We stood together on the poop, watching the banks slide by in the fading light of an aging day, seeing the red touch the hills with warning. Abby was beside me, large now with child, and John Tilly, calm, serious, a little worried, I think, for he approved not of our going. Jublain had told me at last that he had not the stomach any longer for the wilds. "I fear you must go from here without me, Barnabas."
Well enough I understood, and blamed him not a whit. There were other places for him, and other climes. In a way I was relieved, for I much wanted a good friend who knew where we were and what we did.
At the last I had decided to leave the ship to Tilly, for Jublain wanted it not, only passage back to Europe or to the French lands to the north. Pimmerton Burke, Tom Watkins, and Jeremy Ring would come with me, and others had chosen also to attempt the wilds. Jublain assured me he would come again on another voyage, but within days now we should be pushing upstream with Wa-ga-su as our guide.
We had hoped to find the fort intact, but it was gone, burned. Had they found the food caches? We did not need the food now but a time might come, and it was a comfort to know it was there.
We went up the hill in the morning under a sullen sky of clouds with lightning playing, and we stood among the charred timbers and felt a sadness upon it, for what man does not love that which he himself has built?
The earth above the caches was grown now with grass. If the food had been found it was long since. The nuts, at least, would keep.
We returned and went back aboard and sat at table with few words between us. "Is it all gone?" Abby asked.
"Burned," I said, "a few timbers and ashes. Grass grows where our house was, and where the wall was built. I think it must have been but a little while after we sailed."
"Nick Bardle?" she asked.
"Indians, I think. Bardle would not burn it. He would rather leave the timbers for further use sometimes, if along this coast he needed a spar. Scoundrel he may be, but he's not a wasteful man."
So we talked a little then, of old times and new times, of the fluyt, and all the while we tried to avoid the thought of good-bye.
For good friends we were and the time for parting near, and no one wished to be the first to speak of an end to what we had together.
Jublain was my oldest friend among them, of a chance meeting when he helped me escape my first serious trouble. Now I would see him no more. Or would I? Who can say, in such a world?
Yet the urge was on us, and on Abby no less than I, the urge to see beyond those blue mountains, to find a new land, to break new earth, and see our crops freshening in the sun of a new spring. For land beyond the mountains is ever a dream and a challenge, and each generation needs that, that dream of some far-off place to go.
We had crossed an ocean to come ... why? What drove us more than others? Why did Pim come with us and not Jublain? Why Jeremy Ring of the dashing manner and not John Tilly?
Thus far we had come together, and now some strange device, some inner urge, some strange thread grown into our beings was selecting us to move on westward.
Selecting? Or was it we ourselves who chose? Never would I cease to wonder at why one man and not another.
We had made our last purchases from Peter Killigrew, three light, strong boats that we carried on our decks for launching. Now we put them ready, and sliding down the river we went along to that other one to the south, a somewhat larger river, and so Wa-ga-su said, a larger one.
Much time I spent with Wa-ga-su. He knew my chart at once, put a finger on the sounds, and traced the rivers. Here and there he showed me changes in the river or parts that had been wrongly marked.
"Each year I shall come once along the coast," John Tilly said, "and shall tell others to keep an eye out for a signal from you."
Once more upon the map I showed him the area in which I planned to settle. "Of course, there is no way of knowing until upon the ground, yet I shall follow this river, I think, to the place where it comes from the mountains. Then I shall look for some valley, some cove, some sheltered, defensible place, and there we will settle.
"We have the tools, the seed corn, and much ammunition. We will plant our seed in the spring, and we shall try to find minerals, not gold so much as the useful minerals, and there we will claim land. I shall even mark out some for you if you should change your mind."
"Barnabas?" Jublain put a hand on my arm. "Cannot I, even at this last moment, persuade you not to do this thing? It will be long before other white men come, and longer before they reach the mountains. You will be very few, and you will be alone. Think of Abigail ... without women, without the friendships, the comforts ..."
"Lila will be there. We will make friends among the Indians."
"You hope! Well," he shrugged, "so be it. Perhaps it be your destiny, Barnabas.
But if you have sons, send at least one of them home to England. There will be no education here for them."
"We will teach them. I have books. Yet, that is one thing you can do, Jublain.
Do you remember where we first cached our furs? In the cave?"
"I do."
"If you come this way, bring books, wrap them well in oilskin, and hide them there. It may be that one day we shall return to the coast, and we will look for them."
Again we shook hands, and then we talked of other things, and at the last, when our ship was anchored off the river mouth, and our three boats were lowered and well stowed with our gear, two boats to be rowed, and one towed behind, Sakim suddenly came from below.
"With your permission," he said quietly, "I shall go with you. You will need a doctor where you go, and your wife will need one. I would like to come."
For a moment I could not speak. I simply held out my hand and he took it, so our party was thus the stronger, and stronger by as able a man as I had known.
In the first boat were Wa-ga-su, as our guide and interpreter, Abby, Lila, Sakim, Pim Burke, Black Tom, and myself.
In the second boat were: Tim Glasco, a square-built, strong young man, blond and cheerful, who was a journeyman blacksmith; John Quill, who had been a farm boy on a great estate in England; Kane O'Hara, who had been a mercenary soldier;
Peter Fitch, a slender, wiry, tireless man who had been a shipwright and a ship's carpenter; Matthew Slater, a farmer; and Barry Magill, who had been a cooper and a weaver; and Jeremy Bing.
Abby kept her eyes firmly set on the river before us, her face slightly pale, her eyes large and solemn. Lila gave never a backward glance, nor had she ever, I think, once her mind was set upon a way to go.
As we moved upriver, I assayed again the strengths and weaknesses of our party.
We were strong in body and spirit, I knew, but we faced our first winter in the wilderness, yet winter on the coast might be even fiercer.
We saw no Indians, we saw no wild game. The boats moved slowly and steadily upstream, holding well to the center of the river except when we could escape the direct current and move in shallower, quieter water near one shore or the other.
Each man pulled an oar, myself not excepted. Only Wa-ga-su, who sat in the bow, was free of that labor, because we wished his eyes and attention solely for the river and its banks.
On that first day we made what I felt was ten miles. Toward dusk, Kane O'Hara killed a deer, and Sakim speared a large fish. We moved to an island and made a small camp with a carefully screened fire.
The river flowed softly seaward, a faint wind rustled the leaves, then was still. Our driftwood fires threw a warm glow upon the faces of the men as they gathered about, eating and talking. Our boats had been drawn into a small cove, sheltered by trees and moss hanging from their branches. Peter Fitch had remained aboard, and I walked down from the fire to talk with him, and to listen to the night.