One of them who sat nearest the front, Pocahontas noticed, was but little older than herself.  He was too young to be a brave; perhaps, she thought, he had run off from home and had followed the war party, as she had heard of boys in her own tribe doing.  She wondered if now he was regretting that his eagerness for adventure had made his first warpath his last one.

When they had feasted the squaws passed around bunches of turkey feathers for them to wipe their greasy fingers on, and in every way the captives were treated with that exaggerated courtesy that was customary towards those about to be tortured.

Then Powhatan rose, and, preceded and followed by several of his fifty armed guards chosen from the tallest men of his thirty tribes, he strode down the centre of the lodge and out into the sunshine.  Pocahontas walked next behind him, and once outside, ran to tell the curious Cleopatra all she had witnessed.

“Why shouldst thou have seen it all?” asked her jealous sister of Pocahontas, “while I had naught of it all but the shouting?”

“Because,” laughed Pocahontas, pulling her sister’s long hair, “because my two feet took me in.  Thine are too fearful, little mouse.”

An open space stretched before the ceremonial lodge, used for games and feats of running and shooting at a mark.  Now Powhatan and his guard and his sons seated themselves upon the firm red ground that rose in a little hillock to a height of several feet at one side of the lodge.  Then other chieftains took up their places behind them, standing or sitting; the squaws crowded in among them and the boys sought the branches of a single walnut-tree, the only tree within the limits of Werowocomoco.  They looked with longing eyes at the slanting roof of the great lodge.  That was undoubtedly the point of vantage, but The Powhatan was a much dreaded werowance and they dared not risk his ire.

Pocahontas, who had been wondering where to bestow herself, noticed the envying glances they cast in its direction.  She was not withheld by their restraining fear, so running to the opposite side of the lodge, she climbed its sides, finding foothold in its bark covering, and soon was curled up comfortably, her hands about her knees, where she would miss nothing of the spectacle.

Now she beheld two long rows of young braves, one of them composed of Powhatans, the other of Chickahominies, stride down the open space below her and form a lane of naked, painted human walls.  In their hands they held bunches of fresh green reeds, sharp as knives, or heavy bludgeons of oak, or stone tomahawks.  For a moment they stood there motionless as if they were merely spectators of some drama to be enacted by others.

Pocahontas recognized most of them:  Black Arrow, whose ear had been clawed off by a bear; Leaping Sturgeon, who had hung two scalps at his girdle before the chiefs had pronounced him old enough to be a brave; her own cousin, White Owl, the most wonderfully tattooed of them all; and the Nansamond young chieftain who wore a live snake as an earring in the slit of his ear.