To Have and To Hold | Page 4

plays (gathered for me by Rolfe when he was last in
London), I began to read; but my thoughts wandered, and the tale
seemed dull and oft told. I tossed it aside, and, taking dice from my
pocket, began to throw. As I cast the bits of bone, idly, and scarce
caring to observe what numbers came uppermost, I had a vision of the
forester's hut at home, where, when I was a boy, in the days before I ran
away to the wars in the Low Countries, I had spent many a happy hour.
Again I saw the bright light of the fire reflected in each well-scrubbed
crock and pannikin; again I heard the cheerful hum of the wheel; again
the face of the forester's daughter smiled upon me. The old gray manor
house, where my mother, a stately dame, sat ever at her tapestry, and an
imperious elder brother strode to and fro among his hounds, seemed
less of home to me than did that tiny, friendly hut. To-morrow would
be my thirty-sixth birthday. All the numbers that I cast were high. "If I
throw ambs-ace," I said, with a smile for my own caprice, "curse me if
I do not take Rolfe's advice!"
I shook the box and clapped it down upon the table, then lifted it, and
stared with a lengthening face at what it had hidden; which done, I
diced no more, but put out my lights and went soberly to bed.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH I MEET MASTER JEREMY SPARROW
MINE are not dicers' oaths. The stars were yet shining when I left the
house, and, after a word with my man Diccon, at the servants' huts,
strode down the bank and through the gate of the palisade to the wharf,
where I loosed my boat, put up her sail, and turned her head down the
broad stream. The wind was fresh and favorable, and we went swiftly
down the river through the silver mist toward the sunrise. The sky grew
pale pink to the zenith; then the sun rose and drank up the mist. The
river sparkled and shone; from the fresh green banks came the smell of

the woods and the song of birds; above rose the sky, bright blue, with a
few fleecy clouds drifting across it. I thought of the day, thirteen years
before, when for the first time white men sailed up this same river, and
of how noble its width, how enchanting its shores, how gay and sweet
their blooms and odors, how vast their trees, how strange the painted
savages, had seemed to us, storm-tossed adventurers, who thought we
had found a very paradise, the Fortunate Isles at least. How quickly
were we undeceived! As I lay back in the stern with half-shut eyes and
tiller idle in my hand, our many tribulations and our few joys passed in
review before me. Indian attacks; dissension and strife amongst our
rulers; true men persecuted, false knaves elevated; the weary search for
gold and the South Sea; the horror of the pestilence and the blacker
horror of the Starving Time; the arrival of the Patience and Deliverance,
whereat we wept like children; that most joyful Sunday morning when
we followed my Lord de la Warre to church; the coming of Dale with
that stern but wholesome martial code which was no stranger to me
who had fought under Maurice of Nassau; the good times that followed,
when bowl-playing gallants were put down, cities founded, forts built,
and the gospel preached; the marriage of Rolfe and his dusky princess;
Argall's expedition, in which I played a part, and Argall's iniquitous
rule; the return of Yeardley as Sir George, and the priceless gift he
brought us, - all this and much else, old friends, old enemies, old toils
and strifes and pleasures, ran, bitter-sweet, through my memory, as the
wind and flood bore me on. Of what was before me I did not choose to
think, sufficient unto the hour being the evil thereof.
The river seemed deserted: no horsemen spurred Along the bridle path
on the shore; the boats were few and far between, and held only
servants or Indians or very old men. It was as Rolfe had said, and the
free and able-bodied of the plantations had put out, posthaste, for
matrimony. Chaplain's Choice appeared unpeopled; Piersey's Hundred
slept in the sunshine, its wharf deserted, and but few, slow-moving
figures in the tobacco fields; even the Indian villages looked scant of all
but squaws and children, for the braves were gone to see the palefaces
buy their wives. Below Paspahegh a cockleshell of a boat carrying a
great white sail overtook me, and I was hailed by young Hamor.

"The maids are come!" he cried. "Hurrah!" and stood up to