The Heart

Mary Cavendish raised her voice high until it seemed to me like a

silver trumpet, and cried out with a wave of her white arm to them

all: "On to Laurel Creek, I pray you! Oh, I pray you, good people,

on to Laurel Creek, and cut down my tobacco for the sake of Virginia

and the honour of the Colony."

It needed but a puff of any wind of human will to send that fiery

mob leaping in a new direction. Straightway, they shouted with one

accord: "To Laurel Creek, to Laurel Creek! Down with the tobacco,

down with the governor, down with the king! To Laurel Creek!" and

forged ahead, turning to the left instead of the right, as had been

ordered, and Mary was swept along with them, and Catherine would

have been crushed, had not a horseman, whom I did not recognise,

caught her up on the saddle with him with a wonderful swing of a

long, lithe arm, and then galloped after, and as for myself and

Captain Jaynes, and Sir Humphrey, and others of the burgesses, whom

I had best not call by name, we went too, since we might as well

have tried to hold the current of the James River, as that headlong

company.

But as soon as might be, I shouted out to Sir Humphrey above the din

that our first duty must be to save Mary and Catherine. And he

answered back in a hoarse shout, "Oh, for God's sake, ride fast,

Harry, for should the militia come, what would happen to them?"

But I needed no urging. I know not whom I rode down, I trust not

any, but I know not; I got before them all in some wise, Sir

Humphrey following close behind, and Ralph Drake also, swearing that

he knew not what possessed the jades to meddle in such matters, and

shouting to the rabble to stop, but he might as well have shouted to

the wind. And by that time there were more than a hundred of us,

though whence they had come, I know not.

We gentlemen kept together in some wise, and gradually gained on

Mary, who had had the start, and there were some seven of us, one of

the Barrys, Sir Humphrey Hyde, Ralph Drake, Parson Downs, in such

guise for a parson that no one would have known him, booted and

spurred, and riding harder than any by virtue of his best horse in

the Colony, myself, and two of the burgesses. We seven gaining on

the rabble, in spite of the fact that many of them were mounted upon

Major Robert Beverly's best horses, through their having less

knowledge of horsemanship, closed around Mary Cavendish on Merry

Roger, clearing the ground with long galloping bounds, and Catherine

with the strange horseman was somewhat behind.