"Nay," cried Pocahontas, "not as long as our brother, the captain, lives. Thou couldst not even face his eyes when he is angry."
She did not imagine that she was stating an actual fact. Claw-of-the-Eagle had never been able to look Smith in the eye since he crawled away from the lodge where he had meant to kill the white man. It was only Smith himself who awed him so; but he dreamed that some day he might be able to deal a blow in the dark when those terrible eyes could not stop him. In the meantime he felt equal to meeting the other palefaces day or night.
"But," asked Nautauquas slowly and gravely, as if weighing the matter, "why should we wish to destroy these white men? I once had different thoughts, and I have gone alone into the forest and fasted and prayed to Okee that I might know whether to greet them as foe or friend. In some way the white tribes that live across the great waters have found their way westward. Many have come, the rumor is, to the south of us, men of different race and different tongue from these on the island. These others are cruel to the Indians among whom they have settled and have destroyed many villages and made captive their braves and squaws. Now I have talked with our father, Wahunsunakuk, of what I now speak, since we can no longer hope to hide our trail again to these wanderers from the rising sun, that it is better to make friends of these who have come and who seem well-disposed towards us, and to have them for allies rather than enemies."
In spite of himself, Claw-of-the-Eagle was impressed with this reasoning.
"Dost thou then like these paleface strangers and their ways?" he asked.
"There is much about them I do not understand," replied Nautauquas; "how they can wear so many garments; why they build them houses that let in no air; why they come here when they have villages beyond the seas; yet I know that they are brave and that their medicine is mighty."
Pocahontas spoke little. She had never told anyone how much interest she found in all that concerned the white men and their ways.
It was some days later that Smith, Captain Newport and fifty men started to march to Werowocomoco for the coronation of Powhatan. The presents which the King and the governors of the Colony in London had chosen for him were sent by boat up the river. When the company of Englishmen in their farthingale-breeches, slashed sleeves and white ruffs, their swords and buckles glistening, accompanied by a few soldiers bearing halberds and long muskets, arrived, the entire population of the village and those of other villages for leagues about were awaiting them. Braves and squaws had decked themselves out also in their choicest finery—necklaces and beads and embroidered robes.
It was a wonderful picture that the dark surrounding forest looked upon—the group of gaily colored Indians facing the more soberly dressed Europeans. Round them circled children, pushing, peering between their elders that they might miss nothing. And through it all, running from one group to the other, welcoming, explaining, smiling and laughing, flitted the white-clad Pocahontas.
After their greeting, when Powhatan and Captain Newport eyed each other appraisingly, the gifts were brought into the field where Pocahontas had danced her masque and spread out before the curious gaze of the savages. Pocahontas, in her white doeskin skirt and wearing many strings of white and blue beads, went about among her new friends, and laid her hand into that of Captain Newport, as Smith had told her was the manner in which the English greeted one another. Some of the chieftains scowled at the sight and did not relish the friendliness shown by her to the strangers. Several even remonstrated with Powhatan who, however, would not restrain her. After a few words with Smith, she rejoined Cleopatra and others of her sisters at one side of the field.