Catanaugh said nothing further, yet he still stood in the doorway.
"Enter," invited Pocahontas, "and behold how I live."
"I see enough," he answered, turning his head from side to side; "but where dwelleth the white man's Okee?"
"The God of the Christians?" she asked, puzzled at his question; "in the sky above."
"But where do the shamans call to him?" he continued.
"Yonder in the church, that building with the peak to it," she pointed out.
"I will walk some more," announced Catanaugh and left her. When he thought Pocahontas was no longer observing him, he hastened in the direction of the church. During his former short stay in Jamestown he had never been inside and had thought of it—if he paid any attention to it at all—as some kind of a storehouse.
He found the door open and entered quietly, glancing cautiously about until he had assured himself that it was empty. Then he pushed the door to and fastened it with the bolt. This done, he set about examining the building curiously. At the end, towards the rising sun, was an elevation of three steps which made him think of the raised dais that ran across the end of Powhatan's ceremonial lodge. This was lined with the reddish wood of the cedar, and there was a dark wooden table covered with a white cloth standing in it, and the sun shining through the windows above made the vases filled with flowers glisten brightly. In the part where he stood there were many benches and chairs, and everywhere that it was possible to stand or hang them, was a profusion of fragrant flowering branches.
The very simplicity of the church awed him; had there been a multiplicity of furnishings, of strange objects whose use he could not comprehend, he would have felt he had something definite to watch and fear. His impulse was to flee out into the sunshine, and he turned towards the door. Then he remembered his object in coming and stood still again.
He listened intently, but there was no sound; then taking from the pouch that hung at his side a lump of deer's suet, he smeared it about the sides of the benches and the backs of the chairs. Then with a handful of tobacco taken from the same receptacle he began to sprinkle a small circle in the centre aisle. When this was complete he seated himself crosslegged inside of it. Slowly and deliberately he drew from the larger pouch slung at his back and covered by his long mantle, a mask, somewhat out of shape from its confinement in a small space, and a rattle made of a gourd filled with pebbles. He attached the mask to his face as carefully as if he were to be observed by all his tribe, and laid the rattle across his knees. All these preparations had taken place so quietly that no one who might have been in the church could have discovered the Indian's presence by the aid of his ears alone.