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Suddenly, as we sat staring at the fire ere beset by a band ofout of the woods, painted, with antlers upon their heads and pine branches in their hands They danced about us, now advancing until the green needlesuntil there was a space of turf between us Their slender li ti, now raised by the whole choir, now fallen to a single voice Pocahontas had danced thus before the English reat wondering eyes and her piteous, unti she was to Rolfe and how happy they had been in their brief wedded life It had bloomed like a rose, as fair and as early fallen, with only abyat the young and lovely and innocent
We were tired with all the mummery of the day; moreover, every fibre of our souls had been strained to aol at Jaone Now, the plaintive song, the swaying figures, the red light beating against the trees, the blackness of the enshrouding forest, the low, e, and yet deadly old, as though we had seen and heard the of the world All at once a fear fell uponupon my heart like a stone She was in a palisaded town, under the Governor's protection, withsick, unable to harhed at one
The Indian girls danced ay and shrill and sweet Higher and higher rang the notes, faster and fasterand ether They who had danced with the abandonain but shy brown Indian rass beneath the trees Froe cries only less appalling than the hoop itself In a e had rushed from the shadow of the trees into the broad, firelit space before us Now they circled around us, now around the fire; now each man danced and stamped and muttered to himself For the most part they were painted red, but some hite from head to heel,--statues come to life,--while others had first oiled their bodies, then plastered theht-colored feathers The tall headdresses lare of the fire they had a fiendish look They sang, too, but the air was rude, and broken by dreadful cries Out of a hut behind us burst two or three priests, the conjurer, and a score or more of old men They had Indian dru pipes ave forth no uncertain sound Fixed upon a pole and borne high above the of stuffed skins and rattling chains of copper When they had joined theht the clas, and the place grew light as day Opechancanough was not there, nor Nantauquas