nation as he and
Pocahontas went off unthanked.

Wansutis's wigwam was on the edge of the village. As they came nearer to
the lodges they heard yelling and shouting from every side, and they saw
small boys and young braves rush forth, glancing eagerly about them.

"Let us hasten," cried Pocahontas. "I wonder what hath befallen,
Nautauquas."

[Illustration: Decorative]

CHAPTER IV

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET

"What hath happened?" Nautauquas called out to Parahunt, his brother,
when he caught up with him hastening to the river.

"Word hath come by a runner that one of the tribes from the Chickahominy
villages hath fallen upon a party of Massawomekes and hath vanquished
them. Even now they are approaching with the prisoners."

In passing the front of his wigwam Nautauquas threw down the carcass of
the deer, then ran on to join the ever increasing crowd of braves and
children on the river bank.

Pocahontas too had mingled in the throng, and so Cleopatra and the
squaws in the lodge had not noticed her absence, thinking when they saw
her that she had been roused from sleep in the early dawn as they had
been.

It was now almost light. Far down the river six large dugouts were
approaching. But even that sight was not sufficient to make the
onlookers forget the fact that the sun was rising and must be greeted
with the customary ceremony. Two chiefs, whose duty it was, took from
their pouches handfuls of dried uppowoc (tobacco), and each turning away
from the other, walked in a large half-circle, scattering the uppowoc
upon the ground, until when they met a brown ring had been formed.
Within this braves and squaws hurried to seat themselves. With uplifted
eyes and outstretched hands they greeted the Sun who had come back to
them to warm their fields and to draw their young corn upright.

By the time this morning ceremony was over the dugouts were almost at
the beach. There was now a great shouting and yelling from shore to
boats and from boats to shore, and Pocahontas slipped into a thicket of
bushes on to a higher point of the bank where she could be alone to
watch the landing. She clapped her hands as their friends, the stalwart
Chickahominies, leaped ashore, twenty to each huge dugout; and though
her dignity would not permit her to call out derisively, as did the
crowd, to the three prisoners each boat contained, she looked eagerly to
see what kind of monsters these enemies of her tribe might be.

The ei