The Windy Hill Part 3

"Why?"

There was a sharp note of wonder, hurt friendship, even of terror, in the man's voice.

"The people of our village say you are not like other men," said the boy. "They say you can call the friendly spirits of the forest and the hostile G.o.ds of the sea, and that you have wisdom learned in another world. But I, who am your friend, think it is not so. I love you dearly, but I know you are a man as I am. I know the sea is only water and that the forest is only trees. I--I do not believe."

He got to his feet, blind with misery, and went stumbling down the hill. The warm September darkness was thick about him, but up on the hill the starlight showed plainly the motionless figure sitting beneath the oak tree, never turning to look after him, uttering no sound of protest or reproach.

As September days pa.s.sed into October, as the Seven Brothers rode higher in the sky, strange tales, once again, began to come from the south. More white men had been seen in their ships, sailing up and down the coast, trading with the Indians, buying the fish that they had caught and trying to talk to them in an unknown tongue.

"We have heard stories before and will hear them again," said the older warriors incredulously. "Such tales are of the sort that old women tell about the fires on winter nights."

"What does your friend the medicine man say of these rumors, Nashola?"

asked one of the boys of his own age, but Nashola did not answer. He went no more up the hill to the big oak tree; he had held no speech for weeks with Secotan. Yet he would suffer no one to ask him why.

A day came when the news could no longer be disbelieved. A boy of the tribe, who had been digging for clams on the beach, came running home with startling tidings.

"The white men--the winged canoes--as big as our lodges----" he gasped. "Come quickly and see!"

Old men and young, squaws and papooses, every one deserted the little settlement by the river and went in wild haste up the eastward hills to look upon this strange wonder. It was a lowering day with overcast skies and water of a sullen gray and with ominously little wind. In speechless wonder the Indians stood gazing, for there indeed were three white-sailed ships, moving slowly before the lazy breeze, stanch little fishing vessels of English build, come to see whether this unexplored stretch of coast would yield them any cargo. As they watched, the largest one got up more sail, veered away upon a new tack, and was followed by the others.

"What can they be? Are they come to destroy us all?" asked a trembling old woman, and no one could answer.

"Hush," said another in a moment, "the medicine man is coming."

Secotan, who so seldom left his own lodge now, and who never mixed with the village folk, was climbing slowly up the hill after them.

Nashola noticed that he had begun to look old, that his fierce hawk's face was sunken, and that he walked very slowly, leaning upon his staff. The men and women drew back respectfully as he advanced and stood in a silent, waiting circle, while he shaded his eyes and gazed long at the ships, now growing smaller in the distance.

"Are they friends or enemies, Secotan?" one of the hunters ventured to ask, but the medicine man replied only:

"That must be as the G.o.ds decree."

"Then destroy them for us," cried the old squaw, Nashola's grandmother. "Call up a storm that will break their wings and shatter the sides of those giant canoes. Bring wind and rain and thunder and all the spirits of the sea to overwhelm them."

There was a breathless silence as Secotan slowly moved forward and raised his staff. Nashola, standing before the other boys, watched the medicine man's face with eyes that never wavered. Even as the sorcerer moved there came a low mutter of thunder across the gray, level floor of the sea, and a distant streak of darker water showed the coming wind.

"There is the storm! The very winds obey him!"

The cry went up from all the Indians, save only Nashola who stood silent. The medicine man turned to look at him, then hesitated and dropped his eyes.

"Why do you wait? Raise up a hurricane, O greatest of sorcerers,"

cried a man behind them.

"No," shouted Secotan suddenly. He flung down his staff and held up his empty hands before his face. "I will raise no storm," he cried, "I will call no spirits from the deep--because I cannot. The wind and thunder answer no man's bidding--storms come and go at the will of the Great Spirit alone. There is one soul here that I love, one being whom, in all my life, I have had for a friend. In his eyes I will stand for truth at last, although I had almost learned to believe in my magic myself. I can do none of those things that you think. I am a man without power, like every one of you!"

A roar of anger went up, a dull, savage, guttural sound that died away almost at once into silence, a quiet more ominous than an outcry could have been. Terrified by that strange apparition out yonder upon the waters, the Indians saw themselves deserted by the one person to whom they could look for courage and counsel. Only half understanding, they knew, at least, that Nashola had been the means of their medicine man's downfall. Frenzied hands seized them both and dragged them headlong down toward the water. Visions of the savage tortures that his people wreaked upon their enemies pa.s.sed through the boy's mind, but he did not struggle or cry out, although Secotan's set face, beside him, turned gray under its coppery skin. Some one had found Nashola's canoe, left long unused upon the beach, and had launched it in the breakers.

"Let him go back to the sea that he loved, this boy who has never been one of us. Let the man perish in the storm that is coming without his call."

Relentless hands flung them into the frail boat and pushed it out through the surf. Nashola crawled to the stern and took up the paddle; a crash of thunder broke over their heads and a wild flare of lightning lit the dark water as he dipped the blade. In a moment, rain was falling in blinding sheets, the wind and spray were roaring in their ears, and the ebbing tide was carrying them away, out of the harbor, past the rocky island, straight to the open, angry sea.

After a long time, Secotan, who had lain inert where he had been thrown into the boat, got to his knees and took up the second paddle.

Only by keeping the little boat's bow to the wind could immediate destruction be averted. But the medicine man's strokes were feeble, affording little help, and at last he laid down the blade.

"It is of no use, Nashola," he said. "Death rides on the wind and s.n.a.t.c.hes at us from the black waters. Lay down your paddle and let us die."

"No," the boy answered, "even though death is not an hour away, we will fight it until the very end."

Darkness shut down about them so that they could scarcely see each other as they went on in silence. Although each combing, foam-capped rush of water seemed certain to overwhelm them, there was a strange exhilaration, a mad thrill in rising to every giant wave and shooting down its green side in a cloud of spray. One--two--three--each one seemed the last, and yet there were ever more. Nashola's arms were numb and heavy, his head reeled, but still he struggled on. He wished at last that death would come quickly, to still the terrible aching weariness that possessed his whole being. The worst of the storm had blown, roaring, past them, but the seas were still heavy and nothing--nothing, Nashola thought, could ever bring back the strength to his failing arms.

Suddenly the clouds were torn apart, showing a glimmer of stars and a vague glimpse of the tossing black water all about them.

"Look, look, Nashola," cried the medicine man, pointing upward, "they have come to help us, your kinsmen, the Seven Brothers of the Sun!"

But Nashola was not looking at the sky; his eyes were fixed on a ghostly shape moving close ahead of them and on the fitful gleam of a ship's lantern that tossed and glimmered in the dark. Dropping his paddle he put his hands to his mouth and lifted his voice in a long hail. The light bobbed and swung and an answering shout came through the darkness.

To the weather-beaten English sailors, used to the rough adventures of sailing new and uncharted seas, there was little excitement in picking up two half-drowned Indians, although they had never done such a thing before. They warmed the two with blankets, they revived them with fiery remedies, and they sat about them on the deck, trying to talk to them by means of signs, but with small success.

"It is no common thing to see these natives so far from sh.o.r.e," the mate said to the captain, "for as a rule the Indians distrust the sea.

We cannot find out how these came to be adrift in that canoe. The young one tries to make us understand, but the old man merely covers his face and groans. I think he will not believe that we are men like himself."

"Bring the boy to me," the captain ordered. "Perhaps we may be able to understand him."

In the quiet dawn, when calm had followed the night's storm, the ship ran in toward a rocky headland to send a boat ash.o.r.e. Yet when it had been lowered and Secotan had dropped into it, he turned to see Nashola standing on the deck above, making no move to follow.

"I am not coming, Secotan," he declared steadily. "The chief of these men and I have talked with signs and he wishes to carry me to his home on this strange winged vessel. He promises that he will bring me safe back again. Then I can tell you and all of our tribe what these white men really are. And I have always longed to know what lay beyond this forbidden sea."

Secotan did not protest.

"I have called you friend, I have wished to have you for my brother,"

he said, "but I must call you master now, since you have dared what I can never dare."

Much has been said of the courage of those white men who crossed the stormy Atlantic in their little vessels to explore an unknown continent. But what of the brave hearts of those Indians who thought the white men were spirits come out of the sea, who did not know what ships were, yet who still dared to set sail with them? For we know that there were such dusky voyagers, that they crossed the sea more than once in the English fishing vessels, and that they brought back to their own people almost unbelievable tales of cities and palaces, or harbors crowded with shipping and of whole countrysides covered with green, tilled fields. With all these wonders, however, they could tell their comrades that these white beings were mere men like themselves, to be neither hated nor dreaded as spirits of another world. Deep dwelling in Nashola was that born leadership that makes real men see through the long-established doubts and terrors of their race, who can distinguish the false from the true, who can go forward through shadowy perils to the clear light of knowledge and success.

It was in recognition of this that old Secotan, half understanding, wholly unable to put his feeling into words, standing alone upon the headland, raised his arms in reverent salute and cried a last good-by to his comrade:

"Farewell and good fortune, O Brother of the Sun!"

CHAPTER III

JOHN Ma.s.sEY'S LANDLORD

The story had come to an end, but the boy and girl still waited as though to hear more.