en we heard the sound of the horses,
and six Indians--Ricahecrians--with Luiz Sebastian, came against me. She
stood at my side while I killed three. Then I was struck down, and I
heard her scream as I fell."

The master freed himself from Carrington's supporting arm, and raised
from his hands a face that had suddenly become that of an old man. But
the voice was steady with which he said quietly,--

"Let them search the room thoroughly, for the child may be laying in a
faint beneath these dead, though my soul doth tell me that it is as this
man says, and that she is gone. But we will after them at once, and,
please God, we will have her back, safe and sound. They have but an
hour's start."

"Ay," muttered young Whittington to Havisham. "Only an hour. But the
Chickahominies build the swiftest canoes in this corner of the world,
and I have heard that the canoes of the Ricahecrians are to the canoes
of the Chickahominies as swallows are to cranes."

CHAPTER XXVIII

BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS

Great trees, drooping from the banks of the Pamunkey, shadowed into inky
blackness the water below them; but between the lines of darkness slept
a charmed sheet, glassy, fiery red from the sunken sun. Three boats
moved silently and swiftly up the crimson stream, until, rounding a low
point, they came upon an Indian village, nestling amidst vines and
mulberries, and girt with a green ribbon of late maize, when they swung
round from the middle stream and made for the bank. They were rowed by
stalwart servants, and in the foremost sat the master of Verney Manor
and Sir Charles Carew. In the second boat was the Surveyor-General and
Dr. Anthony Nash, and in the third the overseer, and among the rowers of
this last was Godfrey Landless.

As they neared the bank their occupants saw that the usual sleepy
evening stillness was not upon the village above them. A shrill sound of
wailing from women and children rose and fell through the gathering
dusk, and in the open space round which the bark wigwams were built,
dark figures moved to and fro in a kind of measured dance, slow and
solemn, and marked at intervals by dismal cries. As the boats touched
the shore and the white men sprang out, a boy, stationed as scarecrow
upon the usual scaffold in the midst of the maize fields, raised a
shrill whoop of warning which brought the lamentation of the women and
the dance of the men to a dead stop. The latter rushed down to the river
side,