John White stares at the sun bleached skull. Empty eye sockets stare back. This was surely one of Grenville’s men. But 15 stayed behind to hold Fort Raleigh. Where were the rest of them? “Governor White,” one of the men speaks up, “we should go.” White nods, but go where? He’s still rattled from the news he was given back at the ship, still trying to make sense of it. As they’d clamored into the boat to head to shore, the ship’s pilot, Simon Fernando, had leaned over the railing. “Leave the men on shore,” he had yelled down in his thick Portuguese accent, “you come back for the rest.” White hadn’t understood at first. They were only here to find Grenville’s men. They were meant to sail on to the Chesapeake Bay farther north, to settle in a more accessible spot, with friendlier native people. “Summer is far spent,” Fernando continued, “I will land all the planters in no other place.” They were stuck, it seemed, on Roanoke Island, stuck amidst hostile enemy territory. 

Sources: 

• The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand: Roanoke's Forgotten Indians
• Remarkable Women of the Outer Banks
• Coastal Land Trust "Coastal Land Trust Saves Site X"
• First Colony Foundation "Hidden Images Revealed on Elizabethan Map of America"
• Mental Floss "The Dare Stones"
• Smithsonian Magazine "The Mystery of Roanoke Endures Yet Another Cruel Twist"
• National Park Service "Fort Raleigh"
• First Colony Foundation "The Roanoke Colonies"

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