Raleigh's Page (13 page)

29

S
HIPWRECK
!

At dusk, from the
Tyger
’s deck, they saw Indians onshore. Admiral Grenville made signs of greeting, but the Indians ran away. That night, on board, they heard a harsh, wavering conch horn signal that carried for miles. “They send news of us,” Manteo explained.

The gentlemen unpacked their finery to dress for the landing.

They attempted it early the next morning. Waves and eddies roiled the channel as the
Tyger
poked its way. The chart the first exploring captains had made was useless. Storms and drifting sand had changed the inlets.

Andrew clung to the bowsprit like a spider, legs around, one hand holding as he sounded the channel depths with the other. The vessel pitched and heaved with the rolls of water and the pushing wind.

“Sixteen!” the boy behind him yelled, calling the number from his marked rope.

Andrew’s showed less than twelve.

“Eleven!” he hollered as a huge roller hurled the ship forward.

The cord in his hand went slack as the
Tyger
ran aground with a crash like falling timber. It was all Andrew could do to hang on to the narrow spar as he spun like a toy on a stick. Then another wave sent the ship rolling far to port and he was pitched into the churning water along with crates and chunks of broken wood. As he fell in, one of the heavy crates tore his ear and banged his shoulder.

Roller after roller smacked the
Tyger,
each one breaking more of her bones. There were yells and screams as rigging snapped like kindling. Gagging on seawater, the boy splashed frantically and fought for breath. His left arm hurt. His boots were pulling him down. Then Pena’s voice came to him: “On your back. Rest. Then make like the frog.”

He rolled over on his back. It was hard to kick with his boots on. Slowly, he worked them off. Then he rested, panting and vomiting. At last he made like a frog for land.

Salt! Where was Salt?

The wind shifted and the ship broke free. The admiral brought her, half sunk, to anchor some distance from the island.

Two deckhands and the ships’ boy who’d spotted the prize a few days before were missing.

That afternoon, the sailors began ferrying the explorers to shore in the small boats. Andrew heard there were many injured. He went out to the
Tyger
to help Tremayne and Mr. Harriot as they worked with the ship’s surgeon.

They were sent to a sailor whose leg bone was sticking out like a piece of snapped wood. Andrew had watched his mother set such breaks. Tremayne gave the sailor a drink of spirits, then tied him down. The sailor’s groans became howls as the boy used all his strength to force the ends of bone together and then probed the wound to fish out splinters.

That done, he rinsed the swollen purple mess with strong wine and braced it with splints tied tight around with cords.

Next was a man with his scalp torn open. Blood gushed when they lifted his bandage. Andrew sewed him up the way you’d stitch shut a sack, loop over and thread under.

Tremayne then stitched Andrew’s torn ear. He’d had no practice at this work; his stitching hurt more than the crate’s tearing. He fixed the tear, but he didn’t line it up properly.

The sailors, meanwhile, ferried to shore what could be saved of the expedition’s food. There wasn’t much. The
Tyger
’s hold was deep in brine. The barrels of flour were soaked, the dried meat and stockfish all spoiled.

A gentleman fussed about damage to his yellow silk suit.

They were one hundred four explorers. With what they’d saved and counting the supplies not needed on the other ships, they had food for twenty days. The
Tyger
had carried most of their stores because the admiral feared the crews’ stealing. The best of what they had left was cheese. Andrew had never liked cheese.

Right then he didn’t think about their difficulties. The place was beautiful, unlike any he’d ever seen, flat and noisy in constant sea wind, slap of water, rustling reed meadows along the shore, thick green brush a little ways inland, then immense oaks bearded with silver moss. Cypress grew tall out of the water; there were groves of great spiked cedar trees. The soil was black and sandy. He scooped up a handful and made a ball. It held. He sniffed it and tasted it.
I can grow anything in this,
he thought. Near the fort, there were trees blooming white blossoms large as saucers. A gray and white bird mocked his whistle; when it flew, it looked like a wheel turning.

Exhausted and half sick from salt water as he was, Andrew had never felt happier in his life. A glow of pride and relief warmed him. “I made it,” he said to himself. “I made it to America!”

Manteo and Wanchese showed the explorers how to cut fragrant cedar boughs for their beds. As Andrew and Tremayne worked, the wind and swamp smells filled their heads. There were whitecaps on the gray-brown water. The water glinted like silver from the silt in it. Strange birds sang. Some were red, some blue with touches of black. In the warm sunlight, the air was heavy with green and growing.

In the last light, Tremayne helped Andrew dig slits to heel in the apple shoots until they could plant them proper. “Water them good!” the boy heard Pena saying. There was no fresh water close by. Anyway, he didn’t have a bucket. “Tomorrow!” he whispered, touching the closest one.

When he came into the fort, one of the explorers brought a candle to look at his swollen ear.

“I saw it happen,” the man said. “It was a crate of chickens did it. I was sure you’d sink when it crowned you.” He bathed the injured ear with the stinging spirits they called aqua vitae, or “water of life.”

The next day, the man whose scalp Andrew had stitched found Salt on the island, weak and unsteady, sick from swallowing seawater.

That afternoon a small party of warriors came up, armed but curious. They’d seen white men before. They recognized Manteo and Wanchese.

Manteo repeated in Algonquin what the explorers’ land captain, Captain Lane, told him to say:

“Make ready! Our chief will soon present himself to your chief. He brings word from the ruler of these lands, Sir Walter Raleigh, and from Big Chief Elizabeth, the chief of all chiefs.”

Andrew stood beside Mr. Harriot as Manteo spoke in case there was interpreting to do. There wasn’t. The warriors looked hard at Manteo, then left without speaking.

Sir Walter would have begun friendlier,
Andrew thought.
Captain Lane makes us sound like Spaniards.

30

T
O
C
HIEF
P
EMISAPAN

On hearing his warriors’ report that the English chief was going to visit, Chief Pemisapan called all his lesser chiefs to his lodge. He ruled the island and the mainland opposite. The mile of water that separated them was so shallow a man could walk most of the way when the tide was out.

The next morning, Captain Lane ordered Wanchese and Manteo to take him across to Pemisapan. Mr. Harriot, Tremayne, and Andrew were to go along. Sir Walter had given the captain written instructions that Mr. Harriot was to accompany every mission, with Tremayne as his assistant and Andrew as secretary to write the daily log and help interpret.

By now Manteo had learned enough English to get along, and Mr. Harriot and Andrew knew basic Algonquin.

“I don’t expect trouble,” Captain Lane announced, “but to impress them we’ll go with a squad of soldiers in armor. We’ll be asking for food. We’ll want those people to be in a willing mood.”

That wasn’t the way they’d planned their first meeting with the natives when they’d sat with Sir Walter in the turret back at Durham House. It was as if the shipwreck and loss of food had changed everything. Captain Lane was preparing for war. He was acting like a Spaniard!

Andrew looked at Mr. Harriot. The tall man’s lips were pressed tight together.

Mr. Harriot spoke with Manteo for a moment.

“Manteo suggests no weapons and we take the chief a gift,” he said.

The captain glared. “You may trust them; I do not. We travel as soldiers,” he exclaimed. “My men and I will wear armor and carry weapons. As for gifts, I have a small knife and some trinkets in this bag.”

“More, for when you ask for the food,” Manteo whispered to Mr. Harriot. “That!” he said, pointing to a large copper pot.

“Manteo suggests we take that as well,” said Mr. Harriot.

“You’ll spoil them from the start,” the captain muttered, “but if that’s what you want to do, you can have Andrew lug it.”

Approaching Pemisapan’s village, the Englishmen clanked past rough-kept fields of corn with beans and yellow-blooming squash underneath. Nearby there were smaller plots of tobacco.

“How much crop do they save?” Mr. Harriot asked.

“Enough to eat through winter and plant in spring,” Manteo replied, “unless the cold lasts long or the seeds rot.”

The Indians’ dogs set up a racket. Salt growled. Andrew picked him up. He didn’t fit in the boy’s pocket anymore.

A fence of sharpened poles dug in and laced together with vine ropes surrounded a cluster of lodges made of cedar hoops covered with reed mats.

One lodge stood apart. There were paths to the others, no path to that one.

“Who lives there?” Andrew asked.

“Our dead chiefs and priests,” Manteo replied. “You put yours in the ground; we keep ours.”

The boy looked puzzled.

“When they die, we take out the guts,” Manteo explained. “We lay their bodies on a shelf with medicine root to eat in the next world. When the flesh rots away, we wrap their bones in what’s left of their skins.”

Andrew wanted to know what the medicine root was, but just then Captain Lane marched up. “Tidy!” he announced with a sweep of his hands. “A good camp, well protected.”

The Indians stood silent, watching the English soldiers approach, noisy and awkward, red-faced and sweating as sunlight glinted off their polished armor.

Andrew felt someone staring at him. He turned and saw a broad-faced Indian boy his age standing apart. He looked like a younger Manteo. Manteo noticed him too and waved him over.

“My brother’s son,” he explained as the boy approached, his eyes fixed on Andrew. Manteo talked with him for a moment in a low voice that Andrew could not make out.

“His name is Sky. He came when he saw your ships passing,” Manteo explained. “His village is called Ocracoke, an island to the south. He says your spirit called him. His father is a healer, a kind of priest; his grandfather too. He will be the same.”

“My spirit called him?” Andrew asked.

“Yes,” said Manteo. “He says it spoke when he saw the ships. He set out at once. He just got here.”

The back of Andrew’s neck prickled as the Indian boy searched his face, hands, and feet. What was he looking for? His eyes were black, unblinking. They gave no sign; it was as if he were studying a rock. He was fine-looking, shorter and thicker than Andrew. He wore a plain deerskin apron around his waist and a drilled claw the size of a little finger from a leather strip at his neck. His silky black hair was cropped short.

As Tremayne and Mr. Harriot moved on, Sky walked close beside Andrew.

Tremayne pointed to the chiefs’ guards. Their heads were shaved bare save for a long lock on the left side, oiled and combed. Their fingernails were long as claws.

“Look at their scars!” Tremayne whispered.

So far as Andrew knew, Manteo’s body and Wanchese’s were unmarked. The older men he saw now had marks burned into their backs and upper arms: a long arrow on one, an “X” on another, four arrows diminishing in length on a third, three uniform arrows on a fourth.

“What are the marks for?” he asked.

“Allegiance marks,” Manteo explained. “You carry a flag for your Queen; our most powerful warriors carry a mark. Your men can switch sides,” he said with a smile. “Ours cannot, unless they are captured and made slaves. Wanchese is marked. On the inside of his leg—here,” he said, pointing to his upper thigh. “Here he carries a mark.”

The Englishmen had not known Wanchese was allied to one of the chiefs.

“Are you marked?” Andrew asked.

“No,” Manteo replied. “I am not a warrior. When I left here, I was studying to be a priest.”

Pemisapan met them with his council. He said nothing. His head was shaved bare, save for a lock on one side tied in an oiled knot stuck with feathers and a shrunken hand. His teeth were small and wide-spaced. On his chest he wore a plate of beaten copper the shape and size of a man’s palm. Its gleam caught the captain’s eye.

Wanchese introduced Captain Lane to the assembly in the Indian language. The captain stood tall, holding the silver-headed pole of polished wood, called a mace, that signified his office. In his other hand he held the leather sack of presents.

Captain Lane did not know Algonquin, so he spoke his English extra loud.

“I represent the owner of this land, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord of Virginia!”

He thumped the pole.

“We are all the Queen’s subjects! She is the chief of all chiefs.”

Two more thumps.

“We are here to introduce you to the Reformed Christian religion!”

Several thumps.

The Indians stood motionless, their eyes on the leather sack.

The captain looked to his soldiers to clap. He then presented a small knife to Chief Pemisapan. The captain had bronze bells and tin whistles for the others.

The captain ordered his men to rattle the bells and blow on the whistles as they passed them out. The Indians did nothing with them. They were not pleased; knives would have suited them better. They cut with sharpened oyster shells and chipped stones.

The captain motioned to Mr. Harriot. “Now!” he said in a low voice.

Mr. Harriot had been ordered to show the Indians something of his science. As Andrew gathered up twigs and dry leaves, Mr. Harriot took a magnifying glass from his pocket and passed it among the chiefs.

“It will make fire,” he told them in Algonquin.

Their looks revealed nothing.

He positioned the lens to beam the sun against Andrew’s pile of tinder. In a moment a curl of smoke rose, then a lick of flame.

The lesser chiefs whispered among themselves.

“They say your power to call fire means you are a priest,” Manteo explained. “They say that is why you do not dress like the others.”

Andrew caught Sky’s eye as he watched. “I will show you,” he whispered in the boy’s language. Sky nodded and smiled a little.

A feast was offered. While the women put out food, Andrew went to Mr. Harriot.

“May I give him a present?” he asked, pointing to Sky. “He is Manteo’s nephew.”

Mr. Harriot fumbled in his deep pocket.

“I have more of the captain’s trinkets for the chiefs—bells and whistles—but it won’t do to give him any of those.

“How about this?” he asked, pulling out a chipped piece of lens glass.

Andrew took it.

“A gift,” he said as he held it out to Sky. “A piece of the fire stone.”

Sky nodded as he studied it carefully, feeling the edge. Suddenly he turned and ran back to the lodges. He returned with a claw like the one he wore.

“My gift,” he said. “Your spirit told me to bring it. Bear claw,” he added. “I’ll bore it so you can wear it like mine. It will protect you.”

The smell of food cooking made them hungry. They went to where the chief’s allegiance men were signaling the English to sit.

The feast was a stew of corn and beans together with broiled meat cooked on wooden spits. Later, the squaws baked corn cakes on the heated rocks. Sky sat with Manteo and Andrew. As soon as the women served the corn cakes, the Indian boy tossed a fistful of dried corn on the hot rocks. Andrew started when the first grains popped. Sky laughed at his surprise. He grabbed up the white puffs and ate them. Then he handed a fistful of the popped corn to Andrew.

As the biggest of the marked guards pulled his meat from a spit, he pointed to Salt and gestured as if to skewer and cook him in the same way. The Indians and the English laughed together as Andrew gathered the dog in his arms. Sky did not laugh.

There was no beer, wine, or any spirit. The Indians’ drink was water flavored with sassafras root. It was not sweet; nothing the Indians ate or drank was sweet.

“The grapes we see,” Mr. Harriot asked Manteo. “What do you make with them?”

Manteo shook his head. He puckered his mouth to show their sourness.

“Do you make wine?”

He shook his head.

“Do you brew with corn?”

Again he shook his head. “You want beer,” Manteo said. “We don’t make beer. To get like you with much beer, we smoke tobacco and dance!”

After dinner the warriors gathered in a circle around the fire pit, clapping to a rhythm of drums, rattles, and a sort of flute as they sang in high voices. Suddenly a small band of black-painted priests appeared wearing antlers on their heads. They formed a smaller circle inside the larger. They shook their heads and waved green boughs up and down as they danced in the opposite direction, singing their own music. Then, as if on signal, the rattles and the singing stilled.

Chief Pemisapan looked at Captain Lane and spoke slowly in a deep gravelly voice.

The captain looked at Mr. Harriot. “What does he want?” he whispered.

“Your speech of thanks.”

“You make it,” said the captain. “And order food for the others.”

“Send for the big pot,” Mr. Harriot commanded as he stepped forward and spoke in the Indians’ tongue.

“We have enjoyed your feast,” he said slowly, bowing with his hands pressed together. “The hundred back at the fort would like the same for a week. In thanks, we will make Chief Pemisapan gift of a fine copper pot.”

The chief and his council sat silent as they waited for the captain’s party to bring the pot.

Mr. Harriot pointed to show they should place it at the chief’s feet.

After a long pause, Pemisapan nodded slowly.

It was late afternoon when the explorers rowed back across the channel to the fort.

“Perhaps we feed on copper pots this winter,” the captain said. “We have plenty; the
Tyger
’s wetting didn’t spoil them!”

He had learned the Indian word for the piece of bright metal the chief wore on his chest. He had smiled broadly at Pemisapan all through the feast and pointed to show that he wanted to hold it, but the chief wouldn’t take it off.

“Wassador!” the captain announced as they paddled. “We must find where they mine it!

“Mr. Harriot,” he called in a loud voice. “That name the Indians call us by—‘Mucksoquick’ or some such—is that their word for God?”

Mr. Harriot pursed his lips. “It means, sir, ‘They wear fine clothes.’”