Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/15



HE came in mid-winter, when a cold north east wind might have been blowing across harbour waters grayer than the gray January skies. But Fate had set a trap for Jolie Stanwicke and had baited the trap with beauty. That winter day was as gentle as a May morning. When the Queen Bess, seven weeks out of London, sailed into Charles Town harbour with Jolie Stanwicke her most favoured passenger, a warm, odorous breeze from the south filled the ship's white sails; the waters of the wide, land-locked bay were of that luminous blue which artists try to forget; a silver haze lay like a transparent curtain over the encircling islands; and through this haze the sunlight streamed down, softer, yet somehow more brilliant and more beautiful.

Jolie Stanwicke stood on the forecastle deck, her red-gold hair bare to the sun, and gazed across the blue water at the little low-lying town which seemed afloat upon the surface of the bay. Mr. Richard Barradell of Hampshire and London, slender and elegant in orange velvet and dark green satin, stood beside her, and Mistress Wilkinson of Charles Town, in