Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) (44 page)

Browne squatted on his knees and stared at man who dared dispute him. “You don
’t truly believe he’s coming back, do ye?”

Standing outside in the darkness, Manteo listened until their protestations grew too foolish to be believed, then he turned and left them alone.

“Ahoy, John White!” a voice called from the
Moonlight
, and John looked across the water to see the gleaming blonde hair of Edward Spicer aboard the
Hopewell
’s consort. “Do you think your pretty daughter will give an old sea hound a kiss?”

“Ahoy, Edward!” White answered, feeling almost like a schoolboy in his glee. “If the sea hound is you, I
’ll send you to the Devil before I’ll let you near my daughter! But mayhap the wee one will give you a peck on the cheek!”

Edward waved and disappeared into the crew milling on the
Moonlight
’s deck, and White turned to join his own landing party. He checked the arquebus in his belt, then paused to study his reflection in a small looking glass he carried in his doublet pocket. He was heavier than when he had left this place, his beard grayer, his hair thinner, and crescents of flesh bagged under his tired eyes. But he would have changed little compared to little Virginia Dare, who had grown from an infant to a toddler. What must his granddaughter look like now?

He climbed into the shallop and held tightly to the side of the boat as the last of the landing party boarded with him. Aboard the
Moonlight
, Spicer was lowering his shallop as well.

“You
’ve arranged to fire the guns, right?” White called up to Cocke, who chose to remain aboard his ship.

“We
’ll fire them,” Cocke promised. “Every hour.”

“Good.” White straightened himself in the boat. The sound might even reach as far south at Croatoan, but would surely alert the colonists at Roanoke. Nothing signaled the arrival of a fleet so well as cannon fire.

The first cannon boomed as the shallops set out along the coast of the island of Hatarask and passed the high sand dunes White knew as Kenricks Mounts. A great plume of smoke rose suddenly from behind the dunes, and White motioned toward the beach, commanding the landing party ashore. If the colonists had moved this far south and heard the Hopewell’s guns, this fire was a sign to divert him.

They landed and marched south to Kenricks Mount, but could find nothing. The heat of the day pressed upon them like ocean waves, and the continual breeze from the sea served not to cool them, but only make them thirsty. “We must have fresh water,” one of the seamen complained, but White ignored him and surveyed the blackened sand where the fire had burnt itself out. There was nothing left, not even the brushwood that must have lit from natural causes.

“There is nothing here,” White mumbled to himself. “Nothing at all.”

Dead-tired and dripping with sweat, White and his men marched back to the beach, where White showed the seamen how to dig in the sand and find fresh water in the dunes. Once they had quenched their thirst, White announced that they would press on, but Edward Spicer put out a restraining hand.

“The day is far spent, John,” he said, glancing toward the brightening western horizon. “We will start again on the morrow.”

White reluctantly agreed, and the two shallops returned to their ships.

The
Hopewell
and the
Moonlight
used the scant remaining hour of daylight to move northward within two miles of the Outer Banks. The next morning, the shallop from the
Hopewell
set out at daybreak as a wicked northeaster blew directly onto the barrier islands and churned the waters at the narrow funneling inlet that led to Roanoke Island.

Captain Cocke, John White, and a crew of men held onto the small boat as it whipped into the fierce current and tossed in the tide. The shallop overturned just after the shallop passed through the inlet into the waters off Roanoke, but a fierce undertow and crashing waves made swimming difficult.

Struggling with all his might, White swam with the men to shore. After resting to regain their breath on the beach, they waded in the shallow water to gather the few provisions that had been with them in the boat, noting with disappointment that their food, matches, and gunpowder had been totally ruined.

Cocke gave the order to haul the boat onto shore and White helped the men spread their wet provisions on the sand to dry. “Ho!” one of the seamen called, pointing to the stretch of sea beyond the bar. “The
Moonlight
’s crew!”

White and the men with him stood on the beach to watch as Captain Spicer
’s boat made for the bar. “The wind has picked up since we came through,” White said, his expert eyes studying the sea. “Mayhap they should not undertake the risk. Shout out, Captain, and tell them to turn back.”

Captain Cocke waved toward the boat, but the crew aboard the
Moonlight
’s shallop was too busy to pay attention to the landing party. The strong and fierce waves pounded the land at the north and south of the inlet, and Spicer’s steersman, Ralph Skinner, handled the boat well until she had nearly passed the bar.

Suddenly a rough wave overswept the shallop and tossed it like a child
’s toy, throwing the men into the water. Most of the men clung to the boat as she bobbed upside down in the tide. A few tried to wade ashore, but were knocked down and swept away by the angry sea. White could see Captain Spicer and Skinner hanging onto the boat, but as the waves continued to pound and toss the craft, soon both men disappeared.

Only four of Spicer
’s men—good swimmers who got safely into deeper water off Roanoke—were in a position to be saved. Captain Cocke and strong swimmers from his boat rowed out to pick up the four who waited in deep water, and when he returned with the survivors, a deep gloom had settled over the entire company.

“We were eleven,” one of the shivering survivors said, crossing his arms around his wet doublet. “Seven are missing.”

“Seven are drowned,” Cocke answered, glancing toward the treacherous sea. “Who were they?”

A second survivor, a boy probably only sixteen years old, spoke up: “I don
’t know all of the men, sir,” he said timidly, burying his feet in the sand in a vain effort to warm himself. “But the Captain was aboard—”

“We knew him,” White interrupted, his mind still reeling from Spicer
’s loss.

“And the surgeon, a fellow called Haunce,” the first survivor inserted. “And there was a fellow by the name of Edward Kelley—”

“I knew him as well,” White said, catching Cocke’s eye. “He was one of the Lane colonists at Roanoke. A good man.”

“And a boy about my age called Robert Colman,” the boy added. “He was a son of one in the colony here.”

Robert Colman
, White thought. Surely ‘twas Thomas Colman’s son! Had he come to seek his father?

“And the others?” Cocke asked.

“Ralph Skinner, Thomas Bevis, Edward Kelborne,” the boy answered, ticking the names off on his fingers. “They were seamen, sir, like us. Hands of the crew, ‘tis all.”

“Aye.” Abraham Cocke stood and watched the shore. “We
’ll wait until the bodies surface, if they do. They deserve a Christian burial.”

They waited six hours and buried three bodies, one of which was Edward Spicer. John uttered a brief and sincere prayer over the grave of his friend, and marveled that so many had died in such a short time. In his entire year at the colony under Ralph Lane, they had not lost even one man, yet on this morning they had lost seven in a single hour. Such was the treachery of the sea.

It had taken every bit of his persuasiveness to convince the men on shore that they must go on. Shaken by the violence of the sea and the loss of their captain and comrades, neither Cocke’s crew nor Spicer’s men had any further inclination to look for the colony, but White persisted. To White’s surprise, Abraham Cocke supported him, and an hour before sunset, the nineteen men climbed into the two shallops and rowed their way up Roanoke Sound.

At first the place seemed a deserted Eden, but then through the trees on the north end of the island they saw a great fire burning. Afraid to risk going ashore in the falling darkness, they beached their ships on a sand bar in the harbor and sounded a trumpet to alert whomever moved on shore to their presence. At White
’s suggestion, through the night the men sang familiar English songs to reassure the inhabitants that they were friendly, but no one answered.

After spending an uncomfortable night in the boats, the two parties went ashore at dawn and found that the fire had been only a grassfire, probably ignited by lightning from the storm that had so agitated the ocean. They walked westward through the woods to Croatoan Sound, directly across from Dasemunkepeuc, then worked their way eastward toward the place where White had left the colony. Several times the party spotted Indian footprints, probably made within the last twenty-four hours, but there was no sign of human life.

As they walked, John White could not help but think of the irony in his situation. ‘Twas August eighteenth, Virginia Dare’s third birthday, but they had found no trace of his granddaughter on the island of her birth. ‘Twas almost as if the child had never existed.

But as the explorers neared the sight of the old fort and village, White gasped in delight as he spied a tree that had been carved with the fair Roman letters C-R-O.

“Why is the word incomplete?” Captain Cocke asked, running his finger over the carving.

White smiled confidently. “
‘Tis all that’s needed. This signifies the place where I will find the planters. This a secret token agreed upon between them and me at my departure.”

He pressed forward toward the village, and soon found the place where the colonists
’ houses had stood. White noted with pleasure that the houses had been taken down and the village enclosed with a palisade of great trees. On one of the chief posts at the entrance, the bark had been removed and five feet from the ground the word
Croatoan
had been fully engraved.

“Did I not say so? They have moved to Croatoan,” White said, glancing around the houses to make sure no life stirred.

A thorough examination of the fort indicated that the colonists had left heavy equipment, but had taken at least one mortar and firearms. White went to the creek where the shallop and pinnace had been anchored, but there was no sign of a vessel either on or under the water.

“Governor White!” the young sailor from Spicer
’s ship ran up, his face glowing. “We found English trunks! Come and see!”

A frown settled upon White
’s forehead as he followed the boy into the ruins of the village. Had the colonists reason to leave in such a hurry that they would bury their possessions rather than transport them?

The boy pointed to a trench that had been opened for some time. Five trunks lay broken amid the dirt, and the articles from the trunks had been rifled by human hands and ruined by the weather. To White
’s chagrin, he discovered that three of the trunks were his own, and the books that lay rotting in the rain were his own sketchbooks and journals. His armor, left behind in the safekeeping of the planters, lay rusting under a nearby tree.

White paused and leaned his hand against an oak. One voice in his heart whispered that the colonists were safe at Croatoan, but another voice muttered darkly that they had fled into the unknown, caring little for their governor or his promise to return.

He felt a hand upon his back. “There is no more we can do here,” Abraham Cocke said, jerking his head toward the beach. “Come, Governor, we must go.”

White protested weakly, but followed the captain to the beach where they had left the boats. The wind had freshened, and a dark cloud loomed over the ocean. “Row men, make haste,” Cocke called, settling himself into the shallop. The men obeyed instantly, recognizing the danger in the heavy storm clouds, and
‘twas only with difficulty that the two small boats made it back to their ships.

At dusk on the same day, Manteo appeared again before the hut of the Englishmen, and forced a smile as he spoke. “A distant thunder sounded today from Roanoke,” he said, jerking his head toward the north end of the island.

“A storm,” Browne said quietly. “‘Tis storming even now.”

“No,” Manteo answered. “Not a storm. Big guns.”

The English looked at each other again. “A sea battle?” one of them said. “I told you there were Spanish about!”

“If there are Spanish about, and they
’re firing cannon, there must be English about, too!” Browne’s face lit up in a grin. “Manteo, did you speak truly about the ship?”

Manteo didn
’t dignify the question with an answer. But after a moment, the one called Henry Browne grinned. “That’s it, then. On the morrow we go to the beach and lay low. We’ll wait until we see the ship, make sure she’s flying the blessed British flag, then light our signal fires!”