Smith looked critically at the girl who sat on a mat beside him.  He had never seen a maiden whose spirit was more eager for life.  In her avidity for the miraculous he recognized something akin to his own love of adventure and desire to explore new lands and to sample new ways.  She could not sail across the ocean in search of them as he had done—­he was her great adventure, he realized, a personified book of strange tales to fire her imagination, as his had been stirred as a boy by stories of the kingdom of Prester John, of the El Dorado, of the Spanish Main and of the lost Raleigh Colony.  The tobacco, which he had learned to smoke while with the Pamunkeys, soothed him; he was in no immediate danger; the warm sun was pleasant and the bright-eyed girl beside him was a sympathetic audience.  He was always fond of talking, of living over the picturesque happenings that had crowded his twenty-eight years, and now he let himself run on, seeing again in his mind’s eye the faces and the scenes of many lands, none of them, however, more strange than his present surroundings.  The only difficulty was his insufficient vocabulary; but his mind was a quick and retentive one and each new word, once captured, came at his bidding.  Also, Pocahontas was a bright listener; she guessed at much he could not express and helped him with gesture and phrase.

“Princess,” he began, when she interrupted: 

“Call me Pocahontas as do my people.  Perchance some day I’ll tell thee my other name.”

“Pocahontas, then,” he repeated slowly, impressing the name on his memory, “I will obey thee.  We are but men, as are thy kinsfolk, subject to cold and hunger, ills and death.  Yet, as God, our Okee, is greater than your Okee, so our power and our medicine excel those of the mighty Powhatan and of his shamans.  Thou asketh for tales of the land whence I come.  They are so many that like the leaves of the forest I cannot count them.  If we sat here until thou wert a wrinkled old crone like her yonder,” and he pointed to old Wansutis who was hobbling by, “I could not relate half of them.  Therefore, if it pleaseth thee, I will tell thee of some matters that have affected thy captive.”

Pocahontas nodded her approbation.

“Our land, fair England, set in a stormy sea, is a mighty kingdom many, many days’ journey over the waters.  There all men and women are as white or whiter than I, now so weatherworn, as indeed are those of many other kingdoms further towards the sunrise.  Our land, now ruled by a king who wields dominion over hundreds of tribes, was a few years ago under the sway of a mighty princess.”

“Was she fair?” asked Pocahontas.

Smith hesitated.  The glamour which had once hovered about “Good Queen Bess,” obscuring the eyes of her loyal subjects, had since her death been somewhat dispelled.  He thought of the pinched face, the sandy hair, the long nose, the small eyes—­but then he had a vision of her as his boyish eyes had first beheld her, the sovereign riding her white steed before the host assembled to encounter the forces of the Armada Spain was sending to crush her realm.