Pocahontas had strolled a little further down the beach, picking up the fine thin shells of transparent gold and silver which she liked to make into necklaces.  She had found a number of them and as they were more than she could hold in her hands, she sat down to string them on a piece of eel grass until she could transfer them to a thread of sinew.  When she had finished she lay back against a ridge of sand and watched the gulls as they flew above her, dipping down into the waves every now and then to bring up a fish.  Far away a school of porpoises was circling the waves, their black fins sinking out of sight and reappearing as regularly as if they moved to some marine music.  Pocahontas wondered whence they came and whither they and the gulls were bound.  How delightful it was to move so rapidly and so easily through water or air.  But she did not think of envying them.  Was she not as fleet as they in her element?  She pressed her hand against the warm sand how she loved the feel of it; she stretched her naked foot to where the little waves could wet it.  How she loved the lapping of the water!  Within her was a welling up of feeling, a love for all things living.

It was a very quiet world just now; the sun was only a little over the zenith.  Only the cries of the sea gulls and the soft swish of the waves broke the silence.  It would be pleasant to sleep here as her comrades were sleeping, but if she slept then she would miss the consciousness of her enjoyment.

Yet, though she intended to keep awake, when she looked seaward, she felt sure that she must have fallen asleep and was dreaming the strangest of dreams.  For nowhere save in dreamland had anyone ever beheld such a sight as seemed to stand out against the horizon.  Three great birds, that some shaman had doubtless created with powerful medicine, so large that they almost touched the heavens, were skimming the waves, their white wings blown forward.  One, much larger than the others, moved more swiftly than they.

Yet never, in a dream or in life, were such birds, and little Pocahontas, who had sprung to her feet, stood gaping in terrified wonder.

“Then must I be bewitched!” she cried aloud; “some evil medicine hath befallen me.”

She called out, and there was a tone in her voice that roused the sleeping maidens as a war drum roused their fathers.

“What see ye?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh!  Pocahontas, we know not,” they answered in terror, huddling about her; “answer thou us.  What are those strange things that speed over the waves?  Whence come they—­from the rim of the world?”

Pocahontas, the fearless, was frightened.  She gave one more glance seaward, and then turning, took to her heels in terror.  Her maidens, who had never seen her thus, added her fright to they own, and none stopped until they had reached the lodge at Kecoughtan.

The squaws rushed out when they caught sight of the frightened children and tried to soothe them, but they could get no explanation of what had startled them.  Finally Opechanchanough strode out, and when Pocahontas had tried to tell him what she had seen his face grew stern.