CHAPTER XI.
THE FRIEND IN NEED
Now, if a boy, while eating a fine dinner, should suddenly form the belief that the men who gave the food to him meant it to make him plumper, so that he would form a better dinner for them, I am sure he would not have much appetite left. Captain John Smith came to this belief not many hours after finishing a bountiful meal provided by his Indian captors, and he made up his mind not to eat another mouthful. If they meant to feast upon their prisoner, they should find him in the poorest condition possible.
It is easy for anyone to form such a resolve when he has no craving for food, but with the next morning it seemed to Smith that he was never hungrier in his life. And there were two big baskets of pone and venison. After thinking over the question he decided that he might as well eat what was set before him, and begin his fasting after that. By and by it was not hard to persuade himself that it would really make no difference as to what would be finally done with him. So he gave over all thought of punishing himself by going hungry when there was nothing to be gained by it.
The Indians spared his life so long that Captain Smith began to hope they would let him return to Jamestown. When he was taken before a sick man he told the friends he could get his medicine at the settlement that would make the patient well, but they were too cunning to let him go after it.
The next proposal of his captors was that he should help them in destroying Jamestown. They told him nothing could save the place, for the tribes had determined not to allow a white man to remain alive. They promised to give Smith all the lands he could ask, with liberty to choose as many wives as he pleased. He assured the Indians that it was out of their power to hurt the settlement, and that those who tried to do so would suffer awful consequences. His words produced the effect he intended, and the plan was given up.
Smith next did a thing that filled the red men with astonishment. He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and with a piece of red chalk, whittled to a point, he wrote several sentences. Holding up the slip with the writing on it, he said to the staring warriors:
"The words I speak to you have been put on this paper; they ask my friends at Jamestown to give you the articles which I name. Let some of your messengers take this to Jamestown and show it to my people there, and you will see that I have spoken with a single tongue."
Not believing what he said, two of fleetest runners set out for the settlement. It was the depth of winter, when there was a good deal of snow on the ground, and the weather was very cold. But the messengers made the journey, and handed the paper to the persons there, who straightway gave them the trifling articles called for, to the unbounded astonishment of the runners, who could not understand how the strange thing was done.
It need hardly be said that the paper contained more on it than the writer had read to the Indians. He told his friends of the plan of the red men to destroy the place, and urged upon them to use the utmost diligence against surprise. In order to impress their dusky visitors, the settlers fired several of their cannon among the ice-laden trees. The shots made a great racket, and sent the branches and bits of ice flying in all directions. When the runners came back to their people and told what they had seen, and proved that the prisoner had really spoken by means of the paper to his friends many miles away, their amazement was beyond words.