He spoke at last: “When the dance is over, and the fires are low, and the sunrise is at hand, then will Opechancanough come to you to bid you farewell. He will give you the pearls that he wears about his neck for a present to the Governor, and a bracelet for yourself. Also he will give you three men for a guard through the forest. He has messages of love to send the white men, and he would send them by you who were his enemy and his captive. So all the white men shall believe in his love.”
“Well,” I said dryly as he paused. “I will take his messages. What next?”
“Those are the words of Opechancanough. Now listen to the words of Nantauquas, the son of Wahunsonacock, a war chief of the Powhatans. There are two sharp knives there, hanging beneath the bow and the quiver and the shield. Take them and hide them.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth before Diccon had the two keen English blades. I took the one he offered me, and hid it in my doublet.
“So we go armed, Nantauquas,” I said. “Love and peace and goodwill consort not with such toys.”
“You may want them,” he went on, with no change in his low, measured tones. “If you see aught in the forest that you should not see, if they think you know more than you are meant to know, then those three, who have knives and tomahawks, are to kill you, whom they believe unarmed.”
“See aught that we should not see, know more than we are meant to know?” I said. “To the point, friend.”
“They will go slowly, too, through the forest to Jamestown, stopping to eat and to sleep. For them there is no need to run like the stag with the hunter behind him.”
“Then we should make for Jamestown as for life,” I said, “not sleeping or eating or making pause?”
“Yea,” he replied, “if you would not die, you and all your people.”