Serpent Never Sleeps by Scott O'Dell
It was a hot morning, with the sun slanting straight down and steam rising from the river. Captain Argall had an awning stretched over the foredeck for the comfort of his guests. Jugs of a pink drink were served. Pocahontas took a sip of hers, made a wry face, walked to the rail, spat it into the river, and wandered off.
She stopped at the mainmast and looked up at the ladder that soared high overhead to the crow's nest. Remembering Captain Smith's descriptions of how she swung in the Jamestown trees, jumped the palisade walls, swam the wide James River, I half expected her to set off and climb the ladder. She did put a foot on the first rung, then turned away with a heavy sigh.
As she walked toward the stern, Japazaws jumped to his feet and pursued her. Climbing the steps of the sterncastle, they were lost to view. At once Japazaws' wife confronted Captain Argall.
She wore his ruby and chain. One of the crew passed by at this moment with a copper kettle. She pointed at this and made a motion, a quick jab of her thumb, toward the shore. Her signs were clear. They had completed their part of the bargain. They had delivered Pocahontas to the ship. They wished to be gone.
Captain Argall had been loath to surrender his ruby and even more unhappy to give up his sword. The copper kettle was of no consequence. But with the show of greatest reluctance, he handed it over.
When Japazaws and the princess returned to our circle, Captain Argall took her hand and escorted her to the gunnery room. As soon as the gunnery door had closed, the Japazaws climbed over the side and were rowed ashore.
Long before the king and his wife were out of sight, the anchors were pulled in, and the ship nosed slowly downstream. We had not moved beyond the first bend in the river when Pocahontas appeared at the sterncastle door. She was nearly as tall as Captain Argall, who stood behind her. Her broad shoulders filled the doorway.
As she ran to the sterncastle rail, I hurried up the ladder and stood beside her. I feared that, seeing that the ship was bearing her away from Pastancie, she might be tempted to throw herself into the river and swim ashore.
She held tight to the rail, her body tense. In one swift leap she could reach the river. The water was calm and the shore close upon us. Long before the ship could be turned about and a boat lowered, she would be on shore. The forest, which came to the riverbank, would hide her. We would never see her again.
"You'll be happier in Jamestown," I said, grasping her arm.
She pulled away. She said nothing. Her gaze was fixed on the shore and the forest.
"Stay," I said. "I'll protect you. Stay. You'll not be harmed."
She turned to face me. She was still silent. But in her eyes was a look that made me wonder if she was not glad to be leaving the kingdom of Patowomek.
Captain Argall did all he could to make her comfortable. He lodged her in the gunnery room, the best place on the ship save his own cabin. He instructed the crew to treat her with deference at all times.
She liked their attention and the ship, which she roamed from bow to sterncastle. She liked her new life so much that, as we sailed back to Jamestown, I began to believe that she had outwitted us all, that for a long time she had yearned to go home and make peace with her father. The kidnapping had come to her as a wonderful surprise.
We talked about England, I think because John Smith was there.
She wanted to know what the English people did, what they ate, what games they played. She was sad when I told her I was going back to England.
One morning she said, "We speak like friends, but I do not know your name."
"Serena Lynn."
"It sounds like a bird singing," she said.
We were in the gunnery room and she was braiding her hair. It fell to her waist, coarse as a horse's tail but alive and lustrous. When I saw her in the temple, her hair had covered most of her face. I hadn't seen that it was cropped short in front and on the sides, a sign that she was still unwed.
"Serena Lynn," she said, trilling the words. "What does it mean?"
"Nothing that I know about. It's just a name. What does Pocahontas mean?"
"My father gave it to me. It means Bright Stream Between Two Hills. Do you like it?"
"It is beautiful," I said. "It fits you. To me you are a bright stream." I didn't say that I liked it better than the name Pocahontas, which always sounded lumpy to me, like a wagon bumping along a rough road.
She paused and turned her head to look at me. We looked at each other in silence, like two travelers who have come upon each other unexpectedly out of a dark forest.
"I like you," she said. "I hope you like me."
"I do, Bright Stream. From the bottom of my heart, I do."
"Would you like to know my secret name?" she asked. Before I could answer, she said, "It is Matoax. It means Snow Feather."
She had braided her hair and piled it on top of her head. She looked a little like one of our Jamestown ladies. But then she got out of her leather shift and put on a snow-white mantle trimmed with swan's down and, about her neck, double loops of white pearls. She looked like a snow feather now, nothing like one of the plain ladies of Jamestown.
It was April and warm. We went out on the deck. We were near the village where the Indians had attacked the ship before. As we came abreast of the place, we were met by a shower of arrows, some of which whistled close above us. In return, two of the ship's cannons answered with shots that set the village afire.
Bright Stream said, "Do you think that we will shoot at each other always?"
"Not always," I said, but this is not what I believed. I believed that the killing would go on until there were no more Indians to kill. King James was determined to have all that her father owned, and arrows were no match for cannons.
TWENTY-FOUR
We left the Chesapeake and sailed up the James. The fort and barricades were stark against the April sky. As we tied up at the riverbank, Pocahontas hurried from the sterncastle, resplendent in a rabbit-fur cloak trimmed with weasel tails. At sight of her, Marshal Dale rushed to the ship's side. When Pocahontas reached the bank, he bowed and kissed her hand.
Before noon that day he moved out of his quarters in the fort and Pocahontas moved in. He assigned soldiers to guard her night and day and had a special cook prepare food from our meager supply that he hoped she would like.
A few settlers, those who had suffered under the Laws of Blood, noted how attentive he was. Emma Swinton said, "He's a snob, like all the other English gentlemen. He falls all over himself because she's royalty."
Marshal Dale was impressed by the fact that she was the daughter of a king. Her wild beauty enchanted him. And there was something else, far more important.
Before the day was out he sent a messenger up the James with a guard of well-armed soldiers. We knew what the message was before it ever left the town.
It bluntly said to Powhatan, supreme chieftain of the rivers, forests, and great lands of Tidewater Virginia, that his beloved daughter had been kidnapped. She was a prisoner of Marshal Dale in Jamestown and could be ransomed by the safe return of the seven Englishmen whom he held captive, the return of tools and muskets he had stolen, and a fulsome gift of corn as well. A prompt answer was suggested. In the meantime his daughter would be treated with the gentleness her position demanded.
A month went by but no formal answer came from the supreme chieftain.
However, a band of Indians attacked Henrico and burned down three of the new cabins, one of them near Tom Barlow's. Marshal Dale considered this an answer and raided a small village close to Henrico, shot two Indians, and captured four whom he set in the sun to dry out and die.
It was a tense time for the settlers, a trying time for me.
While Marshal Dale feuded with Powhatan, Captain Argall collected a load of timber from the pines that grew everywhere, tall and straight as arrows. It would be used in England for ship masts. He also took the first crop of tobacco John Rolfe and Tom Barlow had raised in Henrico. Having assumed I would return to England, he was sur
"That will be six months from now, at least," he said. "You were so determined to leave. You're free to do so since you played a part in stealing the princess. What's happened?" He gave me a knowing glance. "Could it be Tom Barlow? I've seen you with him of late."
"Once, a month past."
"There's no harm in that. Barlow's not handsome, sort of plain, in fact. But this doesn't matter. He's a sturdy young man not afraid of work, which is unusual in Virginia."
"I don't have to leave now. You'll be making voyages back and forth all year. I like Pocahontas. We're friends, and she needs a friend. If I leave, she'll have no one to talk to. Besides, our friendship could be helpful in Jamestown and Henrico, everywhere in Powhatan country."
"Indeed," Captain Argall said skeptically, unconvinced that this could be the reason for my wish to remain in Virginia.
I was silent, and let the captain think what he pleased about Tom Barlow.
"Barlow's coming down tomorrow with some of his fine timber. I trust you'll have time to see him."
"Oh, I'll see him. I always do when he comes here. I'm very fond of Tom. I've known him for a long, long time. We were shipwrecked together."
Tom did come down the river the following day, but he never made it to Jamestown. According to Stephen Turlock, who was traveling with him, he was towing a raft of timber, out in midstream, a more sensible place to be than along the shore, where he could easily be ambushed.
They had passed the mouth of a stream that runs into the James near Henrico. Two canoes they'd never seen slipped out behind them and unloosed a flight of arrows. One of the arrows struck Tom in the shoulder. They were much closer to Henrico than to Jamestown, so Turlock turned around, cut the timber loose, and paddled fast.
Harry Simpson, the barber, pulled out the arrow, and they carried Tom over to his cabin and made him comfortable. Simpson's wife stayed with him through the night.
When the news came early the next morning with the tide, Humility and I rowed up to Henrico. When we got there a fire was going, and Mistress Simpson had Tom lying bundled up in his big, wide bed. He was very pale. I thought he was dead. But he stirred when I called his name.
Barber Simpson's wife left us to go home and cook her husband's supper. She promised to return later that night if I thought I'd need her. I didn't. I went down to the river, brought back water to heat, and warmed up some venison soup Tom had left over.
He wouldn't eat any. He groaned all night but in the morning looked better and ate some of the soup. By noon he was talking—he always liked to talk—about the Indians who had ambushed him and about their leader.
"We know about Dale's message to Powhatan and Powhatan's answer," he said. "I suppose the arrow I received was part of it. Still, I believe we'll have peace. I've got faith in what Pocahontas can do. Do you suppose you could get her here somehow? It might be helpful. We'd get all the settlers together and sit down and talk."
"I'll try."
"But not until I'm back on my feet. Not before I get the place cleaned up a bit. I've been so busy with planting that I haven't had time to do anything around the cabin."
Humility and I had slept on the floor. Since it looked as if we would be needed for a few days, we went out in the woods and gathered leaves and boughs to sleep on.
Tom crawled out of his big bed, lay down on the pallet we had put together, and wouldn't move, though I raised my voice to him.
"I made the bed for you, you know," he said. "It's a good one. Birch and leather slats and goosefeather quilting. You may fall in love with it and decide to stay. Who knows? Women are funny sometimes. My sister Jenny married a man who raised tumbler pigeons because she liked to see them making somersaults in the sky. It gave her a religious feeling."
"I'm not going to fall in love with your bed, so get yourself in it and behave. You're still a sick man."
He obeyed me, so like a helpless child that a queer, protective feeling came over me, the first I had ever felt about him.
The barber came in the afternoon and dressed Tom's wound, and his wife brought a parcel of food. Humility was fretting over what she was given to eat and wanted to go back to the fort.
Barber Simpson appeared every day to dress the wound, and his wife brought what food they could spare. After a week, Tom was sitting up, and I made plans to return to Jamestown. Then he came down with a fever.
Barber Simpson thought the arrow that struck Tom was poisoned. Tom went back to bed. I didn't leave, but I sent word to Pocahontas, who was still held at the fort, thinking she might know of an Indian remedy for his poisonous fever, if such it was.
At first, Marshal Dale, fearing that she might take a notion to flee, refused to let her leave. But she caused him all sorts of trouble, and he finally relented and sent her to Henrico, accompanied by a dozen guards.
When she came, she looked at Tom's eyes, his tongue, then his fingernails, and said that he had been poisoned. It was a poison that worked slowly and, if not treated, would eat away at him for years.
She searched the woods and came back with six kinds of milkweed, which she crushed and fed to him with water. This drug had to be given daily for at least a month. To find the various kinds of milkweed, to see that they were given promptly and in the right amount, she stayed on. Tom recovered a little every day.
Marshal Dale's guards killed a deer and gave us part of the meat. Barber Simpson's wife baked bread for us and brought news from Henrico and Jamestown. She told us that Powhatan had finally answered Marshal Dale.
Seven of our men had straggled into the fort, their muskets unusable, bearing a message: When Pocahontas was delivered, Powhatan would send five hundred bushels of corn and forever be a friend of the people in Jamestown and Henrico.
Marshal Dale answered at once, saying that the supreme chieftain had not returned everything, and until he did, his daughter would be held captive, gently withal.
One swooningly hot day while Tom was mending, Pocahontas and I were under an oak by the riverbank, away from the cruel sun. Her guards were not far off, dozing under another oak. Quietly, a canoe pulled ashore and John Rolfe got out, mopping his brow, praising the weather, saying it was fine for the tobacco crop.
He had not met Pocahontas. As I introduced them, he made a small nod and went on mopping his brow. But when she looked up at him, he put away his handkerchief, started to speak, then suddenly stopped, as if he had seen an apparition. His eyes closed and slowly opened.
He stayed only a short time, said little, and excused himself, saying the crops needed water. But he came to the cabin the next day, stayed longer, and talked some about tobacco.
The following day he appeared for supper, talked more about tobacco, then, seeing that Pocahontas was not interested, talked about England, but she was still quiet—I believe because England meant Captain John Smith, her dearest love.
As for John Rolfe, the wild beauty of the Indian girl, her glowing, boisterous spirit, so different from that of the frail, staid woman he had married, who lay buried in a Jamestown meadow, seized upon him. It blinded him to the point where he often fell speechless in her presence. He began to appear regularly at suppertime, would remain for supper, and leave late, finding his way in the night up the dark river.
When I learned to collect the six kinds of milkweed, make the paste, and give it in the right amount to our patient, Pocahontas went back to Jamestown with her guards, happy, I believe, to be away for a while from John Rolfe's attentions.
After a few more weeks of the milkweed treatment, Tom gained strength enough to go out to the fields. I got my things together and made a pack of the dolls he had fashioned from pine cones for Humility. He followed us to the river and helped us into the canoe. Humility brushed away tears. By now she liked Tom better than Marshal Dale.
"I'll fix up the cabin," Tom said. "Cobble a table and some chairs. They're making glass at Jamestown now. I'll get a piece and put in a proper w
He gave the canoe a shove and it picked up the current.
"I'll get some cloth and make a curtain, too," he called. "So the Indians can't look in."
"I'll make the curtain," I called back. "I'll send it along."
"Bring it," he shouted.
TWENTY-FIVE
Twice each week, Rolfe came down from Henrico, forty miles by the river, double the distance by forest trail, to see Pocahontas. On these lonely trips back and forth he must have suffered, if one could judge by his haggard looks, the awful pains of damnation.
The first word I heard of his torment was on a day of lowering clouds. He had already come down the river two times that week. This was the third time. I was outside washing clothes, spreading them on the bushes to dry, when he called me aside.
"Have you seen her today?" he asked.
"Yes, we ate together this morning," I said.
"Did she bring up my name?"
"Yes, once."
"In what way?"
"She said you had proposed marriage."
"What will she answer, do you think? I couldn't tell what she thought."
"She looks upon you favorably."
Relief shone in his tormented eyes, but almost at once a shadow settled upon them. He was a Calvinist, familiar with the warnings of the Old Testament. In Henrico he led us in prayer at supper and often quoted passages from the Bible.
But I was astounded to hear him say, staring into the stormy heavens, "I am terribly aware of the displeasure which Almighty God conveyed against the sons of Israel for marrying strange wives."
Did he think upon Pocahontas as strange? Was it possible?
"I have moments when I fear my relations with her are more demonic than divine," he said. "Is it God or Satan who has provoked me to be in love with one whose education has been so rude or absent, her manners barbarous, her generation cursed and so different in all ways from my own? Surely these are instigations hatched by him who seeks and delights in men's destruction."