"A name? Aye, 'twas Henry Burlingame!" Ebenezer laughed like one deranged and leaned over toward the old king, on whose face was the piercing, great-eyed frown of an osprey or fishhawk. "Henry Burlingame!" he shouted again, and tears dropped down his cheeks. "You've heard of him, have you, murtherer? Or is it thou'rt Burlingame in disguise, and here's another of thy famous pranks?" Hysteria brought him to the edge of a swoon; his jaw slacked open, and he, was obliged to sit heavily on the ground before he fell.
Another sharp query from Chicamec.
"Who is this Henry Burlingame?" translated the Anacostin King. "A friend of yours?"
Ebenezer nodded affirmatively, unable to speak.
"One of these here?" Quassapelagh asked. "No? In the white man's towns, then?"
The affirmative brought more excited Indian-talk from old Chicamec, in reply to which, when it had been translated for his benefit, Ebenezer explained that Burlingame was his former teacher, a man of some forty summers by his own best guess, made in ignorance of his actual birth date, birthplace, and parentage.
One last inquiry Chicamec made, without recourse to language: his whole frame shaking with consternation, he fetched a charred stick out of the fire, drew with it upon a clean deerhide mat the symbol III, and raised his terrible questioning stare to the poet again.
"Ay, that's the one," Ebenezer sighed, too weary in spirit to share the troubled surprise of the others. "Henry Burlingame the Third." And then, "I say, Quassapelagh, how is't he knows my Henry?" For it had only just occurred to him that in all his tutor's years of adventure and intrigue, it had been Burlingame's policy never to employ the name he was raised by. The question was duly translated, but instead of answering directly, the ancient Indian — the malevolence of whose countenance was supplanted altogether by fierce astonishment — directed two guards to fetch a carved and decorated chest from one end of the hut and place it directly before the bewildered poet.
"The Tayac Chicamec bids you open the chest," said Drepacca.
Ebenezer did so, and was surprised to see nothing evidently breathtaking among the contents, which so far as he could discern without rummaging about, consisted of a number of black garments (whose obviously English manufacture led him to observe that the little chest itself, beneath its Indian decoration, was the sort used by seamen and travelers, not by savages), four corked glass bottles of what seemed to be nothing but water, and on top of all what looked like an old octavo notebook, bound in stained and battered calf.
Chicamec spoke through the Anacostin King.
"There is a — " Quassapelagh looked to Drepacca for assistance with the translation.
"Book," the African said. "A book, there on the top."
"Book," Quassapelagh repeated. "Chicamec bids my foolhardy brother open the book and read its signs." And he added in the same translator's tone, "It is the hope of Quassapelagh that my brother will read some charm therein to cure his madness."
The poet picked up the volume as directed, whereupon the line of guards behind Chicamec fell as one man to their knees, as though before some holy relic. But Ebenezer found it to be in fact a species of English manuscript-book, penned in the regular calligraphy of a gentleman, but with ink too crusty and crude to be European. It bore on the front page the unassuming title How the Ahatchwhoops Doe Choose a King Over Them and commenced with what appeared on quick scanning to be a description of the Dorchester marshes, perhaps the same island on which the tribe now lived.
" 'Tis most intriguing, I concede," the poet said impatiently to Quassapelagh, "but i'faith, this is no time. . i'Christ, now. ." He interrupted himself to reread, incredulously, the opening line — Being then our armes bownd, and led like kine to the Salvage towne, some miles inland, I had leisure to remark the countrie-side, through wch we travell'd — and embarrassment, apprehension, and all gave way to recognition.
"John Smith's Secret Historie!" he exclaimed. " 'Sheart, then 'twas no coincidence. ." He was thinking of the Straits of Limbo, but his eyes had moved already to the next passages of the Historie; his jaw dropped lower, and his sentence was destined never to be completed, for the substance of the manuscript, and more especially of the Tayac Chicamec's tale that followed after, were as amazing as anything in Ebenezer's life.
For the benefit of his mystified companions he read aloud as follows:
"It doth in sooth transcend the power of my pen, or of my fancie, to relate the aspect of this place, so forsaken & desolate & ill-appearing withal; a sink-hole it is, all marshie and gone to swamp. Water standeth hereabouts in lakes & pooles, forsooth there is more water than drie land, but most of the grownd is a mixture of the twain, for that the tyde doth rise & fall, covering & discovering grand flatts of mud thereby, and Isles bearing naught but greene reedes & pine-scrubb. When that the tyde runneth out, smalle pooles remaineth everiewhere, the wch do straightway sower & engender in there slyme more meskitoes, then there are beades in a nunnerie, and each meskitoe hungrie as a priest. Add thereto, the entire countrie is flatt, and most belowe the level of the sea, so that the eye doth see this drearie landscape endlesslie on everie hand; the aire is wett & noisome to the lights; the grownd giveth way beneathe the foot; and the water is too fowle & brynie to drink. It is forsooth Earths uglie fundament, a place not fitt for any English man, and I here venture, no matter how that the countrie neare to hand, such as our owne Virginia, doth prosper in yeers to come, yet will no person but a Salvage ever inhabit this place through wch we march'd, except he be a bloudie foole, or other manner of ass.
"As for those same Salvages, that had us prisoner (thanks to the idiocie of my Nemesis & rivall Ld Burlingame, that fatt clott-poll, as I have earlier discryb'd), they were a fitt reflection of there countrie, being more smalle in stature & meane in appearance, then those others we had incounter'd. ."
Ebenezer looked up uncertainly from his reading, but the faces of Quassapelagh and Drepacca showed no reaction to the words.
"Moreover," he read on, "they seem'd less wont to speake, for that, upon my enquiring of them, What nation were they? my captor hard by responded merelie, Ahatchwhoop, wch signifyeth, in the tongue of Powhatans people, that foule aire, that riseth on a mans stomacke, after he hath eate a surfitt of food, and I cd not determine, whether my Salvage design'd to answer my querie, or meant thereby an insult, or other like barbaritie; he wd saye no more. None the less I was pleas'd, that they spoke a tongue resembling Powhatans, for that were I able to converse with them, so much greater was our chance of slipping there halter. For alle there silence, they did use us civillie, and harm'd not any of our companie, while that we march'd. I reflected, that did they meane to kill us, they had done so lightlie upon the shoar whereon we were ambuscado'd, but they did not. Verilie, they cd be sparing of our lives, onelie to take them anon. But to dye on the morrowe, is better by a daye then to dye now, and therefor I did breathe easier, while keeping still alert for a meanes of escaping injurie at there hands.
"At length we arriv'd at there town, the wch was the rudest I had yet seene, being little save a dozen hovells of sticks & mudd, thrown up on a patch of drie grownd, that rose a hand or two from the swamp. At our approach, eight or tenne more Salvages issu'd from the hutts, ag'd and feeble men in the mayn, and with them the women of the trybe, about 15 in number, and uglie as the Devill. Also, a host of scurvie doggs, that snapp'd & bitt at us from everie quarter.