Rescue Pocahontas!  And in addition—­kill the hated white men!  Had they not wounded him and carried her off?  There were not many of them and they were all asleep.  While he and Pocahontas had talked he had pulled himself out of the water and thrown his legs over the stern.  Now he rose and whispered: 

“Before I go I would know what their canoe is like.  Be not afeared for me; there is no danger, only do not stir.”

She wished to remonstrate with him, but he was already a few paces ahead of her, treading as lightly as if the deck were gravel that would roll about and betray him with its noise, and she did not dare call out to him.  She saw him draw near to a sleeping sailor and stoop; but it was too dark for her to see that he had placed his hand over the man’s mouth and with the knife in his other hand, had stabbed him to the heart.

The sailor’s dying struggles were noiseless and when they were over Claw-of-the-Eagle moved softly on to the next.

There was something sinister to Pocahontas in the silence; she began to divine that it was not mere curiosity which was keeping Claw-of-the-Eagle, and yet she dared not go in search of him.

The second victim was despatched as easily as the first, and the third, though he awoke before the blow was struck, was unable to avert it.  The young brave, whose lust for slaughter increased as he went on, felt about for Captain Argall.  Already the dawn was coming, and he could distinguish the forms of the four other men.  He bent over one of them; his hand, burning with the fever from his wound and excitement, touched the cheek of the man instead of the mouth.  The sailor cried out instantaneously even before he was awake; and Claw-of-the-Eagle, realizing in a second that his game was up, slashed out with his knife at him in passing as he ran for the stern.

He could have leapt overboard more easily, but though he had failed to kill all his enemies, he meant to rescue Pocahontas.  He dashed towards her, followed by the sailor.  Argall and the two others of the crew, roused at the outcry, were at their heels.  Claw-of-the-Eagle caught Pocahontas in his arms and before she knew what was happening, he had sprung with her into the river.

The sailor, who had been but slightly wounded by the young brave’s knife, had seized his musket as he ran.  His forebears had been outlaws with Robin Hood, skilful archers, and bowmen with Henry V at Agincourt, whose arrows never failed to find French marks.  The same keen eye and strong arm were his with a musket.

“Do not shoot.  Mark!” called out Argall breathlessly.  He did not know what had happened prior to his own awakening, though his feet had stumbled over the dead bodies of his men.  “The Indian princess is there in the water.  Shoot not, for the love of heaven, or we’ll have all the red hordes of America on top of Jamestown!”

Mark, however, had already made out the two figures in the water so close together that Argall’s older eyes thought them but one.  And just as Claw-of-the-Eagle, hampered by his wounded shoulder, was about to sink below the surface of the river to swim under water, Mark took aim.  The bullet hit the top of the head, gashing the skin about the scalp-lock, but did not penetrate very deeply.