Again, the location must be healthful, and quite easily defended, for
the attack by the natives upon the colonists when they first landed at
the cape they called Henry after the young Prince of Wales, had given
them a taste of what they might have to expect. It was the rumor of this
fight which had reached Opechanchanough at Kecoughtan.

At the prow of the _Discovery_ stood a man who paid no attention to the
disputes going on behind him. He was not tall, but was powerfully built,
and even the sight of his back would have been sufficient to prove him a
man accustomed to a life of action. It was not so easy, however, to
guess at his age. His long beard and mustache hid his mouth, and there
were deep lines from his nose downward that might have been marked by
years. Yet his brow was high and wide and unfurrowed, and his hair was
abundant and his eyebrows dark and high. An intelligent, eager
countenance it was, of a man who had seen more of the world in his short
twenty-eight years than any white-haired octogenarian of his native
Lincolnshire. He held a spy glass and, standing by the rail, moved it
slowly until he had pointed it in every direction. He had swept the
river and both shores as far as his eye could reach and now it rested on
an island some little distance above, near the right-hand bank of the
newly named river.

A sailor, pushing through the crowd about the cabin door, approached the
man at the prow.

"Captain Smith," he said, "Captain Newport bids me say that the Council
is about to be sworn in in the cabin and that he desires thy presence
there."

John Smith turned and walked slowly aft, wondering what would be decided