As soon as the Pelican was out of arrow-shot of the cliff, the Beothics disappeared. Ouenwa laid aside his bow with a sigh of regret. Then he tried to repeat to Kingswell what he had heard from Panounia. After a deal of questioning, sign-making, and mental exertion, the Englishman gathered the information that treachery and murder had taken place up the river, and that his young friend hated the new leader of the tribe with a bitter hatred. He did not wonder at the bitterness. He looked at the young savage's flushed face and glowing eyes with sympathy and admiration. His liking for the boy had grown in every hour of their companionship, and, by this time, had developed into a decided fondness.

"Sit down, lad, and let your guns cool," he said, with a light hand on the other's knee. "Your enemies are my enemies," he continued, "and we'll fight the dogs every time we see 'em."

Ouenwa sat quiet and tried to look calm. He was soothed by the evident kindliness of Kingswell's tone and manner, though he had failed to translate his speech. The men on the thwarts had caught the words, however. They nodded heavily to one another.

"Ye say the very word what was in my mind, sir," spoke up Tom Bent, "an', if I may make so bold as to say further, your enemies be your servants' enemies, sir. Therefore the young un's enemies must be our enemies, holus bolus." The other sailors nodded decidedly. "Therefore," continued Tom Bent, "all they cowardly heathen aft on the cliff has to reckon, hereafter, with Thomas Bent an' the crew o' this craft."

"Well spoken, Tom," replied Kingswell, with the smile that always won him the heart and hand of every man he favoured with it,—and of every maid, too, more than likely. "But we can't enthuse on empty stomachs. Pass out the bread and the cold meat," he added.

For fully two hours the Pelican rocked about within half a mile of her night's anchorage. Kingswell was not in a desperate hurry, and so his men pulled at the oars just enough to hold the boat clear of the rocks. A sharp lookout was kept along the coast, but not a sight nor a sound of the Beothics rewarded their vigilance.

"They be up to some devilment, ye may lay to that," said Tom Bent.

At last a wind fluttered to them out of the nor'east, and the square sail was hoisted and sheeted home. Again the Pelican dipped her bows and wet her rail on the voyage of exploration.

After two hours of sailing, and just when they were off the mouth of a little river and a fair valley, a fog overtook them. Kingswell was for running in, but Ouenwa objected.

"Panounia follow," he said. "He great angry. Drop irons," he added, pointing to the little anchors.

"Panounia is wounded. You winged him yourself," replied Kingswell. "He could not follow us around that coast, lad, at the clip we were coming."

Ouenwa considered the words with puckered brows. They were beyond him. The commander pointed shoreward.

"All safe," he said. "All safe."

"No, no," cried the lad. "All kill. No safe."

During this controversy the sail had been partly lowered, and the Pelican had been slowly running landward with the fog.

Kingswell looked from the young Beothic to the seamen with a smile of whimsical uncertainty.

"Out o' the mouths o' babes an' sucklin's," remarked Tom Bent, with his deep-set eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Kingswell's glance rested, for a moment, on the ancient mariner.

"Lower away," he said. The sail flapped down, and was quickly stowed. "Let go the anchors," he commanded. The grapplings splashed into the gray waves. The fog crawled over the boat and shut her off from land and sky. With a last dreary whistle, the wind died out entirely.

"Rip me!" exclaimed Master Kingswell, "but here is caution that smells remarkably like cowardice." Fretfully sighing, he produced his pipe, tobacco, and tinder-box. Soon the fragrant smoke was mingling with the fog. The young commander leaned back, taking his comfort where he could, like the courageous gentleman that he was. The habit of burning Virginian tobacco was an expensive one, confined to the wealthy and the adventurous. The seamen, who, of course, had not yet acquired it, watched their captain with open interest. When a puff was blown through the nostrils, or sent aloft in a series of rings, they nudged one another, like children at a show. By this time the walls of fog had made of the Pelican a tiny, lost world by itself. Suddenly Ouenwa raised his hand. "Sh!" he whispered. Kingswell removed the pipe-stem from his mouth, and inclined his head toward the hidden river and valley. All strained their ears, to wrest some sound from the surrounding gray other than the lapping of the tide along the unseen land-wash. But they could hear nothing.

"Village," whispered Ouenwa, pointing landward.

"But we saw no signs of a village," protested Kingswell, gently.

"Village," repeated the lad. "Ouenwa hear. Ouenwa smell."

Immediately the four Englishmen began to sniff the fog, like hounds taking a scent on the wind. But their nostrils were not the nostrils of either hounds or Beothics. They sniffed to no purpose. They shook their heads. Kingswell wagged a chiding finger at their keen-nosed companion. The boy read the inference of the gesture, and flushed indignantly.

"Village," he whispered, shrilly. "Village, village, village."

Kingswell looked distressed. The sailors grinned leniently at the determined boy. They had great faith in their own noses, had those mariners of Bristol and thereabouts. Ouenwa, frowning a little, sank into a moody contemplation of the fog.

"This is dull," exclaimed Kingswell, after a half-hour of silence. "Tom, pipe us a stave, like a good lad."

The boatswain scratched his head reflectively. Presently he cleared his throat with energy.

"Me voice be a bit husky, sir, to what it once were," he murmured, "but I'll do me best—an' no sailorman can say fairer nor that."

Straightway he struck into a heroic ballad of a sea-fight, in a high, tottering tenor. The song dealt with Spanish swagger and English daring, with bloody decks, falling spars, and flying splinters. Harding joined in the chorus with a booming bass. Clotworthy and the commander soon followed. Kingswell's voice was clear and strong and wonderfully melodious. Ouenwa's eyes glowed and his muscles trembled. Though the words held no meaning for him, the rollicking, dashing swing of the tune fired his excitable blood. He forgot all about Panounia, and the suspected village on the river so near at hand ceased to trouble him. He beat time to the singing with his moccasined feet, and clapped his hands together in rhythmic appreciation of his comrades' efforts. In time the ballad was finished. The last member of the craven crew of the Teressa Maria had tasted English steel and been tossed to the sharks. Then Master Kingswell sprang to his feet and sang a sentimental ditty. It was of roses and fountains, of latticed windows and undying affection. The air was captivating. The singer's voice rang tender and clear. Old Tom Bent remembered lost years. Harding thought of a Devon orchard, and of a Devon lass at work harvesting the ruddy fruit. Clotworthy saw a cottage beside a little wood, and a woman and a little child gazing seaward and westward from the door.

For several seconds after the last note had died away, the little company remained silent and motionless, fully occupied with its various thoughts. Ouenwa was the first to break the spell of the song. He laid his hand on Kingswell's arm with a quick gesture, and leaned toward him.

"Canoe," he whispered.

The sound that had caught Ouenwa's attention was repeated—a short rap, like the inadvertent striking of a paddle against a gunwale. They all heard it, and, with as little noise as possible, set to work at getting out cutlasses and loading muskets. Kingswell crawled forward and whispered with old Tom Bent. The boatswain nodded and turned to Harding. That sturdy young seaman crawled to the bows and placed his hands on the hawser of the forward anchor. He looked aft. Kingswell, who had returned to his seat at the tiller, leaned over the stern and cut the manilla rope that tethered the boat at that end. Harding immediately pulled on his rope until he was directly over the light bow anchor. Then, strongly and slowly, and without noise, he brought the four-fingered iron up and into the bows. They were free of the bottom, anyway, and with the loss of only one anchor. Kingswell breathed a sigh of relief.

The Pelican drifted, and the crew stared into the fog, with wide eyes and alert ears. Then, to seaward and surely not ten yards away, sounded a plover-call. Kingswell signalled to Bent to man the seaward side and Clotworthy and Harding the other. They rested the barrels of their great matchlocks on the gunwales. Suddenly the prow of a canoe pierced the curtain of fog not four yards from Tom Bent. He touched the match to the short fuse. There was a terrific report, and a chorus of wild yells. In the excitement that followed, the others discharged their pieces. Kingswell grabbed an oar, slipped it into a notch beside the tiller and began to "scull" the boat seaward. The men reloaded their muskets and peered into the fog. They heard splashings and cries on all sides, but could see nothing. Ouenwa, standing erect, discharged arrow after arrow at the hidden enemy.

The splashings grew fainter, and the cries ceased entirely. Kingswell passed the oar which he had been using to Harding, and told the men to lay aside their muskets and row. Ouenwa let fly his last arrow, in the names of his murdered father and grandfather.

For a long and weary time the Pelican lay off the hidden land, shrouded in fog and silence. A few hours before sunset a wind from the west found her out, drove away the fog, and disclosed the sea and the coast and the open sky.

"Pull her head 'round," commanded Kingswell, "and hoist the sail. We are going back to have a look at that village."

The men obeyed eagerly. They were itching for a chance to repay the savages for the fright in the dark.