the sunset, all shattered gold and crimson. Not a word had been
spoken. I sat in a humor grim enough, and she lay there before me,
wide awake, staring at the shifting banks and running water, and
thinking that I thought she slept.

At last my own wharf rose before me through the gathering dusk,
and beyond it shone out a light; for I had told Diccon to set my
house in order, and to provide fire and torches, that my wife might
see I wished to do her honor. I looked at that wife, and of a sudden
the anger in my heart melted away. It was a wilderness vast and
dreadful to which she had come. The mighty stream, the towering
forests, the black skies and deafening thunder, the wild cries of
bird and beast the savages, uncouth and terrible, - for a moment I
saw my world as the woman at my feet must see it, strange, wild,
and menacing, an evil land, the other side of the moon. A thing
that I had forgotten came to my mind: how that, after our landing
at Jamestown, years before, a boy whom we had with us did each
night fill with cries and lamentations the hut where he lay with my
cousin Percy, Gosnold, and myself, nor would cease though we
tried both crying shame and a rope's end. It was not for
homesickness, for he had no mother or kin or home; and at length
Master Hunt brought him to confess that it was but pure panic
terror of the land itself, - not of the Indians or of our hardships,
both of which he faced bravely enough, but of the strange trees and
the high and long roofs of vine, of the black sliding earth and the
white mist, of the fireflies and the whippoorwills, - a sick fear of
primeval Nature and her tragic mask.

This was a woman, young, alone, and friendless, unless I, who had
sworn to cherish and protect her, should prove myself her friend.