Once his trading party was trapped for slaughter in a house at Powhatan’s camp, but Pocahontas, at the risk of her life, warned her hero, so that all escaped. Another tribe caught Smith in a house where he had called to buy grain of their chief. Smith led the chief outside, with a pistol at his ear-hole, paraded his fifteen musketeers, and frightened seven hundred warriors into laying down their arms. And then he made them load his ship with corn. This food he served out in daily rations to working colonists only. After the next Indian attempt on his life, Smith laid the whole country waste until the tribes were reduced to submission. So his loafers reported him to the company for being cruel to the Indians, and seven shiploads of officials and wasters were sent out from England to suppress the captain.
This was in September of the third year of the colony, and Smith, as it happened, was returning to Jamestown from work up-country. He lay asleep in the boat against a bag of powder, on which one of the sailors was pleased to knock out the ashes of his pipe. The explosion failed to kill, but almost mortally wounded Captain Smith, who was obliged to return to England in search of a doctor’s aid. After his departure, the colony fell into its customary ways, helpless for lack of leadership, butchered by the Indians, starved, until, when relief ships arrived, there were only sixty survivors living on the bodies of the dead. The relieving ships brought Lord Delaware to command, and with him, the beginnings of prosperity.
When the great captain was recovered, his next expedition explored the coast farther north, which he named New England. His third voyage was to have planted a colony, but for Smith’s capture, charged with piracy, by a French squadron. His escape in a dingey seems almost miraculous, for it was on that night that the flagship which had been his prison foundered in a storm, and the squadron was cast away on the coast of France.
Meanwhile, the Princess Pocahontas, had been treacherously captured as a hostage by the Virginian colonists, which led to a sweet love story, and her marriage with Master John Rolfe. With him she presently came on a visit to England, and everywhere the Lady Rebecca Rolfe was received with royal honors as a king’s daughter, winning all hearts by her beauty, her gentleness and dignity. In England she again met Captain Smith, whom she had ever reverenced as a god. But then the bitter English winter struck her down, and she died before a ship could take her home, being buried in the churchyard in Gravesend.
The captain never again was able to adventure his life overseas, but for sixteen years, broken with his wounds and disappointment, wrote books commending America to his countrymen. To the New England which he explored and named, went the Pilgrim Fathers, inspired by his works to sail with the Mayflower, that they might found the colony which he projected. Virginia and New England were called his children, those English colonies which since have grown into the giant republic. So the old captain finished such a task as “God, after His manner, assigns to His Englishmen.”
XXXVI
A. D. 1670 THE BUCCANEERS
It is only a couple of centuries since Spain was the greatest nation on earth, with the Atlantic for her duck pond, the American continents for her back yard, and a notice up to warn away the English, “No dogs admitted.”
England was a little power then, Charles II had to come running when the French king whistled, and we were so weak that the Dutch burned our fleet in London River. Every year a Spanish fleet came from the West Indies to Cadiz, laden deep with gold, silver, gems, spices and all sorts of precious merchandise.
Much as our sailors hated to see all that treasure wasted on Spaniards, England had to keep the peace with Spain, because Charles II had his crown jewels in pawn and no money for such luxuries as war. The Spanish envoy would come to him making doleful lamentations about our naughty sailors, who, in the far Indies, had insolently stolen a galleon or sacked a town. Charles, with his mouth watering at such a tale of loot, would be inexpressibly shocked. The “lewd French” must have done this, or the “pernicious Dutch,” but not our woolly lambs—our innocent mariners.
The buccaneers of the West Indies were of many nations besides the British, and they were not quite pirates. For instance, they would scorn to seize a good Protestant shipload of salt fish, but always attacked the papist who flaunted golden galleons before the nose of the poor. They were serious-minded Protestants with strong views on doctrine, and only made their pious excursions to seize the goods of the unrighteous. Their opinions were so sound on all really important points of dogmatic theology that they could allow themselves a little indulgence in mere rape, sacrilege, arson, robbery and murder, or fry Spaniards in olive oil for concealing the cash box. Then, enriched by such pious exercises, they devoutly spent the whole of their savings on staying drunk for a month.