and cower, and I, though I laughed too, thought of Smith, and how
he ever held the savages, and more especially that
Opechancanough who was now their emperor, in a most deep
distrust; telling us that the red men watched while we slept, that
they might teach wiliness to a Jesuit, and how to bide its time to a
cat crouched before a mousehole. I thought of the terms we now
kept with these heathen; of how they came and went familiarly
amongst us, spying out our weakness, and losing the salutary awe
which that noblest captain had struck into their souls; of how many
were employed as hunters to bring down deer for lazy masters; of
how, breaking the law, and that not secretly, we gave them knives
and arms, a soldier's bread, in exchange for pelts and pearls; of
how their emperor was forever sending us smooth messages; of
how their lips smiled and their eyes frowned. That afternoon, as I
rode home through the lengthening shadows, a hunter, red-brown
and naked, rose from behind a fallen tree that sprawled across my
path, and made offer to bring me my meat from the moon of corn
to the moon of stags in exchange for a gun. There was scant love
between the savages and myself, - it was answer enough when I
told him my name. I left the dark figure standing, still as a carved
stone, in the heavy shadow of the trees, and, spurring my horse
(sent me from home, the year before, by my cousin Percy), was
soon at my house, - a poor and rude one, but pleasantly set upon a
slope of green turf, and girt with maize and the broad leaves of the
tobacco. When I had had my supper, I called from their hut the two
Paspahegh lads bought by me from their tribe the Michaelmas
before, and soundly flogged them both, having in my mind a
saying of my ancient captain's, namely, "He who strikes first
oft-times strikes last."