"There are priests on board!" he managed to say as I set him down.
"This time to-morrrow we'll all be on the rack! And next week the
galleys will have us!"
"It's the Spaniard at last," I said. "Come on!"
When we reached the river bank before the fort, it was to find
confusion worse confounded. The gates of the palisade were open,
and through them streamed Councilors, Burgesses, and officers,
while the bank itself was thronged with the generality. Ancient
planters, Smith's men, Dale's men, tenants and servants, women
and children, including the little eyases we imported the year
before, negroes, Paspaheghs, French vignerons, Dutch sawmill
men, Italian glassworkers, - all seethed to and fro, all talked at
once, and all looked down the river. Out of the babel of voices
these words came to us over and over: "The Spaniard!" "The
Inquisition!" "The galleys!" They were the words oftenest heard at
that time, when strange sails hove in sight.
But where was the Spaniard? On the river, hugging the shore, were
many small craft, barges, shallops, sloops, and pinnaces, and
beyond them the masts of the Truelove, the Due Return, and the
Tiger, then in port; on these three, of which the largest, the Due
Return, was of but eighty tons burthen, the mariners were running
about and the masters bawling orders. But there was no other ship,
no bark, galleon, or man-of-war, with three tiers of grinning
ordnance, and the hated yellow flag flaunting above.
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