This story is questioned by some historians because Smith did not include it in his first published account of the Virginia colony, nor yet in the second, though he did praise the Indian girl. In a letter he sent to the English queen, years later, bespeaking for her the royal favor, he tells how Pocahontas saved his life and the colony as well. True or not, Pocahontas and Smith became warm friends and the kind-hearted little Indian girl was loyal and faithful to the settlement at Jamestown, and saved the colony more than once. Frequently she would go with her brothers, or some of her Indian attendants, carrying corn or venison to the people who were in danger of starving--you remember how improvident those first colonists were, and how badly their affairs were managed? Once she hid a messenger whom the savages planned to kill; she saved the life of a captured English boy; three times she stole cautiously into Jamestown and warned her new friends of threatened attacks; and she told Smith himself of a trap laid to surprise him, while his party waited for promised provisions. “Great cheer (corn) will be sent you by and by,” she whispered, “but my father Powhatan and all the power he can make will come afterward, if the braves that bring the corn do not kill you when you are at supper. Hurry away! No, no,” she added, refusing a compass he offered her, “I can no take. Indians see it. Powhatan kill me. If know I tell you, I am but dead.” As quietly as she had come through the forest she slipped away, while the Englishmen, ready for the attack, returned in safety to Jamestown. In the autumn of 1609, tired of the endless quarreling and dissension in the colony, and sorely wounded by an explosion of gunpowder, Smith went back to England. Then Pocahontas made no more visits to Jamestown. Finally word came that Smith was dead and the little Indian girl grieved deeply. After this all friendship between the red men and the whites ceased. The settlers were often greedy and selfish, frequently breaking their promises to the Indians who soon came to distrust, then to fear and at last to hate them. A British soldier, Captain Argall, half pirate and half trader, thought of a fine plan to persuade Powhatan, who was trying to starve the British out, to keep the peace. This was to get Pocahontas into their power, and the old chief would do anything to ransom her. Now the maid was visiting old Chief Japazaws and his wife on the Potomac River. And so Captain Argall won them to his scheme by promising them a wonderful copper kettle if they succeeded, and threatening them if they failed. The squaw was to bring Pocahontas aboard his ship, lying at anchor in the Potomac. As they walked along the river bank the old woman said she had seen the English ships three times before, with their great sails like white wings, but she had never been aboard, and oh! how much she wanted to go! Wouldn’t her husband take her? “No, no,” he said sternly.