Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

as thought in the direction of the condemned and prostrate prisoner. Quicker than the whole occurrence can be told, she sprang forward between those uplifted clubs of the executioners and the head of their intended victim, and threw herself upon his devoted neck, encircling it affectionately with her arms. There was a sudden outcry of wonder from the savage multitude at so novel and unexpected an event, and all eagerly strained their gaze to learn who the damsel was that had taken so strange an interest in the prisoner. They looked, and saw that it was Pocahontas, the beloved daughter of their mighty king! Then they turned their eyes upon his majestic countenance, unsettled in their opinion as to how he would brook such an unheard-of interference with his mandates. Though he was deeply moved by what he saw, his face betrayed nothing of the kind. He sat with as calm and rigid an exterior as ever.

It appeared that Pocahontas had been entreating her father to extend compassion to the victim, before this notable occurrence. She had plead with him, with tears running from her eyes, that he would spare the unfortunate cap

tive from a violent death. Much as the Indian king doted on his sweet child, his savage heart had not yet learned to relent from its onceformed purposes, The prisoner had been condemned to die; he had already been ordered forth for execution; Powhatan was the great and mighty emperor, whose very name was a lofty power, and whose slightest mandates must be obeyed; his chiefs and his warriors were all looking on with stern faces to see the pronounced doom finally executed; and how could the fearful sentence at such a time as that be revoked? How could the king stand up before his jealous warriors, in the face of a pardon under such pressing circumstances as these? Though he loved his child, therefore, as the very apple of his eye, he could not encounter with safety the opposition of his many chiefs, nor the loud demands of the pressing multitudes for im mediate and summary punishment. And so the execution went on. And just at the moment of the crisis, the same compassionate daughter of the king rushed forth, as we have described, and threw her arms protectingly about the neck of

the victim, interposing her own valuable life between his and any further harm.

As soon as the profound astonishment which it produced had in some degree subsided, the brows of the chieftains began to relax from their savage rigidity, and another feeling took silent and steady hold upon their hearts. It was a thing not to be lightly passed over, that the one who had thus openly befriended the prisoner was the daughter of the king. Her arms had been around his neck. Her sweet and tender compassion was not to be thought lightly of. Her earnest plea, before the eyes of the multitude, for mercy, was not to be slighted. Even her childish partiality deserved the sober and serious regard of the bravest and sternest warriors.

Pocahontas was the idol of her royal father. A boon that she had dared in this manner to crave, it was next to impossible to refuse. The perfect artlessness with which she begged it, the open and flowing bravery with which the act was accompanied, the childlike faith which she seemed to have in her own ability to protect the prisoner, all wrought with so much effect on the

« PreviousContinue »