"My father King Powhatan watched that English camp in Virginia, of wasters led by idiots, who starved and squabbled until the sickness took their silly voices one by one out into the silence. 'There's only one man among them,' said my father Powhatan, 'so they landed him in irons—this fellow they call Johnsmith.' But we called him the Great Werowance. 'I'll kill him,' said Powhatan, 'and the rest of them will blow away like the dead leaves in winter.'
"But Johnsmith had the heart of a saint and the mind of a boy, magic beyond our biggest medicine men, and such a queer little laugh. Our warriors laid his head on a block to club his brains out, but I took his head in my arms and held on tight, so they must kill me first. After that he always used to call me his little daughter.
"My father was the biggest of all kings, but Captain Johnsmith was his master. Time and again Powhatan tried to get him killed but Werowance would come and talk it over, smoking with him, laughing at him. Once I ran through the woods all night to tell him that Powhatan's army was coming against his little helpless camp, but instead of running away he unpacked his goods to give me presents—oh, such lovely gifts if only I'd dared to take them, to be caught wearing them.
"Then came the night when the soldiers blew up his boat with gunpowder, and what was left of him was sent to die in England. You swore to me that he died there, or I'd never have married you. And yet in my heart I knew all the time, that he lived. But how was I to get to England and to him unless I married you? Well," she sighed, "it can't be helped. We're married.
"Verily when we got to England, Johnsmith was alive, but then you see I was married, to a little man with a temper—and so jealous. Well, better jealous than runagate!"
"Go on. Twist the knife deeper."
She put her little head sideways and chirped like a squirrel, then made a great pretense that she did no such thing.
All the fairies were poking one another in the ribs, ever so slyly.
"Johnsmith heard of my coming. The camp crier called it among the tipis in London town, but who believes what he says! And then one day the hero walked in Philpot Lane among the smelly lodges, when who should he see but Uttamatomahkin, one of Powhatan's counselors, who went with a stick and a knife, making a notch for every man he met. Powhatan had ordered him to find out the number of English warriors there were for killing. Johnsmith hailed him, making the sign for peace.
"'Oh, Great Werowance, Master of all the Seas,'" cried Uttamatomahkin. "'I come with the Lady Pocahontas, and her husband, and her baby son to seek you.'"