"No wonder. You scared them with that thunder at your gates, and they ran home."
"You should have brave warriors. Mine too are sometimes cowards, and weak with hunger besides. We want corn."
Smith diverted him with presents, but the Indian kept his disdainful manner.
"Captain Newport, it is not agreeable with my greatness in this paltry manner to trade for trifles and I esteem you a great chief. Therefore, lay down all your commodities together, and what I like I will take."
Smith artfully toyed with a string of blue beads. Their gleam would draw a brighter one in the eyes of Powhatan's young favorite.
"These? Why these are not for sale, your Highness. Blue beads are very rare. You can dye red and brown ones with berries, but these are imported, and their value high as the blue sky whence descends their radiance."
"How much?" plugged Powhatan. "I foolishly indulged one girl with your life. Now probably another must have your foolish bauble."
"I'll let you know tomorrow. I had not thought of parting with them."
By morning, Smith was having Indians load his boat with two hundred bushels of corn.
Newport was ever for conciliating the chief, and when Powhatan sent him twenty turkeys saying to send twenty swords back by bearers, he complied. Not so John Smith, when Newport was gone. This time the turkeys were kept, but the swords also--in English scabbards.
Powhatan was so riled when the swords were not forthcoming, that he told his men to get them by hook or crook. When Smith caught them pilfering he flogged them and imprisoned them. Powhatan now tried diplomacy, knowing how indebted Smith would feel to "Pocahontas, his dearest daughter." He sent her down to Jamestown to persuade him to release the prisoners. He asked Smith "to excuse him of the injuries done by some rash untoward captains, his subjects, desiring their liberties for this time with the assurance of his love forever." Smith delivered them to Pocahontas, "for whose sake only he feigned to have saved their lives and gave them their liberty."
Pocahontas, with her gay capers, amused all Jamestown enormously. If this had been a clown's act upon a London stage, or a traveling circus in the English countryside, it could not have put the discouraged colony into such a gale.