Chesapeake by James A. Michener Page B

offered to do the spying, so Pentaquod, speaking for Scar-chin, said, ‘We’ll go.’ The interpreter, who had been captured once, wanted nothing to do with such a venture, but Pentaquod insisted, and since going in the company of this brave Susquehannock would lend distinction to the little man, he reluctantly agreed.
    No spy in the long history of the region ever moved with more circumspection than Scar-chin as he entered the territory occupied by the invaders. Indeed, he was so painfully careful not to snap a twig that Pentaquod realized the little fellow’s crafty plan: he would move so slowly that the Nanticokes would have two extra days to clear out. When he and Pentaquod did finally reach the village site, the enemy would be practically back in their own villages.
    But Pentaquod would have none of this, and was determined to press forward to see what kind of people the Nanticokes were. But he was simply unable to budge his fellow spy; no amount of scorn, no appeal to Scar-chin’s manhood prevailed. The little man refused to move forward ahead of the prudent schedule he had set himself, and in the end he attached himself to a locust tree and could not be budged, so Pentaquod moved alone to the river.
    From a vantage point he observed the tag end of the Nanticokes as they rummaged one last time through the captured village, collecting final souvenirs of their raid. While the main body rambled east along the river, chanting a victory song which told of how they had subdued the fiercely resisting village, four laggards remained behind, wrestling with some captured article too big for them to handle. Pentaquod, watching them with amusement, could not resist making an arrogant gesture, even though he knew it was foolish and risky.
    Leaping from behind a tree, he uttered his wildest war cry, brandished his spear and lunged at the four startled Nanticokes. They were terrified by this apparition, five hands taller than they and much broader of shoulder, and they fled. But one kept his senses long enough to shout to those ahead, ‘The Susquehannocks!’ and terror ensued.
    The entire foraging party fell into panic, abandoning whatever they had stolen, and with great clatter stormed and thrashed their way in undignified retreat. So definitive were the sounds of defeat that even Scar-chin was lured from his hiding place in time to see his friend Pentaquod brandishing his spear and chasing an entire Nanticoke army through the woods. It had never occurred to Scar-chin that one resolute man might be the equal of four surprised Nanticokes or forty frightened ones, but when he saw the retreating feathers of the southern braves he realized that he had witnessed a miracle, and he began fashioning the ballad that would immortalize the victory of Pentaquod:
    ‘Fearless he strode among the robbers,
Strong he faced the innumerable enemy,
Thoughtless of danger he engaged them,
Throwing the bodies up and over,
Smashing the heads and twisting the legs
Till the exhausted foe screamed and trembled,
Beseeching mercy, kissing his hands in fear …
     
    It was an epic, a portrait in the most exalted woodland tradition, and as Pentaquod casually surveyed the trivial damage done his village and his wigwam, he listened with amusement to the chant. It reminded him of the war songs he had heard as a boy, when the Susquehannocks returned from their forays against the tribes to the south; those songs had depicted events of unbelievable heroism, and he had believed them:
    Now the bravest of the brave Susquehannocks,
Cherodah and Mataloak and Wissikan and Nantiquod
Creep through the forest, spy out the fortress
And leap with violent bravery upon the foe …
     
    And it now dawned upon Pentaquod that the village his ancestors had attacked with such bravery was this village; the enemies they had subdued were ones they had never faced, for the foe had been hiding in faraway marshes. There had been no battle save in the minds of ancient poets who knew that