On May 23 the Bermuda pinnaces Deliverance and Patience dropped
anchor at Jamestown, no doubt looping their mooring lines around trees at the
water’s edge as was the custom. No longboats were needed to carry them to land:
they were so close that men and women climbed down their ships’ ladders and splashed
solemnly, mournfully ashore. They trooped through the fort gate, whose massive
log doors were hanging off their hinges.
That was not a good sign.
Worse yet, there was no one to
greet them. An eerie stillness hung over the little fort, as if it were a
haunted place. Inside the gate, the barracks and storehouse and the church were
still standing, but there was no sign of life around them, and no sounds within
them. Around them the clusters of small mud-walled, wood-framed houses were silent, their
windows like dark, vacant eyes. Many of the houses were in ruins. Bits of roof
thatch and pieces of framing timber lay scattered like jackstraws on the
ground. In the warm, humid air, clouds of mayflies swarmed and buzzed.
Was everyone dead?
No comments:
Post a Comment