The darkness had come quickly and the woods that stretched between the lodge and the centre of Werowocomoco were thick and sombre.  Through them Pocahontas sped more swiftly than she had ever run a race with her brothers.  She did not trip over the roots slippery with frost nor, though she had not taken time to put a mantle over her bare shoulders, did she feel the cold.  For she knew now that the war dance had been danced against the English.

She was all but breathless when she reached the lodge near the river’s edge, but rushing inside, she seized a musket from the pile on the ground, to the astonishment of the guard, who recognized her in time not to hurt her, and thrust it into Smith’s hands, crying: 

“Arm yourselves, my friends.  Make ready quickly,” and as Smith would have questioned, she panted:  “When your weapons are in readiness then will I speak.”

Smith gave hurried orders, reproaching himself for his false confidence.  The men sprang up from the fire, seized their long-barrelled muskets and their halberts; and a few who had laid aside their steel corselets hastily fastened them on again, and threw their bandoliers, filled with charges, over their shoulders.  The merry, careless party was now quickly converted into a troop of cautious soldiers.  Then Smith turned to Pocahontas, whose breath was coming more quietly as she beheld the precautions taken for defence.  She answered his unspoken query: 

“I overheard the words of the treacherous Dutchmen to my father even now.  I feared when I heard the war song and saw them dancing the war dance.  Woe is me! my Brother, that I should speak against my own father, but I listened to the plans he hath made to take you here unawares, your weapons out of your hands.  For this moment he hath waited all day and he hath sought to deceive you with fair words.  They are now on their way with the supper he promised thee; then when you are all eating he hath given orders to his men that they fall upon you and slay all, that none may escape.  And so as soon as I learned this, that thou to whom he had sworn friendship and thine were in dire peril, I hastened through the dark forest to warn thee.”

Smith was deeply touched by this manifestation of her loyalty.  He knew the danger she ran if Powhatan should learn of what she had done.

“Matoaka,” he cried, clasping her hand, “thou hast this night put all England in thy debt.  As long as this Virginia is a name men remember, so long will men recall how thou didst save her from destruction.  In truth, thy father had lulled my suspicions to sleep, and hadst thou not come to warn us we had surely perished.  The thanks of all of us to thee.  Princess,” he continued, when he had turned and told his astonished men the gist of her words, “and to my little Sister my own deep gratitude again.”

He loosened a thick gold chain from about his neck, one that he had brought back from the country of the Turks, and put it about her bare neck.