Abraham Lincoln_ Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith [30]
“That Tuesday, the weather grew ever violent as our caravan sailed into a wall of storm clouds. By nightfall, all but a few deckhands had retreated below to escape the pounding wind and rain. The ship was tossed so severely that Captain White ordered all candles snuffed, for fear that the waves could knock one over and start a fire. With Edeva in my arms, I huddled in total darkness below deck—felt the dizzying motion of the ship; heard the groans of wooden planks and fellow passengers being sick. I know that Elizabeth Barrington had been there with us when the lights went out. I had seen her myself. But she was not there in the morning.”
The storm had passed, and the sun had returned to its oppressive perch. Because Elizabeth often kept to herself below, it wasn’t until midmorning that anyone noticed her absence. Passengers called her name but received no answer. A full search of the ship turned up nothing. A second search, which included bags of flour being emptied and barrels of gunpowder sifted through, was likewise fruitless. She was gone. Captain White made another succinct and dispassionate entry in his log: Girle fell overboarde in a storme. Deade.
“Privately, we all knew that the unhappy girl had taken her own life. That she had leapt into the sea and drowned. Prayers were said for her soul (though we knew it to be condemned to hell—suicide being an unforgivable sin in the eyes of God).”
The last three weeks of their voyage were free of further accidents and blessed with better weather. Even so, the sight of dry land was an especially welcome one. The colonists set about felling trees, rebuilding abandoned shelters, planting crops, and making contact with the natives—particularly the Croatoan, who’d welcomed the English in the past. But this time their truce proved short-lived. Exactly one week after the first of John White’s ships landed on Roanoke Island, one of his colonists, George Howe, was found facedown in the shallow waters of Albemarle Sound. He’d been fishing alone when a group of “savages” took him by surprise. White pieced the attack together based on the evidence at the scene. From his log:
These Savages being secretly hidden among high reedes, where oftentimes they find the Deere asleep, and so kill them, espied our man wading in the water alone, almost naked, without any weapon, save only a smal forked sticke, catching Crabs therewithal, and also being strayed two miles from his company, and shot at him in the water, where they gave him sixteen wounds with their arrowes: and after they had slaine him with their wooden swords, they beat his head in pieces, and fled over the water.
White concluded that Howe was shot with sixteen “arrowes” because the body had sixteen small puncture wounds in it.
“In truth, no arrows were found in or near Mr. Howe. Governor White also omitted an important detail from his record—that the body had already begun to decompose, even though Mr. Howe had only been dead several hours before being discovered.”
On August 18th, the colony turned its thoughts from the Croatoan and rejoiced at the arrival of its first baby, Virginia Dare—John White’s granddaughter. She was the first English baby born in the New World, and like her mother, possessed a shock of red hair. The birth was attended by the colony’s only doctor, Thomas Crowley.
“Crowley was a plump, balding man of fifty-six. Tall in stature, he had a kind, pockmarked face, and a well-known love of jokes. For this and his skill as a physician he was held in high regard, and few things gave him a greater thrill than making a patient forget his troubles in laughter.”
Satisfied that his colony was off to a strong start (the unpleasantness of Mr. Howe’s demise notwithstanding), John White sailed back to England to report on their progress and bring back supplies. He left behind 113 men, women, and children—including his infant