sword and pike, shot down with the muskets that there was now time
to load. The remainder, hemmed about, pressed against the wall, were
fast meeting with a like fate. They stood no chance against us; we cared
not to make prisoners of them; it was a slaughter, but they had taken
the [v]initiative. They fought with the courage of despair, striving to
spring in upon us, and striking when they could with hatchet and knife.
They were brave men that we slew that day.

At last there was left but the leader--unharmed, unwounded, though time
and again he had striven to close with some one of us, to strike and to
die striking with his fellows. Behind him was the wall; of the half
circle which he faced, well-nigh all were old soldiers and servants of
the colony. We were swordsmen all. When in his desperation he would have
thrown himself upon us, we contented ourselves with keeping him at
sword's length, and at last West sent the knife in the dark hand
whirling over the palisade. Some one had shouted to the musketeers to
spare him.

When he saw that he stood alone, he stepped back against the wall, drew
himself up to his full height, and folded his arms. Perhaps he thought
that we would shoot him down then and there; perhaps he saw himself a
captive amongst us, a show for the idle and for the strangers that the
ships brought in.

The din had ceased, and we the living, the victors, stood and looked at
the vanquished dead at our feet, and at the dead beyond the gates, and
at the neck upon which was no living foe, and at the blue sky bending
over all. Our hearts told us, and truly, that the lesson had been
taught, and that no more forever need we at Jamestown fear an Indian
attack. And then we looked at him whose life we had spared.

He opposed our gaze with his folded arms and his head held high and his
back against the wall. Slowly, as one man and with no spoken word, we
fell back, the half circle straightening into a line, and leaving a
clear pathway to the open gates. The wind had ceased to blow, and a
sunny stillness lay upon the sand and the rough-hewn wooden stakes and a
little patch of tender grass. The church bell began to ring.

The Indian out of whose path to life and freedom we had stepped glanced
from the line of lowered steel to the open gates and the forest beyond,
and understood. For a full minute he waited, not moving a muscle, still
and stately as some noble masterpiece in bronze. Then he stepped from
the shadow