above their lodge tops. I hear the
crying of an orphan child; but the mother lieth where she cannot still
it."

Pocahontas gazed in horrible fascination at the old woman who, with
another harsh laugh, vanished into the darkness.

[Illustration: Decorative]

CHAPTER XXII

POCAHONTAS IN ENGLAND

It was an eager, happy Pocahontas that set sail with her husband. Master
Rolfe, her child and last--but not in his own estimation--Sir Thomas
Dale. With them, too, went Uttamatomakkin, a chief whom Powhatan sent
expressly to observe the English and their ways in their own land.

Everything interested Pocahontas on the voyage: the ship herself, the
hoisting and furling of sails in calms and tempests, the chanteys of the
sailors as they worked, the sight of spouting whales and, as they neared
the English coast, the magnificence of a large ship-of-war, a veteran,
so declared the captain, of the fleet which went so bravely forth to
meet the Spanish Armada. During the long evenings on deck Rolfe told her
stories of real deeds of English history and fancied romances of poets;
and all were equally wonderful to her.

She could scarcely believe after she had sailed so many weeks over the
unchanging ocean, where there were not even the signs to go by that she
could read in the trackless forest, that there was land again beyond all
the water. It was a marvel which no amount of explanations could
simplify that men should be able to guide ships back and forth across
this waste. Perhaps this more than any of the wonders she was to see
later was what made her esteem the white men's genius most.

And then one day a grey cloud rested on the eastern horizon. Pocahontas
saw a new look in her husband's face as he caught sight of it.

"England!" he cried, and then he lifted little Thomas to his shoulder
and bade him, "Look at thy father's England."

Even before they stepped ashore at Plymouth Pocahontas's impressions of
the country began. On board the ship came officers from the Virginia
Company to greet her and put themselves and the exchequer of the Company
at her disposal. Was she not the daughter of their Indian ally, a
monarch of whose kingdom and power they possessed but the most confused
idea. They had arranged, they said, suitable lodgings for Lady Rebecca,
Master Rolfe and their infant in London and--with much waving of plumed
hats and bowing--they would attend in every manner to her comfort and
amusement.

These me