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 has given me his word." "I am glad to hear it," I said. "Why have we been kept at all? Why did he not free us five days agone?" He shook his head. "I do not know. Opechancanough has many thoughts which he shares with no man. But now he will send you with presents for the governor, and with messages of his love for the white men. There will be a great feast to-day, and to-night the young men and maidens will dance before you. Then in the morning you will go."