"And how camest thou to know the Indian's language?" I said sternly. "Answer me that."
"I have been in the household of Sir Walter Raleigh for the last two years or more," he replied, "where the savage was; and having little to do much of the time, I amused myself by learning the native tongue. I expect it to be of service to me in Virginia." And he bowed with a pale smile upon his hollow face.
"I doubt not that thou wilt find it so," I said, turning my back upon him, for I distrusted his knavish face. If ever Dame Nature had stamped upon a mortal countenance the brand of a rogue, that one was John Marsden.
I saw much of the Indian in the long days and weeks that followed; he had taken a strange fancy to me, and dogged my footsteps, as though he were some tame animal, and I his master. One morning he brought me a little basket that he had cut in the shape of a wolf's head from a nut. As I looked at the beautiful carving, I realized how much work and labor it must have cost him, and was touched by his thought for me.
"The Eagle is pleased," said the Indian.
"Yes," I answered. "I thank Manteo, and will wear it around my neck," and I fastened it in the little gold chain with the coin and trinket of my lady.
The savage's eye flashed with pleasure.
"It is well," he answered, a look of delight passing over his dark face for a moment, as a bolt of lightning flashes for an instant over the lowering clouds, and then vanishes. "It is enough." And as though ashamed of his emotion, he left me, and disappeared down the companionway.
I learned to speak the tongue of Manteo; it was very like the one that I had learned before. I amused myself by talking with the Indian, becoming more fluent in his language. We had grown to be fast friends, and I had begun to think much of him. He was a strange creature; he never forgot a kind word, and he loved his friends almost to idolatry, and despised his foes with a deep implacable hate, that was a revelation to me.