As the day advanced the crowd began to dwindle. The captive would not fail to be there whenever they desired to observe him and there was hunting to be done and cooking, and already some of the boys had strolled off to play their ever-fascinating game of tossing plumstones into the air. At last only Pocahontas was left with the prisoner.

Smith glanced about to see what the chances of escape might be should he make a sudden dash, but the sight of some braves at a lodge not more than a hundred feet away busied in sharpening arrowheads made him settle down again.

"Tell me, White Chief," said Pocahontas as she lighted a pipe she had filled with tobacco and gave it now to Smith, "tell me about thyself and thy people. Are ye in truth like unto us; do ye die as we do or can your medicine preserve you forever like Okee? Canst thou change thyself into an animal at will? If so, I fain would know how to do it, too."

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."