"Because by going I believe I can serve both our nation and the English.
My Brother, John Smith, said we must be friends, and I promised him e'er
he left to watch ever over the welfare of his people. My father loveth
me so much that in order to free me I think he will do as the English
wish, and so I will go with Captain Argall that the strife may cease
between them and us. But," and here her voice rose so that
Claw-of-the-Eagle had to remind her of their danger by a pressure on the
hand, "but I will not intercede for that traitor Japezaws and his crafty
squaw. My father may wreak vengeance on them when he will."
Her voice, low as it was, had risen in her emotion, and the boy's keen
hearing had caught the movement of a man's foot on the wooden deck. They
kept still, breathless, for a moment; then as all was still again,
Claw-of-the-Eagle asked sadly, in a tone that mourned as wind through
the pine trees:
"Then thou wilt not come with me? I had built a lodge for thee, Matoaka,
with a smoke hole wide enough to let in the whole moon thou lovest. My
arrows had killed young deer and turkeys and I had smoked and hung meat
for thee to last through all popanow (winter). A young maid is lonely
till she follows her brave--all this I came to the village of Japezaws
to pipe to thee. Now I have run wounded through the forests and swum the
black stream to tell it to thee, and thou bidst me turn back alone. But
if thou hast no wish to enter Claw-of-the-Eagle's lodge let him at least
escort thee safely to the wigwam of thy father."
"I thank thee, Claw-of-the-Eagle, for all thou hast done," she
whispered, "and all thou wouldst do for me. There is no braver warrior
in the thirty tribes and no better hunter since Michabo. But I have
listened to my manitou and he hath said to me, 'Remember the word thou
gavest to thy white Brother.'"
Claw-of-the-Eagle knew that it was useless to plead and yet he pleaded:
"Come back with me, Matoaka; what are the white men to thee and me?"
But she whispered: "Go, Claw-of-the-Eagle, go quickly ere the sailors
awake. Hasten back to old Wansutis that she may bind up thy wound, and
to Powhatan and tell him that he must buy Pocahontas's freedom from the
English by returning their men he holdeth prisoners."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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