"Arm yourselves, my friends. Make ready quickly," and as Smith would have questioned, she panted: "When your weapons are in readiness then will I speak." Smith gave hurried orders, reproaching himself for his false confidence. The men sprang up from the fire, seized their long-barrelled muskets and their halberts; and a few who had laid aside their steel corselets hastily fastened them on again, and threw their bandoliers, filled with charges, over their shoulders. The merry, careless party was now quickly converted into a troop of cautious soldiers. Then Smith turned to Pocahontas, whose breath was coming more quietly as she beheld the precautions taken for defence. She answered his unspoken query: "I overheard the words of the treacherous Dutchmen to my father even now. I feared when I heard the war song and saw them dancing the war dance. Woe is me! my Brother, that I should speak against my own father, but I listened to the plans he hath made to take you here unawares, your weapons out of your hands. For this moment he hath waited all day and he hath sought to deceive you with fair words. They are now on their way with the supper he promised thee; then when you are all eating he hath given orders to his men that they fall upon you and slay all, that none may escape. And so as soon as I learned this, that thou to whom he had sworn friendship and thine were in dire peril, I hastened through the dark forest to warn thee." Smith was deeply touched by this manifestation of her loyalty. He knew the danger she ran if Powhatan should learn of what she had done. "Matoaka," he cried, clasping her hand, "thou hast this night put all England in thy debt. As long as this Virginia is a name men remember, so long will men recall how thou didst save her from destruction. In truth, thy father had lulled my suspicions to sleep, and hadst thou not come to warn us we had surely perished. The thanks of all of us to thee. Princess," he continued, when he had turned and told his astonished men the gist of her words, "and to my little Sister my own deep gratitude again." He loosened a thick gold chain from about his neck, one that he had brought back from the country of the Turks, and put it about her bare neck. "Take this chain in remembrance," he said. Then his comrades pressed forward, each with some gift they emptied into the maiden's hands. She gazed at them all lovingly, but she shook her head slowly, the tears falling as she said: "I dare not, my friends; if my father should behold these gifts he would kill me, since he would know that it was I who had brought ye warning." Slowly she took off the chain and reluctantly placed in it Smith's hand, and let gently fall the other treasures she longed to keep. Smith bent and kissed her hand as reverently as he had once kissed that of Good Queen Bess.