When he got back, he found that his own prestige in Jamestown was increasing inversely as that of Ratcliffe tottered. Ratcliffe's position as President had so gone to his head that he was having a palace built for himself. Smith stopped it in mid-air when he came back and heard other colonists hoot at their leader's silly pretensions.
When he returned on September seventh he found Jamestown the worse for his absence as well as for wear. At long last he was made President, on the tenth. He resented the London Company's complaints of the sorely tried colonists. The Company had threatened that if Newport did not bring back sufficient cargo this fall to pay his two thousand pounds of expenses that it would abandon the colony. In hot haste, Smith dispatched a scathing reply, and this fortified his gathering and overdue popularity. He stood in with the Indians better than others did, and he believed in friendly and adroit relations with them when possible. Leadership brought out his prime qualities: his zest for adventure, his hardihood for physical trials, and his bravery to the arrow's point. He believed in discipline and hard work, and calling to mind the strict habits of his school days, he made the sloven and surly bachelors walk-a-chalk. If they swore, water was dashed down their sleeves. They must brush their clothes, wash their hands, sing psalms daily—and like it! He thought this discordant group needed harmony as well as guidance every rousing morning. Mindful of God, the church was repaired; mindful of Mammon, too, the storehouse was covered. Early Virginia was more Puritan than it pretended. Smith also had the fort increased by three acres and had a pentagon made of it. He had men getting cedar, walnut and clapboard for buildings.
Newport brought in the second supply in October 1608, and with it many changes. Two women were among the passengers—Mrs. Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras. When the latter became the bride of John Laydon, colonists saw their first recorded marriage on this side of the world.
That October the harvest had not been plentiful so they were cheered by the prospect of a new business venture. They had sent word that they had the proper ingredients on hand with which to start a new glass works: tar, pitch and soap-ashes. Accordingly eight Dutchmen and Poles, who were skilled in the craft, were among the passengers. The Glass House soon took its bright stand, like a jewel in the wilderness, about a mile down the forest from James Fort. Within two months glass was shipped back, although not very profitably.
Another bright and futile dream bedazzled the lazier colonists—gold. Smith, having given up the search, was disgusted with men who would do nothing but "dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and load gold," and he scolded them soundly for sending the gilded dirt to England in April where it was properly dismissed as mica. "For the country was to them a misery, a ruin, a death, a hell, and their own reports here, and their own actions according."
Smith and Newport were told by their credulous patrons to hunt up the lost colonists of Roanoke, for lost brothers, like lost sheep, should be reclaimed. Powhatan had told Smith of white men who were attired like himself and who were now abiding in Ocanahawan, so Smith had already recorded that on his map. Captain Newport now made an expedition to Panawick, a village beyond Roanoke Island, but his Indian guide led him astray. In December of 1608 Smith led another expedition and sent Master Sicklemore and two guides to seek the lost colonists, but Indians merely showed them some crosses and letters on the bark of trees.
While Newport and Ratcliffe returned to England at the end of December, Smith enjoyed a Christmas holiday with the Indians near Kecoughtan without envy of English Yule Logs, plum puddings and traditional celebrations. He entered into the native merriment heartily. Here was shining snow, frost and cedar, as well as delicious oysters, fish, flesh and wild fowl. He declared that he "never had better fires in England than in the dry, smoky houses of Kecoughtan." Smith knew however that Powhatan was becoming envious of the English way of life if he was not, so he was on his way with fourteen men to build a house for the Emperor.
Powhatan had wanted to gird himself with more and more English trappings, and he requested a cock, a hen and a grindstone. How about a coach-and-four, such as he heard their king had? Most of all he had wanted an English house, for nothing less than sheltering walls could keep off the threat of guns, of which he was so afraid.
Smith already had some German house builders on hand. Instead of having them build a house for himself, he, the great white father, turned them over to the great red father. It was not such a sacrifice, for Smith knew himself to be a born wanderer on the face of the earth. He could do without his own roof, as without his own woman, more easily than could most men. Tragabigzanda, his Turkish angel who had left him in her brother's keeping for a while, had been wasting her pains. Likewise, if young Pocahontas here had designs upon him, she must give them up before hero-worship developed into something too mature and possessive. He was his own man and that of no woman alive.
Smith was embarrassed not so much by indebtedness to the Indian maid as by apprehension of her adoration. His best gratitude to her who had saved his life would be to leave her hers without involving it. What irony that she, like most women, appreciated him too much, while men, who would do better than women to follow him, appreciated him too little! The time was coming when he should move on to new worlds to conquer, for he and his men here could never see eye to eye.