There was something sinister to Pocahontas in the silence; she began to divine that it was not mere curiosity which was keeping Claw-of-the-Eagle, and yet she dared not go in search of him.
The second victim was despatched as easily as the first, and the third, though he awoke before the blow was struck, was unable to avert it. The young brave, whose lust for slaughter increased as he went on, felt about for Captain Argall. Already the dawn was coming, and he could distinguish the forms of the four other men. He bent over one of them; his hand, burning with the fever from his wound and excitement, touched the cheek of the man instead of the mouth. The sailor cried out instantaneously even before he was awake; and Claw-of-the-Eagle, realizing in a second that his game was up, slashed out with his knife at him in passing as he ran for the stern.
He could have leapt overboard more easily, but though he had failed to kill all his enemies, he meant to rescue Pocahontas. He dashed towards her, followed by the sailor. Argall and the two others of the crew, roused at the outcry, were at their heels. Claw-of-the-Eagle caught Pocahontas in his arms and before she knew what was happening, he had sprung with her into the river.
The sailor, who had been but slightly wounded by the young brave's knife, had seized his musket as he ran. His forebears had been outlaws with Robin Hood, skilful archers, and bowmen with Henry V at Agincourt, whose arrows never failed to find French marks. The same keen eye and strong arm were his with a musket.
"Do not shoot. Mark!" called out Argall breathlessly. He did not know what had happened prior to his own awakening, though his feet had stumbled over the dead bodies of his men. "The Indian princess is there in the water. Shoot not, for the love of heaven, or we'll have all the red hordes of America on top of Jamestown!"
Mark, however, had already made out the two figures in the water so close together that Argall's older eyes thought them but one. And just as Claw-of-the-Eagle, hampered by his wounded shoulder, was about to sink below the surface of the river to swim under water, Mark took aim. The bullet hit the top of the head, gashing the skin about the scalp-lock, but did not penetrate very deeply.
Pocahontas saw that he was not badly wounded; but the blood running down his face and into his mouth and nose made it impossible for him to breathe deeply enough to swim under water. His weakness from his other wound, too, made his motions slower. Before he would be able to put a safe distance between him and the pinnace the sailor would have fired again.
But he would not fire at her—the thought flashed through her brain!
With a few rapid strokes she had reached the brave and flung her arm under his wounded shoulder, bearing him up.