e motive was
fear, for they had seen or heard of the tender mercies of the savages.
But in most, I think, it was a love of bold adventure, and especially
the craving to push the white man's province beyond the narrow borders
of the Tidewater. If you say that this was something more than defence,
I claim that the only way to protect a country is to make sure of its
environs. What hope is there of peace if your frontier is the rim of an
unknown forest?

My hardest task was to establish some method of sending news to the
outland dwellers. For this purpose I had to consort with queer folk.
Shalah, who had become my second shadow, found here and there little
Indian camps, from which he chose young men as messengers. In one place
I would get a settler with a canoe, in another a woodman with a fast
horse; and in a third some lad who prided himself on his legs. The rare
country taverns were a help, for most of their owners were in the
secret. The Tidewater is a flat forest region, so we could not light
beacons as in a hilly land. But by the aid of Shalah's woodcraft I
concocted a set of marks on trees and dwellings which would speak a
language to any initiate traveller. The Indians, too, had their own
silent tongue, by which they could send messages over many leagues in a
short space. I never learned the trick of it, though I tried hard with
Shalah as interpreter; for that you must have been suckled in a wigwam.

When I got back to James Town, Faulkner would report on his visitors,
and he seems to have had many. Rough fellows would ride up at the
darkening, bringing a line from Mercer, or more often an agreed
password, and he had to satisfy their wants and remember their news. So
far I had had no word from Lawrence, though Mercer reported that Ringan
was still sending arms. That tobacco-shed of mine would have made a
brave explosion if some one had kindled it, and, indeed, the thing more
than once was near happening through a negro's foolishness. I spent all
my evenings, when at home, in making a map of the country. I had got a
rough chart from the Surveyor-General, and filled up such parts as I
knew, and over all I spread a network of lines which meant my ways of
sending news. For instance, to get to a man in Essex county, the word
would be passed by Middle Plantation to York Ferry. Thence in an
Indian's canoe it would be carried to Aird's store on the Mattaponey,
from which a woodman would take it across the swamps to a clum