but he was treated as a prisoner of rank and importance by the brother of
the great chief Powhatan, by whom he had been captured. He interested and
impressed his captors by his conversation and his instruments; and at the
same time he kept his eyes and ears open, and missed no information that
could be of use to himself and his colony. Powhatan gave him an audience
and seems to have adopted a considerate attitude; at all events he sent
him back to Jamestown after a few days, unharmed, and escorted by four
Indians, with a supply of corn. But precisely what occurred during those
few days we shall never certainly know; since we must choose between
accepting Smith's unsupported story, only made public years afterward, and
believing nothing at all. Smith's tale has charmed the imagination of all
who have heard it; nothing could be more prettily romantic; the trouble
with it is, it seems to most people too pretty and romantic to be true.
Yet it is simple enough in itself, and not at all improbable; there is no
question as to the reality of the dramatis personae of the story, and
their relations one to another render such an episode as was alleged
hardly more than might reasonably be looked for.

The story is--as all the world knows, for it has been repeated all over
the world for nearly three hundred years, and has formed the subject of
innumerable pictures--that Powhatan, for reasons of high policy
satisfactory to himself, had determined upon the death of the Englishman,
rightly inferring that the final disappearance of the colony would be the
immediate sequel thereof. The sentence was that Smith's brains were to be
knocked out with a bludgeon; and he was led into the presence of the chief
and the warriors, and ordered to lay his head upon the stone. He did so,
and the executioners poised their clubs for the fatal blow; but it never
fell. For Smith, during his captivity, had won the affection of the little
daughter of Powhatan, a girl of ten, whose name was Pocahontas. She was
too young to understand or fear his power over the Indians; but she knew