Then before she had grown tired planning their fate, her thoughts flew to Claw-of-the-Eagle. Was he lying dead there in the forest? What a playmate and companion he had always been, she thought; how brave, how strong! Yet now he must be dead or surely he had managed to follow her.
By nightfall the boat was anchored in the centre of the stream, which here widened out into a small bay. Captain Argall, who had not known what to make of Claw-of-the-Eagle's attack, did not feel certain that Japezaws had not played him false. He had therefore made all speed possible the first night and the following day. Now his wearied men needed rest and, as no sign of pursuit appeared, he had granted them leave to sleep. Only one sailor in the bow was left on watch, but he, too, drowsed, to wake up with a start, when finding all well, he dropped off to sleep again.
Pocahontas lay alone in the stem, her head pillowed on a roll of sail cloth that brought it up to the level of the gunwale. Argall had done everything he could to make her comfortable and never even spoke to her except hat in hand and bowing low. Now she, too, had fallen asleep, her eyes wet with the tears she would not shed during the daylight. She dreamed she was again at Werowocomoco and that she had just risen from her sleeping-mat to run out into the moonlight as she so often did.
Suddenly a faint, faint sound half wakened her, a sound scarcely louder than the lapping of the water against the sides which had lulled her to sleep. She opened her eyes but did not move, and waited, tense with excitement. A fish flopped out of the water, then all was silent again and she closed her heavy eyes once more. Then it came again, not louder than the wind in the aspen trees on shore:
"Pocahontas!"
Raising herself to her elbow with a motion as quiet as a cat's, she peered into the dark water over the stern. A hand came up from the darkness and clasped her wrist. She needed no great light upon the features of the face below to know whose it was.
"Claw-of-the-Eagle," she whispered, "is it thou? I thought the white man's gun had killed thee, and I have been mourning for thee."
"I lay dead for an hour," he answered as he lifted himself up in the water and hung with both hands to the sides of the boat. "But it was well that I was wounded on the shoulder and not on the leg. The stiffness made me slow, like a bear that has been hurt in a trap. But I bound mud on the wound with my leggings and I have followed close behind thee along the shore all the way."
"I knew thou wouldst come after me if thou wert not killed," she whispered.
"Yea, I have come for thee, Pocahontas," and there was manly decision now in the youth's voice. "Waste no time. Drop down here beside me as quietly as if thou wert stalking a deer. We will swim under water until we are beyond reach of the white men's dull ears and before three days are passed we shall be at Powhata, where thy father now abideth."