When Suckahanna saw the men coming back to camp she went out slowly to greet them; she was proud, and this was a difficult matter for any woman. Her husband was the finest hunter among the people but she was proposing to leave him for an Englishman who had been seen by everyone as incapable of even shooting a pigeon with one of the white man’s infallible guns.

First she saw the kill. Six of the hunters carried in three deer lashed by their feet to pruned branches. It was a kill that any hunting party would have been proud to bring home, enough to feed the village and leave surplus meat for salting down. Suckahanna breathed in sharply and drew herself a little higher. She would not be seen by anyone running up to the braves and asking them who had done the kill. But three deer was a successful hunt; three deer was undeniable evidence that the braves on the hunt had done well.

Then she saw John. At first she thought he must be wounded, grievously wounded, for the man who was supporting him was her own husband, Attone. She started to run towards him, but then she checked herself after two paces. There was something odd about the way they walked together, it was not the stumble of a sick man and the load-bearing stride of his helper. They were clinging together as if they were both dizzy, as if they were both drunk. She watched, then she put her hand up to shade her eyes from the evening sun. She heard their voices, they were not talking to each other in low, anxious tones, like men helping one another home, nor exchanging the odd satisfied word, like men returning sated from the hunt. They were saying one word and then another and then they would do a little wandering detour in a circle, like drunkards, legless with laughter.

Suckahanna stepped sharply back into the doorway of her house and dropped the curtain of skins to hide herself. In the darkness she turned and lifted the side of the skin so she could peep out. The men carrying the deer were staking them out for cleaning and skinning, but Attone and John were not going to set to work. Arms around each other’s shoulders, they headed for the sweat lodge with most of the braves, and even as they went Suckahanna could still hear that sudden explosion of giggling.

‘Dived in!’ she heard, and then a crow of laughter from Tradescant: ‘But what you don’t know is that I fell on its head!’ That was too much for Attone, his knees simply gave way beneath him.

‘I saw you. You had no arrows?’

‘Why does he need arrows? If he is going to fall on deer to kill them?’