A DANGEROUS SUPPER
Some months later, the first of the year 1609, there was again grave danger of starvation at Jamestown, and Smith, remembering the full storehouses at Werowocomoco, determined to go and purchase from Powhatan what was needed. Taking with him twelve men, they set out by boat up the river.
"I doubt not," said John Russell as they sailed along the James, now no longer muddy as in the summer but coated with bluish ice in the shallows, "I doubt not that those fat Dutchmen the Council sent over to build a house for Powhatan—what need hath he of a Christian house?—have grown fatter than ever upon his good victuals while we be wasting thinner day by day."
"I have no liking for those foreigners," exclaimed Ratcliffe, watching with greedy eyes a flock of redhead ducks that flew up from one of the little bays as the boat approached, wishing he could shoot them for his dinner. "Were there not enough carpenters and builders in Cheapside and Hampstead that the lords of the Colony must needs hunt out these ja-speaking lubbers from Zuider-Zee? They have no love for us, no more than we for them. If they thought 'twould vantage them, they would not scruple to betray us to the savages."
As they proceeded up the James, away from tidewater, the ice extended farther out into the river, until when they neared Werowocomoco there was a sheet of it that stretched half a mile out from shore. Smith had determined, so desperate was the plight of the colonists, that he would not go back to Jamestown without a good supply of corn and other food. He hoped that Powhatan would consent to his buying it; but he meant to take it by force if necessary. For some time there had been little intercourse between the English and the Indians; the latter had seemed more unwilling to barter stores, and there was a rumor that Powhatan had new grievances against the white men.
The four Dutchmen who for some weeks had been building the house for Powhatan, had discussed amongst themselves the relative advantages of friendship with the werowance or with the English. They decided that to weaken the latter would be their best policy, since they would be content to see the struggling settlement of Europeans destroyed and to entrust their own fate to the savages. There was much in the Indian method of living which pleased them; plenty of good food and full pipes of tobacco and squaws to serve them. So they laid their plans and imparted to Powhatan in confidence that Smith, who they knew must soon appear in search of supplies, was in reality using this need as a pretext and that he meant to fire upon the Indians and do great damage to Werowocomoco.
Pocahontas did not overhear this talk, but she had watched the four strangers together and her sharp ears had frequently caught the word "Smith" repeated. Now when the news was shouted through the lodges that the boat bearing Smith and his companions was approaching slowly through the broken ice, Pocahontas hurried eagerly to the river and waved her hand to her friends. She watched them come ashore but checked herself as she started to run to meet them. She had a feeling that this was not the moment for pretty speeches, and feared that Powhatan's enmity to the English had been fanned by the Dutchmen until it was ready to burst forth. She determined, instead of showing any interest in the strangers, to appear indifferent to them and to let her people think she had grown hostile to them. She would stay close to her father in order to learn what he intended to do.
The werowance as he came towards them did not wear his red mantle nor his crown of English make, but a headdress of eagle feathers and leggings and a cape of brown bear fur. Perhaps he wished to show that he had no need to wear a crown to look a king. He strode slowly to the river and called out in greeting to the white men:
"Ye are welcome to Werowocomoco, my son, but why comest thou thus with guns when thou visiteth thy father?"
"We be come to buy food from thee, oh Powhatan," answered Smith, "to fill thy hands and those of thy people with precious beads and knives and cloths of many colors for thy squaws in exchange for food for to-day and to last till comes nepinough (the earing of the corn), when we shall harvest the fruit of the seed we plant."
"But lay aside first your arms. What need have ye of arms who come upon such a peaceful purpose? Have ye thought to try to frighten my people to sell thee of their stores? What will it avail you to take by force what you may quickly have by love, or destroy them that provide you food? Every year our friendly trade will furnish you with corn, and now also, if you will come in friendly manner to see us, and not thus with your guns and swords as to invade your foes."
Many of the English, when Smith had translated word after word of the chief's discourse, felt shamed at the show of force their weapons manifested, and would have been willing to lay them by while they were upon the land of this friendly chieftain, whom, they felt, they had misjudged. But Smith was not deceived. He was learning to read the signs of Indian ways, and he knew that the chief had reasons for desiring to see them unarmed. So he called out in answer:
"Your people coming to Jamestown are entertained with their bows and arrows without any exceptions, we esteeming it proper with you as it is with us, to wear our arms as part of our apparel."
There followed more words between the two and much talk of "father" and "son"; but Pocahontas, who listened to it all, was not easy. She had given her affection to Smith since the day she saved his life, and now she was sure that her father planned to harm him. Nautauquas was away with Claw-of-the-Eagle on a foray against the Massawomekes, the latter having sworn to her that he would now accomplish deeds to make the chiefs of his tribe declare him worthy to be called a real Powhatan brave. Had her brother been at Werowocomoco, she might have confided her fear to him; as it was, she realized that she alone must discover her father's intentions.
She saw that Powhatan had withdrawn on some pretext she did not overhear and that Smith, standing at the entrance of the lodge which Powhatan had assigned to the English, was chatting with some of the squaws he remembered from the time of his captivity, while the rest of the white men were busy in carrying the objects they had brought for bartering from the boat to the lodge.
Suddenly a number of Indian braves rushed towards him, arrows notched in the bowstrings. The foremost savage let his arrow fly; it was aimed a few feet too high and, grazing Smith's steel morion, hit the bark of the lodge-covering above his head. The squaws, shrieking loudly, took to their heels. Smith, before another arrow left its bow, whipped out his pistol and pointed it at the advancing crowd. Then John Russell, hearing the commotion, rushed from the lodge. Pressing the snaphance of his musket, he fired into the oncoming savages, but failed to hit one.
Nevertheless, the Indians, seeing that the Englishmen were still armed, turned and fled, disappearing into the forest. Pocahontas, trembling with anger, ran through the trees to find her father to ask him what was the meaning of this treacherous treatment of his guests.
After she had run some little distance she caught sight of Powhatan approaching and, hiding behind a rock, she waited to see whither he was bound. To her amazement, she saw that he was turning to the strangers' lodge and that behind him followed slaves bearing great baskets of food and seed-corn. What could he mean, she wondered, by first trying to kill and then to feast the white men? She followed, herself unseen, while Powhatan approached Smith without the slightest hesitation.
"It rejoiceth my heart, my son," she heard him call out when he was within one hundred feet of where Smith was standing, watching him with puzzled eyes, "to know that thou art unharmed. While I was gone to see that provisions were provided for thee, even according to my word, my young men who were crazed with religious zeal and fasting they have undergone in preparation for a great ceremonial planned by our priests, knew not what they were doing. See, my son, think no evil of us; would we at one moment seek to harm and to help thee? Behold the supplies I, thy father, have here for thee."
And Smith, though he doubted somewhat, did not feel certain that Powhatan was not speaking the truth. But Pocahontas, still in hiding, knew well that no man in Werowocomoco would have dared shoot at the white men except by direct order of their werowance.
Perhaps, however, all was now well; perhaps her father had at least realized that the Englishmen were not to be caught napping. She looked on while Powhatan and Smith superintended the placing of the great piles of stores in the boat and the refilling of the baskets with the goods with which the Englishmen paid for them.
Then, their work over, the Indians began to deck themselves out in the beads and cloths. While they were thus occupied a man came running and dropped down exhausted before Powhatan, able to gasp out a couple of words 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 night.
The darkness had come quickly and the woods that stretched between the lodge and the centre of Werowocomoco were thick and sombre. Through them Pocahontas sped more swiftly than she had ever run a race with her brothers. She did not trip over the roots slippery with frost nor, though she had not taken time to put a mantle over her bare shoulders, did she feel the cold. For she knew now that the war dance had been danced against the English.
She was all but breathless when she reached the lodge near the river's edge, but rushing inside, she seized a musket from the pile on the ground, to the astonishment of the guard, who recognized her in time not to hurt her, and thrust it into Smith's hands, crying:
"Arm yourselves, my friends. Make ready quickly," and as Smith would have questioned, she panted: "When your weapons are in readiness then will I speak."
Smith gave hurried orders, reproaching himself for his false confidence. The men sprang up from the fire, seized their long-barrelled muskets and their halberts; and a few who had laid aside their steel corselets hastily fastened them on again, and threw their bandoliers, filled with charges, over their shoulders. The merry, careless party was now quickly converted into a troop of cautious soldiers. Then Smith turned to Pocahontas, whose breath was coming more quietly as she beheld the precautions taken for defence. She answered his unspoken query:
"I overheard the words of the treacherous Dutchmen to my father even now. I feared when I heard the war song and saw them dancing the war dance. Woe is me! my Brother, that I should speak against my own father, but I listened to the plans he hath made to take you here unawares, your weapons out of your hands. For this moment he hath waited all day and he hath sought to deceive you with fair words. They are now on their way with the supper he promised thee; then when you are all eating he hath given orders to his men that they fall upon you and slay all, that none may escape. And so as soon as I learned this, that thou to whom he had sworn friendship and thine were in dire peril, I hastened through the dark forest to warn thee."
Smith was deeply touched by this manifestation of her loyalty. He knew the danger she ran if Powhatan should learn of what she had done.
"Matoaka," he cried, clasping her hand, "thou hast this night put all England in thy debt. As long as this Virginia is a name men remember, so long will men recall how thou didst save her from destruction. In truth, thy father had lulled my suspicions to sleep, and hadst thou not come to warn us we had surely perished. The thanks of all of us to thee. Princess," he continued, when he had turned and told his astonished men the gist of her words, "and to my little Sister my own deep gratitude again."
He loosened a thick gold chain from about his neck, one that he had brought back from the country of the Turks, and put it about her bare neck.
"Take this chain in remembrance," he said. Then his comrades pressed forward, each with some gift they emptied into the maiden's hands.
She gazed at them all lovingly, but she shook her head slowly, the tears falling as she said:
"I dare not, my friends; if my father should behold these gifts he would kill me, since he would know that it was I who had brought ye warning."
Slowly she took off the chain and reluctantly placed in it Smith's hand, and let gently fall the other treasures she longed to keep. Smith bent and kissed her hand as reverently as he had once kissed that of Good Queen Bess.
Pocahontas started. "I hear them coming," she cried, and with one bound she had sprung forth again into the night, skirting the river until she was sure of reaching her lodge without running into the troop of Indians advancing with dishes and baskets of food, who, however, were not slaves but braves and armed.
When these reached the stranger-lodge they brought in the supper and laid it down with apparent great heartiness that is the few who actually bore the baskets. The others found themselves somehow halted by Smith at the entrance and engaged in ceremonious conversation. When they suggested that the white men lay aside their weapons and seat themselves the better to enjoy their food, Smith replied that it was the custom of the English at night always to eat standing, food in one hand and musket in the other. For a long time this parleying went on; Smith would not show that he had discovered their perfidy.
Then the baffled Indians retired to the forest, to await the moment when they could catch the white men off guard. But though all night they spied about the lodge, not once did they find the sentinels away from their posts, and they had too much fear of the "death tubes" to attempt an onslaught on men so well defended.
So, thanks to Pocahontas, the morning dawned on an undiminished number of English, and at high tide they embarked in their boat and returned to Jamestown with their provisions so precariously won.
