Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/184

 160 SKETCHES OF THi:

Dunmore, he was indeed, considered as having aban- doned the duties of his office; yet still he was regarded as the governor of Virginia; and there seems to have been no disposition to offer violence to his person.

Dunmore, on his part, considered the colony as in a state of open and general rebelhon; not merely design- ing to resist an attempt to enforce upon them an obnox- ious tax; but to subvert the regal government wholly and entirely; and had his power been equal to his wishes, there is no reason to doubt that he would have disarmed the colony; and hungup, without ceremony, the leaders of this traitorous revolt, as he affected to consider it. His impotence however, and the aversion of the colonists to act otherwise than defensively, pro- duced a suspense full of the most painful anxiety.

In the mean time, capt. Squire, commander of his majest}^'s sloop the Otter, had been labouring through- out the summer with some success, to change the defen- sive attitude of the colony. He was engaged in cruising continually in James and York rivers, plundering the defenceless shores, and carrying off the slaves, wherever seduction or force could place them in his power. These piratical excursions had wrought up the citizens who were not in arms, to a very high pitch of resent- ment; and an accident soon gave them an opportunity of partial reprisal, which they did not fail to seize. On the 2d of September, the captain, sailing in a tender, on a marauding expedition from James to York river, was encountered by a violent tempest, and his tender was driven on shore, upon Back river, near Hampton. It was night, and the storm still raging: — the captain and his men, distrusting (unjustly, as it would seem from the papers) the hospitality of the inhabitants, made their escape through the woods; the vessel was on the next

�� �