CHAPTER XXII
POCAHONTAS IN ENGLAND
It was an eager, happy Pocahontas that set sail with her husband. Master Rolfe, her child and last—but not in his own estimation—Sir Thomas Dale. With them, too, went Uttamatomakkin, a chief whom Powhatan sent expressly to observe the English and their ways in their own land.
Everything interested Pocahontas on the voyage: the ship herself, the hoisting and furling of sails in calms and tempests, the chanteys of the sailors as they worked, the sight of spouting whales and, as they neared the English coast, the magnificence of a large ship-of-war, a veteran, so declared the captain, of the fleet which went so bravely forth to meet the Spanish Armada. During the long evenings on deck Rolfe told her stories of real deeds of English history and fancied romances of poets; and all were equally wonderful to her.
She could scarcely believe after she had sailed so many weeks over the unchanging ocean, where there were not even the signs to go by that she could read in the trackless forest, that there was land again beyond all the water. It was a marvel which no amount of explanations could simplify that men should be able to guide ships back and forth across this waste. Perhaps this more than any of the wonders she was to see later was what made her esteem the white men's genius most.
And then one day a grey cloud rested on the eastern horizon. Pocahontas saw a new look in her husband's face as he caught sight of it.
"England!" he cried, and then he lifted little Thomas to his shoulder and bade him, "Look at thy father's England."
Even before they stepped ashore at Plymouth Pocahontas's impressions of the country began. On board the ship came officers from the Virginia Company to greet her and put themselves and the exchequer of the Company at her disposal. Was she not the daughter of their Indian ally, a monarch of whose kingdom and power they possessed but the most confused idea. They had arranged, they said, suitable lodgings for Lady Rebecca, Master Rolfe and their infant in London and—with much waving of plumed hats and bowing—they would attend in every manner to her comfort and amusement.
These men were different from any Pocahontas had ever seen; the colonists were all, willy nilly, workers, or at least adventure lovers. These comfortable citizens were of a type as new to her as she to them.