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35

F
OR
G
OLD AND THE
P
ACIFIC
S
EA

It was late. Andrew rubbed his eyes. He’d been copying for an hour; his hand was stained and sore. He’d just written Mr. Harriot’s estimate of how much food they had left in the fort.

Tremayne had been sitting with them, adding comments and corrections. Now he stood and stretched.

“We send to the Indians every other day now,” he muttered. “Pemisapan gives as little as he can. Only for fear of our guns does he give anything.”

Mr. Harriot nodded. “He’s had enough of us, burning glasses, copper pots, flaming trees, and clocks no matter. At this rate we’ll soon be eating what they need to plant in the spring.”

Wanchese was listening. “Chief Pemisapan says it is strange,” he said, “that the white men’s god gives them pistols and spinning needles but lets them starve.”

“Tell the chief our God provided him to care for us,” said Mr. Harriot, looking hard at Wanchese.

The Indian looked away.

Every morning now the captain would send a team of explorers fanning out through the forest to drive game toward the hunters. Others gathered crabs and forked for oysters.

Sky showed Andrew how to gather small seeds from a dried plant that stuck up through the snow. It took all morning to gather a cupful, which they pounded into paste and baked into small cakes. Some days, that and a few oysters were all they ate.

Manteo showed them how to make a bread of acorns pounded and shelled, with some of the bitterness leached out in salt water. Andrew could not eat it for the cramp it gave his guts, but Mr. Harriot declared it tastier than English bread.

“We’ve learned to eat hunger,” Tremayne joked, but even as they grew gaunt, the greatest hunger among the explorers was still for gold. The hungriest of all was the captain.

Ever since his first meeting with Chief Pemisapan, Captain Lane had made it clear he wanted wassador more than anything. The chief, for his part, soon realized he did not have enough saved corn to feed everyone through the winter and plant in the spring.

Mr. Harriot was in charge of the next party that rowed across the channel to trade for food. When he was settled in the chief’s lodge, Pemisapan surprised him with news about a large village five days’ paddle to the north, near the great bay the Indians called Chesapeake.

“We trade with their chief, Menatonon,” Pemisapan said. “Skins for metal. They will give your chief news of wassador.” Mr. Harriot pressed Pemisapan to say more. He wouldn’t. That day the explorers got less corn and moldier.

Captain Lane clapped his hands when he heard about the village the wassador had come from. Mr. Harriot looked brighter than he had since his illness. They asked Manteo and Wanchese about it. Wanchese shook his head and said nothing.

“It used to be they could send seven hundred warriors to battle,” Manteo reported. “Now I don’t know.”

“Our guns would be nothing against so many,” the captain mused. “We must devise a trick. What can you tell me about their chief? You, Manteo, what do you know about him?”

“He is weak in his limbs from fever,” Manteo replied. “His favorite son carries him.”

“Ah,” said the captain, lowering his eyes as he nodded to himself.

“Do you know about this tribe?” Andrew asked Sky later.

“No. And I never heard where the metal came from. I thought it came from the god Okeus.”

On Valentine’s Day in wet snow, Tremayne, Mr. Harriot, and Andrew mustered with the captain and a small company to go to Chief Menatonon’s village.

Andrew whispered to Mr. Harriot, “Can Sky come along?”

“No!” said Mr. Harriot, making a grim face. “But for Sir Walter’s order, the captain would leave you behind too.”

Sky knew without being told. He was not around when Andrew went to say goodbye. He’d gone back to his home island.

As they proceeded up the river valley, Mr. Harriot measured how fast the water fell. “This will be a good place for mills,” he observed, sketching a map. “Close to meadows where we can grow grain and not far from the sound for shipping.”

As the company approached Chief Menatonon’s village, Captain Lane sent Wanchese ahead with two soldiers to arrange a parley.

“Tell him I come to speak.”

Word came back that the English were welcome. Chief Menatonon would meet Captain Lane in front of his lodge.

The captain wore his heavy cape with large pockets. Mr. Harriot and Andrew walked just behind him to translate.

The chief sat propped on a litter. Although it was raw and blowing rain, all he wore was a patch at his waist and a deerskin about his shoulders. His legs and arms were withered.

His allegiance men and favorite son stood beside him. As Captain Lane’s party approached, Menatonon’s people came out from their lodges. They showed no fear.

Captain Lane walked up slowly, holding his hands out, palms up.

Menatonon nodded slightly.

“Give him our greeting,” the captain ordered Mr. Harriot. Captain Lane slipped his hands into his pockets as if they were cold.

Mr. Harriot had just started his speech of greeting when the captain drew a pistol from his cloak and fired it into the ground before the chief’s litter. The shot sent up clods of mud and dirt. As the Indians fell back yelling, the captain drew another pistol from his pocket and pointed it at Menatonon’s head.

“Mr. Harriot!” he snarled. “Tell his men I’ll shoot him if they attack.”

Andrew stood frightened, trying to understand. Then his face began to burn.

Before Mr. Harriot could speak, Menatonon signaled his men to stand back. He was calm, almost amused by the trick. He tilted his head a little as if to ask, “What do you want?”

The captain summoned his soldiers to bind the crippled man’s hands.

Andrew shrank away from the captain. He looked at Mr. Harriot. The tall man was pale, his mouth tight with anger.
We are just like Spaniards,
Andrew thought.

“Wanchese,” the captain ordered. “Ask him where the wassador is.”

There was a pause. Chief Menatonon seemed bewildered, unable to understand the question. At last he replied, “There is a great river to the north. Where it falls out of the mountains, men take grains of metal from the sand.”

The captain held up one of the medals he’d taken from the sacred cave. “Is the metal like this?” he asked, thrusting it in the chief’s face.

Menatonon stared. “Where did you get that?” he whispered.

“Why? What is it?” Mr. Harriot asked.

“The image of our god Okeus. Only the chief priest has such a thing.”

“What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” Captain Lane demanded.

“Skip all that!” the captain ordered when Mr. Harriot told him. “Wanchese,” he said, motioning Mr. Harriot aside, “ask him if the grains they find where the water falls out of the mountain are hard or soft.”

The chief was calm. He closed his eyes as if dozing. Andrew’s face was still hot with shame.

“Well?” the captain barked, stamping his foot.

“Soft.”

The captain narrowed his eyes and nodded. “So! Perhaps we’ll find gold there.

“And beyond the headwaters of that river, is there a great sea? Ask him that, Wanchese!”

“Over the smoke-colored mountains, much water” was the reply.

“The Pacific!” the captain cried. “We’ve discovered a passage to the East—a way to China!” He couldn’t contain himself. “How far is it to the headwaters?” he spluttered. “Ask him that, Wanchese: how far is it to the headwaters of that river?”

The captain was pacing about, impatient with how long it took Wanchese to ask his questions and how slow the drowsy chief was to answer.

Andrew was afraid of what the captain would do. The man seemed crazed. The boy held his breath as he watched the captain feel for the pistol.

Wanchese could not seem to make the chief understand.

“You, Mr. Harriot, you ask him how far it is to the place where the river begins,” the captain bellowed. He was clasping and unclasping his hands. His face was bright with sweat.

Mr. Harriot whispered to the chief.

There was a long pause. Again the captain stomped. The chief’s eyes were closed. The captain fumbled with his pistol.

“Fifteen days, twenty,” the chief replied at last.

“And how many days beyond the mountains to the sea?”

Andrew watched as the chief seemed to doze off. He wasn’t faking; he was fainting.

“The same,” Menatonon said finally.

“Ask him if he’s been there, Mr. Harriot.”

Andrew studied the chief’s face and chest as Mr. Harriot questioned him. Everything about the Indian slowed as if he was dying. Then, with a huge effort, he roused himself.

“No.”

“Then how does he get metal to trade with Chief Pemisapan? Do you understand, Wanchese? I want to know how he gets metal to trade for skins.”

“We trade for it with the mountain people” was the reply.

Captain Lane was desperate to get to where the grains of soft metal were found, then on to the Pacific Ocean, but first he had to return to base and make preparations.

“We’ll take Menatonon with us as hostage so his people don’t attack us as we go,” he announced.

“That may prove too much for him,” Mr. Harriot warned. “If he dies on the way, we’re dead men too.”

Manteo suggested they exchange the chief for Skiko, the chief’s favorite son.

“Make the exchange,” the captain muttered.

Skiko went with them back to Fort Roanoke, manacled to one of the company day and night. He was Tremayne’s age. He made no complaint as the irons chafed at his wrists and ankles. While he was chained to Tremayne, Andrew cut strips of hide and cloth to cushion Skiko’s hurts, but they didn’t help. The wounds became infected. By the time they arrived at the fort, his wrists and ankles were red and swollen, oozing pus. Andrew treated them with salt water.

The captain called a meeting of his council. Mr. Harriot ordered Andrew to take notes. “Write down as much of it as you can get,” he said.

“We have three choices,” the captain announced. “We may stay here and starve, racking our guts on their moldy corn. Or we can attempt to move our fort to a better harbor on the Chesapeake. Or we can try for gold and the Pacific Sea.

“If we set out now, we could be back by Easter—in time to meet the supply Sir Walter promised.

“What do you say?”

To a man, they shouted, “For gold and the Pacific Sea!”

The captain’s face was red as a drunk’s.

“Excellent! Excellent! We’ll divide…divide the company,” he stammered in his excitement. “Forty of the strongest to go, sixty to stay.”

At that there were loud grumbles.

“No fear!” he yelled. “Spoils and treasure will be shared equal among all.”

Late into the night, he worked out details of the expedition with his lieutenants. Mr. Harriot, Tremayne, and Andrew observed but said nothing.

“We will go with what we need for a week,” he told them. “Thereafter we’ll supply ourselves, trading or raiding as we travel—copper pots or lead shot, their choice,” he said with a harsh laugh.

“Pemisapan must not know,” the captain added in a hushed voice. “He must believe the whole company is here, sending for food as usual.”

After writing in the log for Mr. Harriot, Andrew told Sky what had happened.

“Captain Lane broke his honor,” Sky said. “He traded his spirit for the bright metal.”

Before dawn on Ash Wednesday, the captain slipped out of the fort with a small company plus two mastiffs as guard dogs. He left Skiko behind in chains as hostage. It was cold and drizzling. Andrew pulled on his cap for America.

“You look like a suffering monk in that,” the captain teased.

Andrew looked at the captain’s hat, already sopping. “Perhaps, sir, but mine sheds wet.”

There were snickers. Captain Lane shot Andrew an ugly look that made the boy afraid.

36

S
TEW OF
D
OG

It was slow, cold going as they poled the heavy boats upriver. Andrew went ahead with the scouts, looking for signs of life. “A village!” he reported to Mr. Harriot. “But no smoke, no people.”

They stopped and searched. The fires had been cold for days. “There’s not a grain of corn to be found,” Tremayne announced. Andrew shivered. The place smelled dead.

The second village they came to was the same. Every village they came to was dead to them.

“This must be by plan,” Mr. Harriot said. “The people have been sent off. Not even the old and sick remain.”

Their meals now amounted to a half-pint measure of corn each day. They grubbed for roots, made stew of sassafras, and chewed buds like the deer. Salt ate where he killed. He knew if he came near the men, he’d be robbed.

After a week without meat, the two mastiffs they’d brought as guards were starving. Their once-fine brindle coats hung slack on their great bodies. Their eyes were dull. They smelled ill. They no longer had strength to clean themselves.

One afternoon Manteo motioned to Andrew. “I feel eyes,” he whispered. “We’re being watched.” Andrew’s hair went up. He felt eyes too.

Early the next morning, Manteo surprised a young warrior. As the boy sprinted away, he tripped on a root and twisted his ankle. Manteo caught him.

“He does not talk,” he said when he reported to the captain.

The prisoner was a little older than Andrew, perhaps fourteen. There was no fear in his eyes. They were bright and hard.

Captain Lane called Wanchese to interrogate. He didn’t come. The men looked around. Wanchese was gone!

Andrew had never seen the captain surprised.

“Then you!” he ordered Manteo. “Ask him why the people have fled. Find out where they have gone.”

“He does not talk,” Manteo said again.

The captain ordered torture. He had a man shave slivers of pine in front of the Indian and gesture how they would be driven deep under his fingernails and set afire.

Watching that show made Andrew angry. “Would Sir Walter do this?” he asked Mr. Harriot.

The tall man looked hard at him and nodded. “To keep us safe he would. He’s a soldier first, above all.”

As the Indian boy watched the preparations for his torture, his eyes glazed over as if his mind were leaving his body.

“It’s no good,” said Manteo. “Torture will not make him talk. But the mastiffs might. Bring up the dogs.”

The warrior had never seen such dogs. The handlers brought them close, growling and foaming. In his terror they got from him that Pemisapan had sent messengers to the river villages: “The white ones come to destroy you,” they warned. “Take your food and leave! Starve them.”

“How did Pemisapan learn our plan?” Captain Lane asked.

“From the one who fled,” Mr. Harriot said quietly. “Wanchese betrayed us.”

Or we betrayed him,
Andrew thought.

Captain Lane’s face worked for a moment, his mouth pulled tight.

He called the company together. “We have two pints of corn per man,” he said in an even voice. “I figure we are one hundred sixty miles from Fort Roanoke, four or five days’ travel downriver. We can turn back now,” he said slowly, “or”—his voice deepening—“we can go on to the place where the grains of metal are found.”

Although many were sick from hunger, all but two voted to go on.

“Good!” exclaimed the captain. “You are good men!”

He ordered the captive bound to a tree by the river. The boy’s foot was swollen, bluish gray. Andrew caught his eyes as they left. The Indian’s sought nothing.

“Tremayne,” Andrew whispered, “we can’t leave him.”

“He would leave you.”

“He’ll die there,” Andrew said, his face tightening as he imagined the boy’s pain and terror.

“Probably,” the man said quietly. He studied Andrew, then put an arm around him. “There’s nothing we can do. We have to make sure we don’t die here! Come on!”

Two days later, the handlers strung the mastiffs up like hogs and cut their throats. They saved the blood. They boiled the butchered dogs in blood and sassafras.

That day, the company ate pottage of dog spiced with sassafras. At first Andrew gagged; then he ate and felt better for it. His mind was numb.