At the entrance of the escort with their captive all the people cheered and shouted. The Queen of Appamatuck was ordered to bring him water to wash his hands. Another queen offered a bunch of feathers to be used as a towel. These ceremonies concluded, platters containing food were served of which we may well believe he partook with an anxious heart. The rhyming Docteur of Divinitie quaintly comments upon the situation:-- "They say he bore a pleasant shew But sure his heart was sad For who can pleasant be, and rest That lives in fear and dread: And having life suspected, doth It still suspected lead." After the dishes were removed, the captors stated their case in several heated orations and then held with the emperor a long consultation. Smith had ample time to look around him. He was always gentle to children, giving back to them in the starving-time half the corn he had been compelled to exact from their parents,--"the bravest are the tenderest,"--and it may be that his eyes softened as they fell upon the little Pocahontas so gravely silent and observant. She probably thought him the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. At all events, when two great stones were brought, and she saw the certain reënactment of scenes to which she was familiar, she implored her father to spare his life, and when he was dragged forth and his head laid upon the stones, she rushed forward, gathered him into her arms, and laid her own head upon his. [Illustration: "She rushed forward, and laid her own head upon his."] The Indians are extremely superstitious. Anything contrary to nature, as they saw nature,--such as madness or idiocy,--they construed into a manifestation of supernatural agency. Evidently John Smith was destined to be spared, and for the sake of the little maiden. To her service he was accordingly assigned, "to make her bells, beads, and copper." He was retained some days as the guest of the emperor, who soon put to him the crucial question, "What was the cause of the coming of the Englishmen?" Captain Smith must have had command, not only of his feelings but of the Indian language. He quickly invented a plausible story.[34] He told the emperor that being in a fight with the Spaniards (Powhatan's enemies) and being overpowered, and almost forced to retreat, they had, because of extreme weather, made for the shore, and landing at Chesapeake been received with a flight of arrows. At Kequoghton,[35] however, the people had been kind, and in an answer to their inquiry about fresh water, had directed them up the river to find it. The pinnace had sprung a leak, and they were forced to stay and mend her to be ready for Captain Newport when he came to take them away.