t he,
too, drowsed, to wake up with a start, when finding all well, he dropped
off to sleep again.

Pocahontas lay alone in the stem, her head pillowed on a roll of sail
cloth that brought it up to the level of the gunwale. Argall had done
everything he could to make her comfortable and never even spoke to her
except hat in hand and bowing low. Now she, too, had fallen asleep, her
eyes wet with the tears she would not shed during the daylight. She
dreamed she was again at Werowocomoco and that she had just risen from
her sleeping-mat to run out into the moonlight as she so often did.

Suddenly a faint, faint sound half wakened her, a sound scarcely louder
than the lapping of the water against the sides which had lulled her to
sleep. She opened her eyes but did not move, and waited, tense with
excitement. A fish flopped out of the water, then all was silent again
and she closed her heavy eyes once more. Then it came again, not louder
than the wind in the aspen trees on shore:

"Pocahontas!"

Raising herself to her elbow with a motion as quiet as a cat's, she
peered into the dark water over the stern. A hand came up from the
darkness and clasped her wrist. She needed no great light upon the
features of the face below to know whose it was.

"Claw-of-the-Eagle," she whispered, "is it thou? I thought the white
man's gun had killed thee, and I have been mourning for thee."

"I lay dead for an hour," he answered as he lifted himself up in the
water and hung with both hands to the sides of the boat. "But it was
well that I was wounded on the shoulder and not on the leg. The
stiffness made me slow, like a bear that has been hurt in a trap. But I
bound mud on the wound with my leggings and I have followed close behind
thee along the shore all the way."

"I knew thou wouldst come after me if thou wert not killed," she
whispered.

"Yea, I have come for thee, Pocahontas," and there was manly decision
now in the youth's voice. "Waste no time. Drop down here beside me as
quietly as if thou wert stalking a deer. We will swim under water until
we are beyond reach of the white men's dull ears and before three days
are passed we shall be at Powhata, where thy father now abideth."

The thought of all home meant made Pocahontas pause: the kindly interest
of all her tribe in everything she did; the affection of her father and
brothers; the haunts in the forest and on the river; the freedom of her
daily existence. Here was her chan