For three days the cross-firing continued, during which the besiegers were so well shielded that they do not seem to have lost a single man.
Upon the third day the Governor decided to make a sally upon the rebels. It is written
that when he gave the order for the attack some of his officers made such "crabbed faces" that the "gunner of York Fort," who, it seems, was humorously inclined, offered too buy a colonel's or a captain's commission for whomsoever would have one for "a chunk of a pipe."
It is also written that the Governor's Accomac soldiers "went out with heavy hearts, but returned with light heels," for the Baconians received them so warmly that they retired in great disorder, throwing down their arms and leaving them and their drum on the field behind them, with the dead bodies of two of their comrades, which the rebels took into their trenches and buried with their arms.
This taste of success made the besiegers so bold and daring that Bacon could hardly keep them from attempting to storm and capture Jamestown forthwith; but he warned them against being over rash, saying that he expected to take the town without loss of a man, in due season, and that one of their lives was worth more to him than the whole world.
Upon the day after the sally some of Bacon's Indian captives were exhibited on top of the earthworks, and this primitive bit of bravado served as an object-lesson to quicken the enthusiasm of the neighborhood folk, who were coming over to the Rebel in great numbers.
News was brought that "great multitudes" were also declaring for the popular cause in Nansemond and Isle of Wight Counties, "as also all the south side of the river."
Bacon sent a letter from camp to two of his sea-faring friends, Captain William Cookson and Captain Edward Skewon, describing the progress of the siege and urging them to protect the "Upper parts of the country" against pirates, and to bid his friends in those parts "be courageous, for that all the country is bravely resolute."
In the midst of the siege Bacon resorted to one measure which for pure originality has not been surpassed in the history of military tactics, and which, though up to the present writing no other general sufficiently picturesque in his methods to
imitate it has arisen, has furnished much "copy" for writers of historical romances.
