An hour's ride brought us to the block house standing within the forest, midway between the white plantations at Paspahegh and the village of the tribe. We found it well garrisoned, spies out, and the men inclined to make light of the black paint and the seething village.
Amongst them was Chanco the Christian. I called him to me, and we listened to his report with growing perturbation. "Thirty warriors!" I said, when he had finished. "And they are painted yellow as well as black, and have dashed their cheeks with puccoon: it's l'outrance, then! And the war dance is toward! If we are to pacify this hornets' nest, it's high time we set about it. Gentlemen of the block house, we are but twelve, and they may beat us back, in which case those that are left of us will fight it out with you here. Watch for us, therefore, and have a sally party ready. Forward, men!"
"One moment, Captain Percy," said Rolfe. "Chanco, where's the Emperor?"
"Five suns ago he was with the priests at Uttamussac," answered the Indian. "Yesterday, at the full sun power, he was in the lodge of the werowance of the Chickahominies. He feasts there still. The Chickahominies and the Powhatans have buried the hatchet."
"I regret to hear it," I remarked. "Whilst they took each other's scalps, mine own felt the safer."
"I advise going direct to Opechancanough," said Rolfe.
"Since he's only a league away, so do I," I answered.
We left the block house and the clearing around it, and plunged into the depths of the forest. In these virgin woods the trees are set well apart, though linked one to the other by the omnipresent grape, and there is little undergrowth, so that we were able to make good speed. Rolfe and I rode well in front of our men. By now the sun was shining through the lower branches of the trees, and the mist was fast vanishing. The forest--around us, above us, and under the hoofs of the horses where the fallen leaves lay thick--was as yellow as gold and as red as blood.
"Rolfe," I asked, breaking a long silence, "do you credit what the Indians say of Opechancanough?"
"That he was brother to Powhatan only by adoption?"
"That, fleeing for his life, he came to Virginia, years and years ago, from some mysterious land far to the south and west?"
"I do not know," he replied thoughtfully. "He is like, and yet not like, the people whom he rules. In his eye there is the authority of mind; his features are of a nobler cast "-"And his heart is of a darker," I said. "It is a strange and subtle savage."