At a word of command from him, the guards moved aside and the huge warrior walked slowly around Smith, examining him from head to foot.

There was a pause which, the Englishman knew, might be broken by an order to torture and kill him.  He did not understand their hesitancy, but he meant at any rate to take advantage of it.  He must engage the attention of the giant chief before him.  Slowly he pulled from his pocket his heavy silver watch and held it up to his own ear.

Never had Opechanchanough and his men experienced such an awe of the unknown.  For all they could tell, this small ball in the white man’s hand might contain a medicine more deadly than that of his pistol.  They stood like children in a thunderstorm, not knowing when or where the bolt might strike.

But nothing terrible came to pass.  Then Opechanchanough’s curiosity was aroused and he put out his hand for the watch.  Smith, smiling, held it towards him in his palm and then laid it against the chief’s ear, saying in the Pamunkey tongue:  “Listen.”  Opechanchanough jumped with astonishment and cried out: 

“A spirit!  A spirit!  He hath a spirit imprisoned!”

Then one by one the captors crowded forward to look at the “turtle-of-metal-that-hath-a-spirit,” and many were the exclamations of astonishment.

In order to increase this feeling of awe and to lengthen the delay, though he did not know what he could even hope to happen.  Smith felt in his pocket again and brought out his travelling compass.  It was of ivory and the quivering needle was pronounced by Opechanchanough to be another spirit.

But suddenly, without warning, two of the younger warriors, who had evidently determined once for all to discover if this stranger were vulnerable or not, seized Smith and dragging him swiftly to a tree, threw a cord of deer thong about him, drawing it fast.  Then they notched their arrows and took aim at his heart.  “In one second it will be over,” thought Smith, “life, adventures, my ambitions and my troubles.”

Then Opechanchanough called out to the braves, holding up the compass.  Frowning with disappointment, the young men loosed their captive and Smith realized that it was again the chief’s curiosity which had saved his life.  By means of such Indian words as he knew and by the further aid of signs he endeavored to explain its usage.

“See,” he said, pointing, “yon is the north whence comes popanow, the winter; and there behind us lies cohattayough, the summer.  I turn thus and lo, the spirit in the needle loves the north and will not be kept from it.”

When all had looked at the compass, Opechanchanough took it again in his hand, holding it gingerly as he would have held a papoose if a squaw had given one to his care.  This was something precious and he meant to keep it, yet he did not know what it might do to him.  At any rate, it would be a good thing to take with him the man who did understand it.