ne branches in their hands. They danced about us, now advancing
until the green needles met above our heads, now retreating until there
was a space of turf between us. Their slender limbs gleamed in the
firelight; they moved with grace, keeping time to a plaintive song, now
raised by the whole choir, now fallen to a single voice. Pocahontas
had danced thus before the English many a time. I thought of the little
maid, of her great wondering eyes and her piteous, untimely death, of
how loving she was to Rolfe and how happy they had been in their brief
wedded life. It had bloomed like a rose, as fair and as early fallen,
with only a memory of past sweetness. Death was a coward, passing by
men whose trade it was to out-brave him, and striking at the young and
lovely and innocent....

We were tired with all the mummery of the day; moreover, every fibre of
our souls had been strained to meet the hours that had passed since we
left the gaol at Jamestown. The elation we had felt earlier in the day
was all gone. Now, the plaintive song, the swaying figures, the red
light beating against the trees, the blackness of the enshrouding
forest, the low, melancholy wind,--all things seemed strange, and yet
deadly old, as though we had seen and heard them since the beginning of
the world. All at once a fear fell upon me, causeless and unreasonable,
but weighing upon my heart like a stone. She was in a palisaded town,
under the Governor's protection, with my friends about her and my enemy
lying sick, unable to harm her. It was I, not she, that was in danger.
I laughed at myself, but my heart was heavy, and I was in a fever to be
gone.

The Indian girls danced more and more swiftly, and their song changed,
becoming gay and shrill and sweet. Higher and higher rang the notes,
faster and faster moved the dark limbs; then, quite suddenly, song and
motion ceased together. They who had danced with the abandonment of wild
priestesses to some wild god were again but shy brown Indian maids who
went and set them meekly down upon the grass beneath the trees. From the
darkness now came a burst of savage cries only less appalling than the
war whoop itself. In a moment the men of the village had rushed from the
shadow of the trees into the broad, firelit space before us. Now they
circled around us, now around the fire; now each man danced and stamped
and muttered to himself. For the most part they were painted red, but
some were white from head to heel