ith
their cooking, and bore maize cakes and broiled fish to the warriors who
sat on the ground in front of the royal lodge. Diccon and I were loosed,
brought without, and allotted our share of the food. We ate sitting side
by side with our captors, and Diccon, with a great cut across his head,
seized the Indian girl who brought him his platter of fish, and pulling
her down beside him kissed her soundly, whereat the maid seemed not ill
pleased and the warriors laughed.

In the usual order of things, the meal over, tobacco should have
followed. But now not a pipe was lit, and the women made haste to take
away the platters and to get all things in readiness. The werowance of
the Paspaheghs rose to his feet, cast aside his mantle, and began to
speak. He was a man in the prime of life, of a great figure, strong as
a Susquehannock, and a savage cruel and crafty beyond measure. Over his
breast, stained with strange figures, hung a chain of small bones, and
the scalp locks of his enemies fringed his moccasins. His tribe being
the nearest to Jamestown, and in frequent altercation with us, I had
heard him speak many times, and knew his power over the passions of his
people. No player could be more skillful in gesture and expression, no
poet more nice in the choice of words, no general more quick to raise
a wild enthusiasm in the soldiers to whom he called. All Indians are
eloquent, but this savage was a leader among them.

He spoke now to some effect. Commencing with a day in the moon of
blossoms when for the first time winged canoes brought white men into
the Powhatan, he came down through year after year to the present hour,
ceased, and stood in silence, regarding his triumph. It was complete. In
its wild excitement the village was ready then and there to make an
end of us who had sprung to our feet and stood with our backs against
a great bay tree, facing the maddened throng. So much the best for us
would it be if the tomahawks left the hands that were drawn back to
throw, if the knives that were flourished in our faces should be buried
to the haft in our hearts, that we courted death, striving with word
and look to infuriate our executioners to the point of forgetting their
former purpose in the lust for instant vengeance. It was not to be. The
werowance spoke again, pointing to the hills with the black houses upon
them, dimly seen through the mist. A moment, and the hands clenched upon
the weapons fell; another, and we were