Evidently the priests were giving the werowance some advice. Smith wondered whether the savages offered human sacrifices to their Okee and if such were to be his fate. But the night was passed quietly there; the next day was spent in marching, and the following night in another village. Everywhere he was the object of the greatest interest: braves, squaws and children crowded about him, fingered his clothes, pulled at his beard and asked him questions. The Englishman observed them with the same interest. He noticed how the men wore but one garment leggings and moccasins made in one piece, and how they were painted in bright colors, many wearing symbols or rude representations of some animal which he learned was their "medicine." He watched the women as they embroidered and cooked, tanned hides and dyed skins, scolded and petted their children. Their lodges were lightly built, he saw, yet strong and well-suited for their occupants. Many of the young men and maidens made him think of deer in the swiftness of their movements and in the suppleness of their bodies.
After many days of travelling, in which Smith believed that they often retraced their steps, they found themselves one afternoon at the outskirts of a larger village than any they had yet entered. Dogs barked and children shouted as they neared the palisade, and men and women came running from every side.
"Certainly," thought Smith, "we are expected. Never in an English village have I seen a Savoyard with a trained bear make more excitement than doth here Captain John Smith."
CHAPTER VIII
POCAHONTAS DEFIES POWHATAN
"Princess, Pocahontas!" cried Claw-of-the-Eagle, as he pointed excitedly to the outskirts of the village, "look, yonder come thy uncle and his men bringing the white prisoner with them."
Pocahontas, who a few moments before had jumped down from the grapevine swing, where she had been idling, to peep into Claw-of-the-Eagle's pouch at the luck his hunting had brought him, now started off running after the son of old Wansutis, who was speeding towards the gathering crowd. Never in all her life had she desired anything as much as she now desired to gain a sight of this stranger.
"What doth he look like?" she called out, panting, to the boy ahead; but her own swiftness answered the question, for she was soon abreast of the procession. There, walking behind her uncle, unbound and apparently unconcerned, she beheld the white man. Her eyes devoured every detail of his appearance. She was almost disappointed to find that he had only one head and two eyes like all the rest of her world. But his beardedness, so unknown among her people, his youth, which showed itself more in his figure and in his step than in his weatherworn features, his cloth jerkin and his leather boots, but above all, the strange hue of his face and hands offered enough novelty to satisfy her.