I marked the light die from the broad bosom of the river, leaving it
a dead man's hue. Awhile ago, and for many evenings, it had been
crimson, - a river of blood. A week before, a great meteor had shot
through the night, blood-red and bearded, drawing a slow-fading
fiery trail across the heavens; and the moon had risen that same
night blood-red, and upon its disk there was drawn in shadow a
thing most marvelously like a scalping knife. Wherefore, the
following day being Sunday, good Mr. Stockham, our minister at
Weyanoke, exhorted us to be on our guard, and in his prayer
besought that no sedition or rebellion might raise its head amongst
the Indian subjects of the Lord's anointed. Afterward, in the
churchyard, between the services, the more timorous began to tell
of divers portents which they had observed, and to recount old
tales of how the savages distressed us in the Starving Time. The
bolder spirits laughed them to scorn, but the women began to weep
and cower, and I, though I laughed too, thought of Smith, and how
he ever held the savages, and more especially that
Opechancanough who was now their emperor, in a most deep
distrust; telling us that the red men watched while we slept, that
they might teach wiliness to a Jesuit, and how to bide its time to a
cat crouched before a mousehole. I thought of the terms we now
kept with these heathen; of how they came and went familiarly
amongst us, spying out our weakness, and losing the salutary awe
which that noblest captain had struck into their souls; of how many
were employed as hunters to bring down deer for lazy masters; of
how, breaking the law, and that not secretly, we gave them knives
and arms, a soldier's bread, in exchange for pelts and pearls; of
how their emperor was forever sending us smooth messages; of
how their lips smiled and their eyes frowned.
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