Now Powhatan gave an order and all seated themselves on the ground or on
mats in lines facing him. Then in came the squaws bearing large wooden
and grass-woven dishes of food. There were hot cakes of maize and wild
turkeys and fat raccoons. The captives were served first and none of
them refused. They would not let their enemies believe that fear of
their coming fate could spoil their appetites. So, after throwing the
first piece of meat into the fire as an offering to Okee, they ate
eagerly.

One of them who sat nearest the front, Pocahontas noticed, was but
little older than herself. He was too young to be a brave; perhaps, she
thought, he had run off from home and had followed the war party, as she
had heard of boys in her own tribe doing. She wondered if now he was
regretting that his eagerness for adventure had made his first warpath
his last one.

When they had feasted the squaws passed around bunches of turkey
feathers for them to wipe their greasy fingers on, and in every way the
captives were treated with that exaggerated courtesy that was customary
towards those about to be tortured.

Then Powhatan rose, and, preceded and followed by several of his fifty
armed guards chosen from the tallest men of his thirty tribes, he strode
down the centre of the lodge and out into the sunshine. Pocahontas
walked next behind him, and once outside, ran to tell the curious
Cleopatra all she had witnessed.

"Why shouldst thou have seen it all?" asked her jealous sister of
Pocahontas, "while I had naught of it all but the shouting?"