e through which I was traveling.
The fallen trees ranged themselves into an abatis hard to surmount; the
thickets withstood one like iron; the streamlets were like rivers, the
marshes leagues wide, the treetops miles away. Little things, twisted
roots, trailing vines, dead and rotten wood, made me stumble. A wind
was blowing that had blown just so since time began, and the forest was
filled with the sound of the sea.

Afternoon came, and the shadows began to lengthen. They were lines of
black paint spilt in a thousand places, and stealing swiftly and surely
across the brightness of the land. Torn and bleeding and breathless, I
hastened on; for it was drawing toward night, and I should have been at
Jamestown hours before. My head pained me, and as I ran I saw men and
women stealing in and out among the trees before me: Pocahontas with her
wistful eyes and braided hair and finger on her lips; Nantauquas; Dale,
the knight-marshal, and Argall with his fierce, unscrupulous face;
my cousin George Percy, and my mother with her stately figure, her
embroidery in her hands. I knew that they were but phantoms of my brain,
but their presence confused and troubled me.

The shadows ran together, and the sunshine died out of the forest.
Stumbling on, I saw through the thinning trees a long gleam of red, and
thought it was blood, but presently knew that it was the river, crimson
from the sunset. A minute more and I stood upon the shore of the mighty
stream, between the two brightnesses of flood and heavens. There was
a silver crescent in the sky with one white star above it, and fair in
sight, down the James, with lights springing up through the twilight,
was the town,--the English town that we had built and named for our
King, and had held in the teeth of Spain, in the teeth of the wilderness
and its terrors. It was not a mile away; a little longer,--a little
longer and I could rest, with my tidings told.

The dusk had quite fallen when I reached the neck of land. The hut to
which I had been enticed that night stood dark and ghastly, with its
door swinging in the wind. I ran past it and across the neck, and,
arriving at the palisade, beat upon the gate with my hands, and called
to the warder to open. When I had told him my name and tidings, he did
so, with shaking knees and starting eyes. Cautioning him to raise no
alarm in the town, I hurried by him into the street, and down it toward
the house that was set aside for the Governor o