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He would lift his head to sniff the salt breeze that swept through the cleft in the hills, and to listen for that far-off thunder that could sometimes be heard as the great waves broke on the beach. At last, one day when he had sat so long with his friend that dusk was falling and the stars were coming out, he broke through the silence with a sudden question: "Secotan, what lies beyond that sea?"
Under the name of the "Sibley tent" it is now in use, with some modifications of plan, in the United States Army, for service on the plains. Sir Richard Grenville's expedition in 1585 visited the south part of the original colony of Virginia, now included in North Carolina. They landed at Roanoke Island, and also ascended a section of Albemarle Sound as far as the villages of Pomeiock and Secotan.
And after ten days remaining in an out island unhabited, called Wocokon, they, with the help of some of the dwellers of Secotan, fastened two boats of the country together, and made masts unto them, and sails of their shirts, and having taken into them such victuals as the country yielded, they departed after they had remained in this out island three weeks.
It was in recognition of this that old Secotan, half understanding, wholly unable to put his feeling into words, standing alone upon the headland, raised his arms in reverent salute and cried a last good-by to his comrade: "Farewell and good fortune, O Brother of the Sun!" The story had come to an end, but the boy and girl still waited as though to hear more. "But do oak trees grow to be so old?"
"Perhaps we may be able to understand him." In the quiet dawn, when calm had followed the night's storm, the ship ran in toward a rocky headland to send a boat ashore. Yet when it had been lowered and Secotan had dropped into it, he turned to see Nashola standing on the deck above, making no move to follow. "I am not coming, Secotan," he declared steadily.
Toward the southwest, four days' journey, is situate a town called Secotan, which is the southernmost town of Wingandacoa, near unto which six-and-twenty years past there was a ship cast away, whereof some of the people were saved, and those were white people, whom the country people preserved.
His was no ordinary errand, for, all about him, Nashola felt dangers that he could neither hear nor see. Before him, sitting motionless as a statue, with his back against the trunk of the oak tree and his keen, hawk-like face turned toward the hills and the sky, was Secotan, the sorcerer and medicine man, whom all of Nashola's tribe praised, revered, and dreaded.
It seems likely that a double set of upright poles were used, one upon the outside and one on the inside, between which the mattings of canes or willows were secured, as the houses at Pomeiock and Secotan are ribbed externally at internals of about eight feet, showing four, five, and six sections. Each house, on this hypothesis, would be from twenty-four to forty-eight feet long.
Along all the seaboard, the Indians talked of Secotan, the man most potent in spells and charms and prophecies, who was said to talk with strange spirits in his lodge by night and who could call up storms out of the sea at will.
"Then destroy them for us," cried the old squaw, Nashola's grandmother. "Call up a storm that will break their wings and shatter the sides of those giant canoes. Bring wind and rain and thunder and all the spirits of the sea to overwhelm them." There was a breathless silence as Secotan slowly moved forward and raised his staff.
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