or the next day. And Captain Percy must smoke the peace
pipe in my lodge above the Pamunkey and watch my young men and maidens
dance, and eat with me five days. Then he may go back to Jamestown with
presents for the great white father there and with a message from me
that I am coming soon to learn of the white man."

For five days I tarried in the great chief's lodge in his own village
above the marshes of the Pamunkey. I will allow that the dark emperor to
whom we were so much beholden gave us courteous keeping. The best of the
hunt was ours, the noblest fish, the most delicate roots. We were alive
and sound of limb, well treated and with the promise of release; we
might have waited, seeing that wait we must, in some measure of content.
We did not so. There was a horror in the air. From the marshes that were
growing green, from the sluggish river, from the rotting leaves and cold
black earth and naked forest, it rose like an [v]exhalation. We knew not
what it was, but we breathed it in, and it went to the marrow of our
bones.

The savage emperor we rarely saw, though we were bestowed so near to him
that his sentinels served for ours. Like some god, he kept within his
lodge, the hanging mats between him and the world without. At other
times, issuing from that retirement, he would stride away into the
forest. Picked men went with him, and they were gone for hours; but when
they returned they bore no trophies, brute or human. What they did we
could not guess. If escape had been possible, we would not have awaited
the doubtful fulfillment of the promise made us. But the vigilance of
the Indians never slept; they watched us like hawks, night and day.

In the early morning of the fifth day, when we came from our wigwam, it
was to find Nantaquas sitting by the fire, magnificent in the paint and
trappings of the ambassador, motionless as a piece of bronze and
apparently quite unmindful of the admiring glances of the women who
knelt about the fire preparing our breakfast. When he saw us he rose and
came to meet us, and I embraced him, I was so glad to see him.

"The Rappahannocks feasted me long," he said. "I was afraid that Captain
Percy would be gone to Jamestown before I was back on the Pamunkey."

"Shall I ever see Jamestown again, Nantaquas?" I demanded. "I have my
doubts."

He looked me full in the eyes, and there was no doubting the candor of
his own. "You go with the next sunrise," he answered. "Opechancanough
ha