From My Lady Pokahontas, A True Relation Of Virginia. Writ by Anas Todkill, Puritan and Pilgrim, [in 1618] With Notes by John Esten Cooke: Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1907; pp. 62-93.
SUDDEN
Hawk Ar-
gyll.
the bright days of wandering with Indian maids on river banks, or in the woods, come to an end.
A bruit reaches Jamestown in these spring days, and moves many; it is brought by a trading ship, whereof the commander is a certain Captain Argall, or Captain Buccaneer. He has come cruising about, to traffic with the Indians, and fish; but if a merchant ship is seen he is ready to traffic with that too; only he makes such bargain as he will, by talking with cannon, before looking at the flag the barque runs up.
What this Captain Argall says to Smith now when he comes ashore at Jamestown is this: —
“Thou art no longer President of Virginia, worthy Captain. The Company hath removed thee.”
“Removed me? Well, for what?” says Smith shortly.
63
Smith’s an-
swer to the
Hawk.Argall looks at him keenly from under the bushy eyebrows of his hawk face.
“For hard dealings with the poor Indians, and not sending the ships fraughted.”
Thereat Smith bursts out: —
“Hard dealings with Indians! — on the York River, doubtless! I that fed the starving, when this alone was left, am to bear the blame of that!”
“So it seemeth,” Argall answers.
“And for not fraughting the ships! — I that told your man Newport to take cedar, not the gilded dirt!”
Hawk Argall thereat laughs, but looks sidewise at Smith’s face, I see.
“To the fiend with your Company and all!” cries the soldier, striking his sword hilt. “I like not your look, Master Argall, — beware! Thou art one of these people: shall I tell you what they are? Newport is a talebearer that hath a hundred pounds a year to go to and fro carrying lies. Wingfield is a fat fool, Archer is a mutineer. As to Ratcliffe, he is a counterfeit imposter, whom I’ve sent home lest my soldiers should cut his throat and so end him!”*
The Captain speaks hotly and Master
64
Their talk
ends.
Argall says it is time for him to go back to his ship.
“Well, this concerns me not, Captain,” he says as he goes, “but what I say is true. My Lord de la Ware is coming as Governor General, with a fleet of ships and half a thousand settlers. By now he has sailed from England, and your friends — I would say these worthies — Newport, Archer, and Ratcliffe are with him. Bend no wrathful looks on me, worthy Captain; I have no part in it. To tell you a secret, I am bent on running a cargo of African negars into Virginia!”†
Thereat he laughs low and departs on his business, not to come back till after times, when he plays a bad game with his hawk face and wary eyes in the Virginia Colony.
Now the day soon cometh when the great Captain Smith will go away from us; but before I tell of that, hear, in few words, what happens to him in this spring, and to his men who built Powhatan his chimney.
One bright morning Smith goes forth to the Glass House, which is in the woods, a
65
Smith is
attacked.
bow-shot or more from the palisade (we are trying glass there), when sudden he is attacked. A huge Indian leaps on him and they clutch and fall in the river, where each would drown the other. But Smith is too much for him. He throttles him and drags him ashore, where he would have struck off his head with his falchion; but the Indian begs his mercy. If Smith will spare him (he says) he will tell who sent him.
Smith says well, and hears all: it was the men at Werowocomoco sent to build the Emperor’s house who would make him, Smith, a prisoner (for some slight), and yield him up to Powhatan.
While they talk so by signs and some words, they are at the palisade, where Smith’s old soldiers, hearing all, are in a great fury.
“I will go cut their throats before the face of Powhatan!” cries Master George Percy;‡ and others say they will go with him.
But Smith will not, and the Indian gets off, and the throats are safe, but not their brains. In the very next year when my
66
The English
fleet.
Lord la Ware comes as Governor, these same men offer Powhatan to come to Jamestown and make the Lord la Ware his friend. Thereat the Emperor grunts and ends all in a word.
“You that would betray Captain Smith to me,” he says, “will surely betray me to this great lord.”
With which words he orders their brains to be beat out, which is done; and so they ended.
Now nought but this is worthy to be set down in my relation of the doings at Jamestown in the spring days of 1609. Hawk Argall sails away, and the place is well rid of him; and so the days pass on, and the summer blooms, and the August month comes, and with it the English fleet whereof Argall spake.
The English fleet; but how sorry a sight! As the ships toil up the great river and come to anchor before Jamestown, they are well-nigh skeleton ships. For, passing the Azores and sailing westward, a fierce hurricane had struck them; and we heard how it wrecked them, tearing the sails and wrenching the timbers. One was lost, and the Admiral’s ship, the Sea-Venture, is driven toward the Isle of Devils and
67
The Cormor-
ants.
no doubt lost too. A bad business, for on the Sea-Venture, with one hundred and fifty men and women, sailed the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, and the Admiral and the Vice Admiral, Sir George Somers and Captain Newport, with the Letters Patent; the Lord la Ware remaining in England.
So no new government yet for this ill-starred Virginia! But certain people coming in the ships mean to see to that. The worn hulks spit out their load of cormorants, — and lo! here is Ratcliffe and all the old crew. They have been to London whispering to the Company, and blackening Smith and his old soldiers. These would seize the country, divide it, and set up for themselves. Smith is a tyrant who oppresses the poor savages, and will send home no cargoes; so the Company say the wrong doer shall go.
Ratcliffe comes on shore and boldly says he represents the Governor, and Smith must yield to his authority. Then the evil day comes, and the Fort is torn with factions. To and fro goes Ratcliffe, in and out of the Tavern, drinking deep, and telling the new men Smith is a tyrant and deposed by the Letters in the Sea-Venture. More,
68
How they
would trifle
with the
Lion.
Smith’s time is nigh expired, and he would seize authority anew; putting whoso angered him in the stocks or whipping them. So Ratcliffe talks everywhere and therewith forms a faction; and the days go by hotly (for late summer is come now), and Smith knows not what to do, and exclaims: —
“The London Company will have none of me, and strikes me down, but I will rule these sluggards!”
It was not a time for love dreams and going to the York River (to see the Emperor) now! Had Smith raised so much as his finger, the Indians, much more his soldiers, had marched on the rioters; but he would not. More than once came Pokahontas, and found him ill at ease, knitting his brows and breathing out his passions; but ever the brows would unknit, and the sweet look come back to him, and he would talk with her in a low voice, looking toward England.
Soon Ratcliffe and the unruly crew thought to openly beard his authority. But it was ill trifling with that lion, who but kept his claws from them for the peace of the Colony. They would take the rule whether or no, saying Smith was no longer
69
Ratcliffe’s
end for that
time.
President; and he, putting his clutch on Ratcliffe, drags him bodily to the Fort, where he claps him in irons.
Thereat all quiets down, and Smith is master of all things. But he is weary and sick at heart, with a great anger and disgust. After all his toils and sufferings for the Virginia Colony, the London people disown him.
“I will no more of them, Anas!” he exclaims to me, striking his sword hilt. “I will put my commission beneath my heel
* These expressions are so similar to Smith’s in his Rude Answer sent to London as to afford a striking proof of Todkill’s accurate memory.
† The cargo was landed by accident in the Bermudas instead of Virginia.
† The same words are attributed to Percy in the General History.
NOW
The two as
before. to tell of the last scenes of Smith’s stay in Virginia, and his pitiful, brave struggle with the unruly people.
But first of another matter; for ever comes to me the thought, here in my home in Kent in old England, “Thou art writing not of Virginia, Anas, so much as of that blessed Pokahontas! and, though thou tell of other things and people, it behooves thee ever to come back to this angel and discourse of her.” So now a brief relation of what happeneth at the Place of Retreat on Ware Creek, nigh the York River.
One day of late summer Pokahontas comes to Jamestown, and she and Smith, standing on the platform of the Fort near the cannon, are long to talk. But ever some one comes with this or that he must see to, so that now and again he loseth patience. When the Lady Pokahontas goes
71
Smith would
meet some-
body.
away with her wild train in the woods, Smith calls me to him and says: —
“Wilt thou go on a journey with me, Anas?”
“A journey?” I say.
“On the morrow. Time presses. Soon I will be gone, and yet I have somewhat to say to somebody. Wilt thou go with me?”
He spake with a wistful, earnest look and I say: —
“To the world’s end. It were little to do for one who hath saved my life in the Transylvania wars. But whither?”
“Thou shalt see. Now farewell, Anas; I have work. This cat’s-paw Martin hath fled from Nansemunge distraught with fear, leaving his company; and the men at the falls are in combustion. Soon I must go thither. To-morrow elsewhere, — and thou with me.”
With which he leaves me, and at daylight I feel a hand on my shoulder where I sleep in my hut.
“Rise, Anas!” says a voice, and starting up I behold my Captain in brave apparel girt with his sword.
“Come,” he says in earnest tones, “and ask nothing.”
72
We go to
Ware.Then I follow him, catching up as I go somewhat of bread and meat, for the Todkills have ever been keen for provender.
Not a word speaks the Captain as we go out of the palisade where the first light of the sunshine is on the reed thatches of the cabins. None is astir save the guard of the Fort, who salutes the President; and so we push in the woods, and he leads the way toward York River.
Soon I know whither we go. This is the path to the Place of Retreat on the ridge above Ware. We follow it through the forest, wading at times through little streams of water, and hearing the birds sing; when having marched long, we see the laurels and the half-built fort on the wild ridge.
The Captain has said little to me on the way, seeming lost in sorrowful thought. Now he points and says: —
“I shall see her here to-day, Anas.”
Thereat his voice sinks low, and he draws a long, deep breath that is piteous to listen to.
“They would still irk me yesterday, and there was no opportunity to have full speech with her,” he says in the same voice. “I am going away, and certain
73
The Some-
body comes.
things must be spoken. So she will meet me here, she says, at this hour to-day. See, she is coming!”
His face glowed as he spoke, and he pointed to a light skiff with two in it coming up Ware stream. An Indian youth was paddling the skiff, and one I knew for Pokahontas was standing at the prow.
Often now I close my eyes and think of that sight and of what followed — two people sitting on a stone by the Ware fort with eyes fixed on each other. I heard nought that was said and would not, since ’t was not my business. Going apart on the wild height whereto the approach was only by a ragged defile amid laurels and evergreens, I talked by signs with him in the boat, who was Pokahontas’s brother Nantaquaus; the manliest, comeliest youth I ever saw for a savage. I knew not his barbarous lingo, but natheless saw he was a young prince. From the first he loved Smith and was best beloved of the Lady Pokahontas.
The sun was going away to the woods when the talk of Smith and the maid ended. He comes to meet us, and clasps the hand of Nantaquaus and says: —
“We will go, Anas.”
Then he turns his head and looks piteously
74
Their part-
ing there
toward Pokahontas, who bends down and weeps. Ere long the maid and her brother have passed to their canoe and are paddling away; the last we see of her she is bent and seemeth to be weeping still.
Smith looks at the boat till the woods take it and it is no more seen.
“Come Anas,” he says, in his deep voice, which falters a little, “this hath well-nigh made a child of me.”
So we go back to Jamestown, and all the way the worthy Captain speaks no word.
WHAT
The evil
day. followeth now is the last that was seen of Captain Smith in Virginia; and I, who relate it, make the relation so brief as I can, finding no heart to make it other, or dwell at length on it.
A great sinking at heart and distaste of all things had come over Smith. He was weary and irate; all things galled him. For this man, though the mildest and sweetest to friends and worthy people, was a lion when aught thwarted him. He would do what was right, not counting cost to himself; when others would do the wrong, and brave him — woe to such! His heavy wrath and heavier hand would certes fall on them.
Now, his wrath and grief were great. The Company had disowned him. He was cast away like a worthless husk. His commission was suppressed he knew not why; himself and his soldiers to be rewarded
76
Smith’s
mishap.
he knew not how; and new authority to lie in he knew not whom, — certes it should not lie in Ratcliffe! But the end had come. He could struggle no more; and thereupon he sets all in order, for peace or war, to leave the country.
Little keeps him, and the ships will sail soon. All things are going to confusion. Martin has fled, distraught with fear, from the Company in Nansemunge, and West’s people at the Falls are in wild disorder. Smith will see to these and then take himself away. So he draws back the company from Nansemunge, and then for the Falls.
He goest thither in his barge with a picked company, and I go with him. Never saw I man so cool, with so set a purpose in his face. The vain people had begun their plantation at the Falls on marshy ground, and Smith says it shall not be. When they resist and fight, he seizes the leaders and plants the company on the hill of Nonsuch, where Powhatan once had his summer capital.
Then cometh the end. As Smith sails down James River again, a bag of powder explodes in his barge. His clothes catch fire, and he is so tormented by the furious flame he leaps into the river, and scarce his
77
A black
traitor
would mur-
der Smith.
old soldiers drag him into the boat again and take him to Jamestown.
Then follows what was burned deep into my memory and still moves me. Smith was lying on his bed tormented by his hurt, and the factions roared around him, and would seek his death where he lay wounded. One traitor comes into his room in the Fort and would murder him; he puts a pistol to his breast, but Smith, lying still and quiet, looks him steadily in the eye, so that he turns away and durst not. I, Anas Todkill, saw this with my eyes and took charge of that traitor, dragging him out by the collar and hurling him against the Fort gate so he reeled, and went away staggering in his gait and muttering.*
As he goes, comes in some one covering her face and shaking with sobs, — my little Lady Pokahontas. But she cannot see him then. He has fainted from his torment, and ere night she goes back weeping with her wild train saying she will return on the morrow. As she went out of the Fort sobbing, she looked up as though to see something that was passing in the clouds, and said, in a low voice, “God!
78
He makes
ready to
leave us.
God! God!” to my amaze; and then I knew how in their talks Smith had persuaded her to be a Christian.
All that night I watched by him, and at dawn comes the shot of a culverin: the ships are going back to England, and Smith is firm to go with them. His work is ended in Virginia, if not forever, for this time. The London people will have none of him; he will tell good-bye to his old soldiers. Captain Percy, a resolute gentleman, is adjudged to act as President, and Smith is carried on board on the backs of his old soldiers, pale and faint. The sailors bustle and make ready the ships; but an hour before the sailing comes the blessed Pokahontas for a last greeting.
She comes into the cabin where I am standing by Smith, and her sorrowful face lights up the mean place. The month was September, and she was wrapped in a robe of furs, out of which rose the fair flower of her small head, with wan cheeks, woe-begone and moist eyes like the heart’s-ease. But I saw there was no heart’s-ease in the fair bosom of that maid. Her face streamed with tears, and going to Smith’s couch she knelt down and took his thin hand and leaned her wet cheek on it.
79
My Lady and
her soldier
say farewell.
Thereat a flush comes to the soldier’s face, and I who had looked on at this strange meeting durst not stay, but went out trembling, leaving them alone, each with other.
Near an hour they were talking together in low words by themselves. Then the culverins roared out giving the signal to weigh anchor, and seeing the ship’s Captain going to Smith’s cabin I got before him, with fixed intent that no cold eye should pry into this last greeting. I opened the door, and never shall I forget what I there saw. My Lady Pokahontas was kneeling with her arms around him, and his head on her shoulder. Both were pale, and as I came in their lips met in a long kiss. Then the maid turned away from him, hiding her wet face in her fur robe, and with a great sob of farewell went out of the ship and so to shore.
Scarce seeing his face for tears, I myself took my leave of him. With a last grasp of the hand I parted from that true solider, and, losing him, felt that all things well-nigh went with him. What shall I say of him we thus lost, save that truth and justice were his guides; that he hated sloth and baseness worse than danger
80
Our Captain
goes away,
never to re-
turn.
and death; that he would send his men nowhere that he would not lead himself; that he would never see us want, and would rather want himself than borrow, or starve than not pay; that he loved action more than words, and hated falsehood more than death; whose adventures were our lives, and whose loss was our deaths.
I looked after the white sails of the ship till they were gone from view toward the wide ocean. Then I come back slow to the dreary palisade, emptied of all joy
* Ample evidence is to be found in the old relations that Todkill does not exaggerate here. Smith’s old soldiers offered, at a sign from him, to cut his adversaries’ throats; but he refused to take it.
I, ANAS TODKILL,
The heathen
murther us.
who write this true relation, look back with amaze now on the days that followed in Virginia. Yonder shines the peaceful sunshine on the hop-fields of Kent; my little girl is standing a-tiptoe to pull the spring buds and put in her curls; the black sky and thunder of old days in far Virginia seem a dream to me.
Soon with Smith’s going the thunder comes and the lightning too. Losing him we lose all things; yea, his greatest maligners could now curse the evil fate that took him away from us. (God forgive thee, Anas! Didst thou say fate? Nay, ’t was Providence, that ordereth all things, and would have us feel the rod for our backslidings.) Sure we feel it now; for the savages no sooner understood our Captain was gone, than all revolted and did spoil and murther all they encountered. It was pitiful; and now see from this what God meaneth when he sendeth a true man to
82
Sick Master
Percy.
rule. While this Smith stayed with us, the land reposed and the people were fed. The savages would not lift hand in that time, but said each to other, “Smith is coming!” did a stick crackle. But ’twas far other now. Nought but blows and arrows and hands imbrued in our blood, when we go to them for succour. All things fall to confusion; the fierce factions fight day and night in the palisade; the people are starving and have no head. Good Master Percy, the new President, cannot hold the reins. He is sick and feeble and would fain go back to England; and the wild horses — so I call the unruly gallants led by Ratcliffe, — run off, dragging all things after them, till the crash comes.
But far worse than all was the Starving Time that now cometh, whereof my heart shrinks from the relation. To end it ere it begin in earnest, Ratcliffe goes to York River to get corn from Powhatan. I go with him, and what follows is my last sight of the Lady Pokahontas for many a day. Since Smith went she comes no more to Jamestown, and sends nought whereof to eat, in osier baskets or other sort. The old soldiers marvel thereat, and say, Where is the blessed Pokahontas? Why comes
83
Ratcliffe’s
folly.
she not? But she will not come; to see her once more, I must go to her.
Now this Ratcliffe takes thirty good shot, and would pass over me as one not well affected to him; but I offer, and he says, content, though he scowls at me under his bushy brows. He knoweth well I loved Smith, his enemy, and had certes gone away with him, but for staying behind to nurse my young cousin, Henry Spilman, nigh slain in the fight at Nonsuch. So Ratcliffe says I may go if I will, and turns his back on me, muttering: —
“We want no whining Puritans and psalm-singing rogues for this business! Powhatan’s time is come, and the end of him at hand.”
“Aer you sure of that, good Master Ratcliffe?” I say; whereat he wheels sudden.
“What mean you?” he shouts, “if your Captain Smith could wrest all from him, where were the trouble to do it once more?”
Thereat a wicked smile (I fear) rises to my face, and I would have said, “Thou art other than Smith,” but say it not, lest he tell me I shall not go, and so I see not my lady again. I am quiet; and so at dawn of day we set out with the thirty shot, marching through the woods to York River.
84
He sees not
the snare.What followeth will not fill much time in this my relation. Certes, God had doomed this Ratcliffe, and even the heathens of Greece and Rome said their vain gods first made mad them they would destroy. We come to York River, and Ratcliffe sends one of his men across to the King to ask audience, in a canoe we find there. In an hour comes back the man and saith Powhatan would gladly do so; he loveth the English and would succour them, but their arms fright his poor people.
“A snare!” I cry sudden: “he would destroy thee, Master Ratcliffe!”
But he scowls at me and says: —
“Peace! I would have no talk from brawlers!”
“Natheless!” —
“Peace! what would you? I will arrest thee for a brawling knave!”
Whereat I say no more, but listen, and Ratcliffe talks with his people. They say, not go; but he differeth from that. Why not? Since the guns fright the poor people he will leave them and cross as friends. When he says that, I, Anas Todkill, who would not seem faint-hearted, whip my hunting knife in my breast, and hide it there for fear I want it; and then we see
85
Ratcliffe is
slain, and
nigh all with
him.
canoes crossing. The King hath sent Captain Ratcliffe wherewith to come over and talk with him.
That talk was short. Ratcliffe says he will go, and every man lays down his arms, and goes in the canoe, and reaches the further shore. That was the end.
Sudden the woods swarm with heathen, and they shout and rush on us, slaying all that they encounter. Sure never was bloodier work, and the poor people fell down dead, pierced with Indian arrows or beat to death with their clubs, holding up hands over their heads and crying for mercy, which comes not, sith God has doomed this Ratcliffe to death, and nigh all them that came with him.
Now to speak of one Anas Todkill, who had a knife by good luck, and cut three heathens with it so that they died; for I drave it in them and they fell down with blood gushing, and hands tearing up grass. But what was two or three to kill when many hundreds, nay thousands, more were there? I say: —
“Thou art dead and gone, Anas! but remember thou art a Christian and these are heathens. Sith thou canst not convert them thou must murther them, lest they murther thee.”
86
My lady of
mercy.With that I drive at them, hooking my left arm in young Henry Spilman’s, and fight through to the woods, and leap a stream to the further bank, where the bushes are close, and fall in the tanglewood. Sudden a voice cries my name, and starting up I see my Lady Pokahontas.
She clasps me close and pulls me deep in the thicket, panting and weeping. Her doeskin robe is all torn by briers, so that her lissom body is near bare, but she heeds it not, nor the boughs catching her black hair, which falleth down to her waist. In her broken English words she crieth there is not time to stay. I must run to the river and swim for my life; they will soon be on me.
“Then I am dead, Master Todkill,” says young Henry, “for I have never yet swum.”
“I will not leave thee!” I cry; “since we have fought together, needs must we die in company.”
But the blessed Pokahontas says quick she will save him, and drags him away. But as she doeth so she comes close to me, very pale, and says in a whisper: —
“He is gone, then?”
I know what she meaneth, and say yes.
87
I escape to
Jamestown.
Then she turns her head and looks over her shoulder toward England, with wide eyes and tears streaming.
“He will come back some day,” she saith low in her Indian tongue. “I know not when, but some day. All is weary, I would go from hence. But do thou go!”
A yell hurries me. The blessed damozel runs off with poor distraught Henry and is hid by the thicket, and I get to York River, and am far from shore swimming lustily ere they see me. Then a race for my life, for canoes come after me with long paddle strokes, and the red heathen stand up yelling, — but they catch me not. Ere their arrows strike me I gain the south shore and plunge in the woods, where I never stop running till I come again to Jamestown.
So ended Captain Ratcliffe and his thirty shot, all but two. That old disturber and mutineer is a dead corpse on the York River, and Master Hamor writ truly his epitaph, that he was “scarce worthy of remembrance but to his dishonour.”*
* This account by Todkill of Ratcliffe’s death agrees with that in other old relations, where it is stated that only two escaped. “Pokahontas, the King’s daughter,” says another narrative, “saved a boy called Henry Spilman that lived many yeeres after, by her meanes, amongst the Patawomekes.” Todkill’s is the only full account of the expedition.
NOW
The Starv-
ing Time.
see what that meaneth; we all found the want of Captain Smith, yea his greatest maligners could now curse his loss. This poor dead Ratcliffe ever irked him, saying he was the true leader, not Smith; and yet behold how Providence fashioneth things. These two men tried the same business of getting corn from Powhatan; and one was fooled and got none, only his death, when the other (Smith) got the corn and his life too.
But it were idle to speak more hereof. The woful Starving Time is coming now. Who can tell of it without sighs and tears, and the conclusion making God’s mercy manifest! Now there was no more corn, and men died of mere famine, looking with dumb amaze each in other’s eyes. When we went to the Paspaheghs praying succour, we had nothing for our pains but mortal wounds with clubs and arrows. At last
89
How a man
did eat his
wife and we
burned him.
all was eaten, hogs, sheep, and horses, and what lived, — nought was spared. Acorns, walnuts, and berries, and a few fish, was now all; we did eat the skins of horses, and at last one another. We slew a savage and buried him, but the poorer sort did dig him up and eat him; and so did divers one another boiled and stewed with roots and herbs. Yea, one did kill his wife, and had eat part of her, ere we knew it, for which we burned him, as he well deserved, heaping fagots around that wretch tied to a stake in the street at Jamestown, and seeing him burn, with loud yells, till he died for his foul murther of his innocent wife.
This was that time which still to this day we call the Starving Time. Oh, the horror of it! Even now it comes back to me in a sudden quaking. Of five hundred men, women, and children scarce sixty were now alive, and they poor miserable creatures that prayed for death to end their sufferings. ’T was the bright May month, but the sunshine brought us no joy. Not one hour passed but some dead body was trailed out to be buried by them that nigh fell in the grave with the dead, for feebleness. By the palisade all were huddled together; men, women, and children, white
90
Goodness of
God in send-
ing the Ad-
miral to de-
liver us.
and ghostlike, with yearning eyes looking to England. The strong men (once) would gnaw wood and the grass blades; and it was pitiful to see the mothers hugging babes close to dry bosoms, praying God to send them milk.
Sudden, one day, I hear a cry and run out of the Fort (staggering a little, I think).
“A sail! a sail!” the babbling voices say; and the crowd totters to the shore.
“Blessed be God for all his mercy to his creatures!” I say, lifting up my eyes; for there was a sail coming up the river; nay, two, white against the fringe of woods.
The foremost was the cedar ship, built by brave Admiral Somers in the Bermuda Island, whereon the Sea-Venture had been shipwrecked the year before. This was the Deliverance (for which deliverance God be thanked!); and the other was the Patience, built with bolts from the wrecked Sea-Venture.
So the white sails slowly come, and in the midst of a babbling crowd lands the Admiral Sir George Somers, and Sir Thomas Gates, the Lieutenant Governor, and looks around them. Oh, the dreary sight! The Jamestown place was a wreck. The cabins were nigh gone for firewood, and the palisade
91
We sail for
England.
half torn down. The gates swung on broken hinges, and the Fort platform scarce held up the cannon.
Admiral Somers, landing first, puts his chin in his hand and looks on with tears. The poor people crowd round him crying, “Bread! bread!” whereat a great sob shakes him, and he gives orders to his sailors, who haste to the ship to bring it. Soon the crowd is fed, and then they jostle and babble and cry with one voice, “England! England!” most of all the mothers, and the Admiral says they shall go. In his ships he has but fourteen days’ provisions, but he will try. No, he will not desert us; as God sees him he will succour us. All shall embark quick, and a day is fixed and all is ready.
The sight was piteous, to see these wretches crowd on the ships, half crazed with joy, and nigh out of their heads. They would have burned the cursed place that they could nevermore return to it; but God, who would not have this fine country unplanted by Englishmen, put it into the heart of the Admiral Somers to forbid that. Having buried the cannon at the gate of the Fort, he posts a guard on the palisade and hurries the poor people
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The coming
of Lord la
Ware.
aboard. The drum rolls for the signal and all are shipped, and the Admiral follows. A salute is fired then as the ships move, — farewell to Jamestown!
But said I not that God would not have this land of Virginia fall back in heathenesse? Blessed be his name for all his goodness; for when the ships stopped a night at Mulberry Isle, here comes at dawn a swift barge shooting up the river, flying the English pennon. Thereat a great shout rises and cries of amaze, — what is coming? It is my Lord la Ware, with more ships and Englishmen. He hath stopped a little below, but hearing Jamestown is abandoned sendeth his orders to go back there and await him; so we go back joyfully.
Next day comes this brave Lord la Ware in his ships, with flags flying, and lands on shore, and kneels down, with shut eyes, and prays for a season; glad at heart he comes in time to save Virginia. Then the drums roll loud once more, and the church is open for service, and all is joy in the Virginia plantation, which was dead and is alive again.
Writing here in the after days, I, Anas Todkill, shut my eyes as my Lord la Ware
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The arm of
the Lord of
Hosts.
shut his, and see all that once more. Sure ’t was God’s infinite providence; and needs must his poor people cast themselves at his very footstool and adore his goodness. For had he not sent Sir George Somers from the Bermudas, within four days we had famished; and if we had set sail sooner and launched on the vast ocean, how encounter the fleet of the Lord la Ware? This was the arm of the Lord of Hosts, who would have his people pass the Red
