"The eternal all-seeing God did prevent Powhatan, and by a strange meanes. For Pocahontas, his dearest jewell and daughter, in that darke night came through the irksome woods, and tolde our Captaine great cheare should be sent by and bye: but that Powhatan and all the power he could make, would after come and kill us all, if they that brought it could not kill us with oure owne weapons when we were at supper. Therefore, if we would live, shee wished us presently to be gone. "In requital for this information, our President would have given her such things as she delighted in, but with teares running downe her cheekes, she said she durst not be seene to have any; for if Powhatan should know it she were but dead; and so she ranne away as she came."[53] Touching as is this proof of the devotion of the Indian girl to Captain Smith, one cannot but pity the old emperor. He had just declared himself the sole survivor of three generations of his people--generations who were lords of the inherited lands of their fathers. The stranger from across the seas was slowly but surely increasing in strength and numbers. He could hope for nothing while the intruder fought behind those terrible things with eyes of lightning and a voice of thunder. Possessing these, the Indian might be the peer of the white man, and drive the usurper from the country. Evil as were the designs of this savage, cruel as were his methods of revenge, his instincts were perfectly natural; instincts born of a consciousness of his own rights and desire to protect them which in civilized rulers have ever been reckoned noble. We can but sympathize with this King Lear of the western world, betrayed in his old age by his "dearest jewell, his darling daughter." Well might he exclaim with the ancient Briton:-- "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!" Of course it is not for us to blame Pocahontas for her humane treason. She, too, had her instincts. The man she adored was about to be murdered in her father's house. It is useless to affect that the devotion she constantly expressed was for the colony. She never set foot in Jamestown after Captain Smith left it! She never brought corn in that terrible time, the winter after he sailed away. It was for his sake, I am constrained to believe, that she hid Wyffin, and rescued Henry Spelman. Smith's next attempt was to wrest his supplies from Opechancanough, and here he succeeded by seizing the chief by his scalp-lock, and with a pistol pressed to his bosom, held him thus until the corn was forthcoming.