Captain Smith was not aware of the stealthy approach of the Indians; a
slight wound by an arrow was the first intimation he had of their
presence.
In this peril, of a nature to quell the greatest courage, because its
exercise must be hopeless, his energies did not desert him; seizing
his Indian guide, he constrained him to serve as a shield against the
missiles of the assailants--and interposing the Indian's person
between himself and his enemies, he commenced his retreat in the
direction of the canoe; but being obliged to make face to the Indians,
his progress was consequently retrograde, and thus not being able to
pick his way, he sunk through the ice to the waist in a morass. Here,
embarrassed as he was, he slew with his musket three of the Indians,
and for several hours kept the others at a distance, until fatigued
with his fruitless efforts to extricate himself from the morass, and
benumbed by the cold, he desisted from the idle contest. The Indians
dared not yet approach him, until he had thrown his arms to a distance
from him, when they raised him and carried him to a fire at the canoe,
near which lay the dead bodies of his companions.
Smith, with the vague intention of gaining time, and of making a
favorable impression upon his captors, endeavored to establish a
communication with their chief, whom he propitiated by the offering of
his pocket compass. The curiosity of the savage was forcibly roused by
the apparent life in the vibrations of the needle, the motions of
which were visible through the crystal, although it eluded his touch;
but when the prisoner, by signs, and so much of their language as he
had acquired, engaged his attention to the description of its
properties and uses--how, by its indication alone, the solitary hunter
could track his pathless way, in darkness, through the deepest
forests, and direct his canoe through the expanse of waters to its
destined point, and this by mysterious and inscrutable influence
between the heavenly bodies and the little talisman he held in his
hands, the Indian's faculties were absorbed in the recital, and he
remained fixed in an attitude of mute and vague wonder.
* * * * *