The Gentleman Poet by Kathryn Johnson

Author:Kathryn Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sadly, our population decreased again.

Under orders from Governor Gates, five of our men departed the Bermudas in a small, sailed bark fashioned from native cedarwood, their mission to reach and inform the settlement in Virginia of our survival. They would tell the colonists of our men building the pinnace, which was to be christened Deliverance, and a second smaller ship. They would discover which among the other eight ships in our fleet had made it safely to Jamestown and those that had been lost during the tempest. Then they would return to us here in our refuge to report their findings or, if it were possible, lead one of the fleet’s ships back to us.

That, at least, had been our officers’ plan.

A week passed, and we felt a great surge of hope. Captain Newport told us he judged our brave emissaries were just then setting foot in the colony, no doubt joyously greeted by our countrymen. As we had agreed before their departure, we lit bonfires along the beach so that they might find us even in the night. We waited…and waited.

They did not come.

A third and fourth week passed without word of them. We spent a cheerless Christmas. Anna and Arthur’s wedding was put off, as celebration of any kind seemed inappropriate while the fate of our brave men was unknown. With the dead of winter wrapped around us, we could do nothing but mourn their loss.

Our Master Bucke spoke at services of salvation and offered special thanks for our intrepid messengers’ sacrifice. I read fear in every face, fear of such I had not seen since our wreck in July. If that sturdy little bark had indeed floundered and all aboard drowned, would the same happen to the rest of us when we set sail in Deliverance?

Dark times haunted us. One of our men drowned. We buried him beside Waters’s grave, well up the hillside, with Christian solemnity, even though it was commonly known that he’d stumbled into the pond, drunk and stupid with palm wine, and was to blame for his own death. Two other men died of unknown illnesses, though some claimed it was from the severity of their labor.

Our minister preached every day, and twice on Sundays, on the evil of drink. It did no good. If men could not have their favorite vices—whoring, gambling, or thieving—they would have another. In the Bermudas the choices were few.

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