Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/254

 168 WORKMEN AND HEROES By autumn the settlement was fearfully reduced in numbers and spirits. Fever, engendered by marshland malaria and famine, threatened utter extinction. " From May to September, those who escaped lived upon sturgeon and sea- crabs ; 50 in this time were buried," writes one of the sufferers. " The rest, see- ing the president's projects to escape these miseries in our pinnace by flight (who all this time had neither felt want or sickness), so moved our dead spirits as we deposed him and established Ratcliffe in his place." It was an exchange of inefficiency for deliberate wickedness, and in the ex- cess of continued misery the more reasonable of the victims arose as a man and put Smith at the head of affairs. The " terrible summer " left hardly ten men who could wield axe or hoe. Smith himself was ill with malarial fever, yet nursed the sick, prayed with the dy- ing, and kept up the hearts of all by brave words and braver action. He bought corn and meat of the Indians when they would sell, and when they refused, se- cured supplies by intimidation. Yet we find him, as soon as the immediate peril was over, again the subordinate of envious leaders, and volunteering to satisfy malcontents in America and in England, by heading a party in mid-December to attempt the discovery of the great " South Sea," for so long the ignis fatims of Western adventurers. The explorers sailed up the James, diverging here and there into the tortuous creeks of the Chickahominy. When stopped by shallows, Smith procured a canoe and Indian guides and pushed on with but two other white men (Robinson and Emry) into the unknown wilderness, teeming with spies jealous of the foreign in- truders. Attempting to land at " Powhatan," one of " the emperor's " resi- dences, he and his guide sank into the morass and were fired upon from the shore. "The salvages . . . followed him with 300 bowmen, led by the king of Pamunkee, who, searching the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Emry by the fire-side. These they shot full of arrowes and slew." Smith bound the Indian guide to his arm and used him as a shield, thus sav- ing his own life. He was, however, captured, lashed to a tree, and would have been killed, but for his address in presenting the King Opecancanough with " a round ivory double compass Dyall " his own pocket compass directing the at- tention of the " salvages " to the movement of the needle, and describing the uses of the instrument. " A month those Babarians kept him prisoner ; many strange triumphes and conjurations they made of him, yet he so demeaned himself among them as he not only diverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured his own libertie, and got himself and his company such estimation among them that these Sal- vages admired him as a demi-god." From the pen of a contemporary we have the account of what led to his " lib- ertie." He had killed two of the attacking party, and was condemned by Pow- hatan to die for the offence. " Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held ; but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought