e they embarked in their boat and returned to
Jamestown with their provisions so precariously won.

[Illustration: Decorative]

CHAPTER XV

A FAREWELL

The late summer sun was beating down pitilessly upon the lodges and open
spaces of Werowocomoco. Even the children were quiet in the shade,
covering their heads with the long green blades of the maize, plaiting
the tassels idly and humming the chant of the Green Corn Festival they
had celebrated some weeks before. The old braves smoked or dozed in
their wigwams, and the squaws left their pounding of corn and their
cooking until a cooler hour. The young braves only, too proud to appear
affected by any condition of the weather, made parade of their industry
and sat fashioning arrow-heads or ran races in the full sunshine, till a
wise old chief called out to them that they were young fools with no
more sense than blue jays.

Off in the woods, near a hollow in a little stream where the trout and
crawfish disported themselves over a bright sandy bottom, Pocahontas lay
at full length, her brown arms stretched out, the color of the pine
needles beneath them. The leafage of a gigantic red oak shaded her;
through its greenery she could see the heavy white clouds, and once an
eagle flying as it seemed straight up into the sun. Away from its direct
rays, cooled by her bath in the stream and clad in an Indian maiden's
light garb, she was rejoicing in the summer heat. She enjoyed the sleepy
feeling that dulled the woodland sights and sounds: the tapping of a
woodpecker on a distant tree, the occasional call of a catbird, the soft
scurrying of a rabbit or a squirrel, the buzzing of a laden bee--all
mingled into one melody of summer of which she did not consciously
distinguish the individual notes. Just as pleasantly confused were her
thoughts, pictures of which her drowsiness blurred the outlines, so that
she passed with no effort from the flecked stream she had just left to
the moonlit field she and her maidens had encircled a few nights before,
chanting harvest songs. She saw, too, the supple bend of
Claw-of-the-Eagle's body as he had waited for the signal to bound
forward in the race at Powhata when he outran the others; and then she
seemed again to see him run the day Wansutis saved him from being
clubbed to death.

As if the many deeds of violence done that day called up others of their
kind, she saw, and did not shrink from seeing, the fate of the Dutchmen
at