ds only. Though the messenger had not breath enough to cry them out,
they were heard by the Indians standing nearby and shouted aloud.
Immediately the crowd jumped to their feet and uttering loud shrieks,
danced up and down and around in circles, to the sound of rattles and
drums.

"What is the meaning of all this, Smith?" asked Russell, who with the
other white men stood watching the strange performance.

"Tell them, my son," said Powhatan, understanding from the tone of the
Englishman's voice that his words were a question, "that two score of my
braves, among them Nautauquas and Claw-of-the-Eagle, have won a great
victory over one hundred of our enemies, and that this is our song of
triumph."

The old chief's eye shone more brightly than ever, and his back was as
firm and straight as that of one of his sons.

"I shall soon have witnessed all their different dances," John Smith
confided to Russell, when he had repeated Powhatan's explanation. "There
lacks now only the war dance."

There was a pause in the dance; then Powhatan gave a signal. Drums and
rattles started up once more. The rhythm was a different one, even the
white men could tell this; and they noticed that the savages moved more
swiftly as if animated by the greatest excitement. Fresh dancers, their
faces and bodies painted in red and black, took the places of those who
fell from fatigue, and the woods resounded with their loud song.

"It must have been a great victory," suggested Ratcliffe, "to have
excited them in this manner."

But Pocahontas's heart beat as if it were the war drum itself, for she
knew what the white men did not know, that this last was a war dance;
but she was not yet certain against whom her tribe was to take the
war-path. She must wait and see.

At last the dancing ceased and the feasting began, and the Englishmen
still watched with interest the "queer antics" of the savages, as they
called them. All was now so peaceful that they laid aside their weapons,
setting a guard to watch them, and sitting about the great fire they had
built in the lodge, waited for the morning's high tide to lift their
boat out of the half-frozen ooze in which the ebb had left it. Powhatan
and the Indians had withdrawn, but the werowance had sent a messenger
with a necklace and bracelet of freshwater pearls with words of
affection for "his son" and to say that he would shortly send them
supper from his own pots, that they might want for nothing that