Free Chesapeake by James A. Michener Page A

marshes, his ability to absorb such ignominy without losing good spirits inspired them.
    They no longer had to hide in the northern rivers, because he had arranged lasting peace with the Nanticokes, and the two tribes now traded instead of fighting: dried deer meat to the Nanticokes, bright shells for roanoke to the villagers. There were even exchanges of visits, which were salutary, for the returning villagers boasted with perverse pride, ‘Our mosquitoes are twice as fierce as theirs.’
    Pentaquod and Navitan had a son to inherit the title, and then another, and all things prospered. He led his people east to the supreme river and watched as its salty waves came higher than his head to thunder upon the shore in shattering power. As he stood transfixed one day an illumination came to him: If the Great Canoe we await is able to move across this river of such tremendous power, it must be of vast size and the men who steer it must be even greater than the Susquehannocks. And he looked upon the ocean with dismay and wonderment.
    There were other mysteries. At far-spread intervals on some starless night a child would cry, ‘The light is there!’ and in the forest across the river would come a single glimmer, and move about as if controlled by demons, and come to rest, glowing ominously through the dark passage of night. In the village parents hushed their children, and no one spoke of it. Through the long darkness the little people remained at water’s edge, staring obsessively, wondering who or what could be moving on the southern shore, but there was never a satisfactory explanation, merely that flickering light emanating from some unknown source. Toward dawn it would vanish and not reappear for many years.
    A greater mystery concerned the bay. It lay only a short distance to the west, but rarely did a villager see it and never did they venture upon it. In all their generations of living beside water, they had not discovered the sail, nor the fact that men could move across rivers and bays without paddling; to them the bay was alien. Its abundance of fish and crabs andoysters was proscribed, and all they knew of this great river of rivers was that it was the route by which the fierce Potomacs attacked. They were content to leave this splendid body of water to their enemies, and never did they know the grandeur of sunset on broad waters or the rising of a sudden storm.
    It was believed by the villagers that on those nights when portentous affairs impended, Fishing-long-legs would come to the river as the stars were beginning to fade, uttering mournful
kraannks
to warn of imminent wonders. Then the people would huddle in the darkness, listening with terror to the sounds that echoed from the trees bending over the water.
    On one such night in 1596, when distant nations were preparing to invade the bay, blue herons flew in great numbers from the swamps, scattering over the landscape before dawn to search the estuaries for swift-moving fish. Their cries filled the night, but if they distressed those men and women of evil conscience and with something to fear, they caused no apprehension in Pentaquod, because he knew that they had flocked to signal the birth of his third child, and before sunrise he heard the reassuring cry.
    ‘A girl!’ the midwife reported as she ran from the birthing hut.
    ‘I am content,’ Pentaquod replied gravely, but he was far more than that. He had always wanted a daughter who would comfort him when he retired from war, and at last he had one. As soon as it was respectable for him to visit the birthing hut, he stooped low, passed beneath the pine boughs and chains of acorns to take the hands of his wife. ‘I am content,’ he said and he was permitted to see the new child, so small that it was hard to believe she was his offspring. Holding his two forefingers apart, he indicated to his happy wife how really minute this child was, not at all like her two brothers at that age. He laughed, then lifted