"This Warren is a fool," grumbled Bertrand.
The King ignored him. "Wear it as a ring upon your finger," he told Ebenezer. "One day when Death is very close, this ring may turn him away."
Ebenezer too was somewhat disappointed by the present, the rude carvings of which could not even be called decorative, but he accepted it politely and, since the outside diameter was too large for comfort, strung it upon a thin rawhide thong and wore it around his neck, under his shirt. Bertrand, on the other hand, stuffed his ungraciously into a pocket of his trousers. Then, it being already late in the afternoon and the beach in shadow from the cliffs, they bade warm goodbyes to the big Negro and Quassapelagh and, with the savage boys as guides, ascended to the forest and struck out more or less north-westward, moving slowly because of their bare feet.
"Thou'rt not o'erjoyed at traveling to our countrymen," Ebenezer observed to Bertrand.
"I'm not o'erjoyed at walking into a pirates' nest, when we could as lightly search for golden towns," the valet admitted. "Nor did we drive a happy bargain with that salvage king, to trade Drakepecker for a pair of fishbones."
" 'Twas not a trade, nor yet a gift," the poet said. "If he was obliged to us for his life, then saving ours discharged his obligation."
But Bertrand was not so easily mollified.
" 'Sbody, sir, I mean nor selfishness nor blasphemy, but 'tis precious rare a valet gets to be a god! Yet I'd scarce commenced to take the measure of the office, as't were, and get the hang of't, ere ye trade off my parishioner for a pitiful pair of fishbones! I wanted but another day or two to god it about, don't ye know, ere we turned old Drakepecker loose."
"Not I," the Laureate said. " 'Tis a post I feel well quit of. We found him cast up helpless from the sea and left him helpful in a cave; he hath been slave to a god and now is servant to a king. Whither he goes thence is his own affair. We twain did well to start him on his journey — is that not godding it enough? Besides which," he concluded, "you had not the chore of keeping him occupied, as I did, or you'd not complain; I was pleased to find that work to set him to. If we reach our golden cities, my own shall be republican, not theocratic, nor have I any wish to be its ruler. That much Drakepecker hath taught me."
Bertrand smiled. "Ye've been not long a master, thus to speak, sir! D'ye think I mean to fill my head with dogmas and decretals, once I'm in my temple? That is the work of the lesser fry — priests and clerks and all that ilk. A god doth naught but sit and sniff the incense, count his money, and take his pick o' the wenches."
"Methinks your reign in Heaven shan't be long," Ebenezer observed.
"Nor doth it need be," said his valet.
After a while the woods thinned out, and to westward, through the trees, they saw a cleared field of considerable size in which grew orderly green rows of an unfamiliar broad-leaved plant. Ebenezer's heart leaped at the sight.
"Look yonder, Bertrand! That is no salvage crop!" He laid hold of one of their guides and pointed to the field. "What do you call that?" he demanded loudly, as if to achieve communication by volume. "What is the name of that? Did the English plant that field?"
The boy caught up the word happily and nodded. "English. English." Then he launched into some further observation, in the course of which Ebenezer heard the word tobacco.
"Tobacco?" he inquired. "That is tobacco?"
"How can that be?" Bertrand wondered.
" 'Tis not so strange, after all," said the Laureate. "Captain Pound was wont to sail the latitude of the Azores, that ran to the Virginia Capes, and any isle along that parallel would have Virginia's climate, would it not?"
Bertrand then demanded to know why a band of pirates would waste their time on agriculture.
"We have no proof they're pirates," Ebenezer reminded him. "They could as well be sot-weed smugglers, of which Henry Burlingame declares there are a great number, or simply honest planters. 'Tis a thing to hope for, is't not?"
A contrary sentiment showed in Bertrand's face, but before he had a chance to voice it the two boys motioned them to silence. The four moved stealthily through a final grove of trees to where the forest ended at a riverbank on the north and a roadway paved with bare logs on the west. Sounds of activity came to them from a large log structure like a storehouse, obviously the work of white men, that ran from the roadside back into the trees; at their guide's direction they crept up to the rear wall, from which point of vantage, their hearts in their mouths, they could safely peer down the road toward the river.
"I'God!" Ebenezer whispered. The noise they had heard, a rumbling and chanting, was made by several teams of three Negroes each, who, barefoot and naked to the waist, were rolling enormous wooden hogsheads over the road down to a landing at the river's edge and singing as they worked. On a pier that ran out from the shore was a group of bareheaded, shoeless men dressed in bleached and tattered Scotch cloth, who despite their sunburnt faces and generally uncouth appearance were plainly of European and not barbaric origin, they were engaged in nothing more strenuous than leaning against the pilings, smoking pipes, passing round a crockery jug (after each drink from which they wiped their mouths on the tops of their hairy forearms), and watching the Negroes wrestle their burdens into a pair of lighters moored alongside. At sight of them Ebenezer rejoiced but more marvelous still — so marvelous that the beholding of it brought tears to his eyes — out in mid-channel of the broad river, which must have been nearly two miles wide at that point, a stately, high-pooped, three-masted vessel rode at anchor, loading cargo from the lighters, and from her maintop hung folds of red, white, and blue that could be no other banner but the King's colors.
"These are no brigands, but honest English planters!" Ebenezer laughed. " 'Tis some island of the Indies we have hit on!" And for all the others warned him to be silent, he cried out for joy, burst out onto the roadway, and ran whooping and hallooing to the wharf. The young savages fled into the forest; Bertrand, filled with gloom and consternation, lingered by the warehouse wall to watch.
"Countrymen! Countrymen!" Ebenezer called. The Negroes stopped their song and left their labors to see him go by, and the white men too turned round in surprise at the outcry. It was indeed a most uncommon spectacle: even thinner than usual from the rigors of his months on shipboard, Ebenezer bounded down the log road like a shaggy stork. His feet were bare and blistered, his shirt and breeches shred to rags: bald and beardless at the time of his abduction from the Poseidon, he had let his hair grow wild from scalp and chin alike, so that now, though still of no great length, it was entirely matted and ungroomed. Add to this, he was more sunburnt than the planters and at least as dirty, the very picture of a castaway, and his haste was made the more grotesque by the way he clutched both arms across his shirt front, wherein he carried still the curling pages of the Journal.
"Countrymen!" he cried again upon reaching the landing. "Say something quickly, that I may hear what tongue you speak!"
The men exchanged glances; some shifted their positions, and others sucked uneasily on their pipes.
"He is a madman," one suggested, and before he could retreat found himself embraced.