In less than a year young John Smith ran away in good earnest, leaving master, guardians, and property behind. He had attended two free schools and had gained what would be equal to a common-school education in these days. He went right to Paris, because France and Spain were at war just then; but peace was declared almost as soon as he was able to enlist.
After several hard experiences, young Smith engaged in the service of the duke of a little kingdom which was fighting the Turks. In one of his books, John Smith describes his adventures in these desperate battles. He tells of killing three Turks single-handed in mortal combat, and of how his princely master designed for him a coat-of-arms having in it three Turks’ heads.
But ill fortune soon befell young Captain John Smith. In a battle with the Turks he was wounded and left for dead, and became the property of a Turkish chief, who, as Smith goes on to tell, “sent him forthwith to Constantinople to his fair mistress for a slave. By twenty and twenty, chained by the necks, they marched in file to this great city where they were delivered to their several masters.”
The princess, to whom Captain John Smith was sent, was too young to own any kind of property. Afraid her mother would sell her white slave before she was of age, she sent him to her brother, a distant chief, asking him to be kind to her prize. But the brother treated his sister’s slave so brutally that Smith killed him and escaped in his master’s clothes to Russia. Here he found people who were unfriendly enough to the Turks to file off the iron collar which he still wore. On his way back to England, Smith found himself on the ship of a friendly French pirate, where he had to fight for his life against two Spanish men-of-war. The French ship succeeded in escaping from the Spaniards into a port on the northern coast of Africa. From here Smith took ship for London and entered the service of the Virginia Company, whose business it was to carry on the settling of America, begun by Sir Walter Raleigh.
The Virginia Company secured a charter from King James and in December, 1606, sent more than a hundred men to America. It was a strange company for such an enterprise. There were four carpenters, one blacksmith, one bricklayer, one mason, one tailor, one sailor, one drummer, two surgeons, two “boys,” or men-servants, and only twelve laborers. But there were forty-eight “gentlemen,” of whom some were ne’er-do-wells and others downright criminals, who could not work because they did not know how to do anything useful. Even before they reached Virginia, quarrels broke out among members of the party and Captain John Smith was falsely accused of conspiracy and condemned to be hanged. He escaped, however, and afterward forgave the conspirators.
The king had sent out the colony with sealed orders, which were not to be opened until they reached Virginia. When the orders were opened, John Smith was found to be among the seven men appointed as council for the colony. But the men highest in control were unfit to command such an enterprise. They spent seventeen days searching for a good site for a settlement. The place which they finally chose was a long distance from the coast, was hard for a sailing vessel to reach, and lay in an unhealthy place between the shallow river and a bad swamp. The river was named the James and the settlement Jamestown, both in honor of the king.
As for Captain John Smith, the others of the party were jealous of him. They thought he knew too much, because he saw how little they knew. Most of the party expected to get rich quick, and they did not care how they did it, so long as it was at the expense of some one else. So, instead of fishing for oysters, planting gardens, and clearing farms, they went hunting for gold and making trouble with the Indians. They did discover something they thought was gold, but Know-it-all Smith told them the yellow stuff was only “fool’s gold,” which is the common name for iron pyrites. Instead of following Smith’s advice and working all together to prepare for the future, they became so spiteful that they would have imprisoned him if he had not been too shrewd for them.
The Indians grew more and more hostile. The condition of the settlers was fast becoming hopeless. Smith himself wrote of their condition:
“What toil we had, with so small a power (twelve laborers out of more than one hundred men) to guard our workmen a-days, watch all night, resist our enemies, and effect our business—to re-lade the ships, cut down trees and prepare the ground to plant our corn.”
The settlers’ provisions were disappearing faster than they expected. One of them wrote at this time of the sad state of affairs: “Our drink was water; our lodgings, castles in the air.” The foolish president of the council was soon displaced. The man elected in his stead was said to be “of weak judgment in dangers, and less industry in peace”; but he had the sense to leave the management of affairs to John Smith.