Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/259

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 171 woods after dark to apprise Smith that treachery was intended, the party lay on their arms all night, and the force sent to surprise them retreated. Next day, Povvhatan loaded the boats with corn, and Smith sailed up the York upon a sim- ilar errand to Opecancanough, Powhatan's brother. While in audience with him, the Englishmen were surrounded by a band of seven hundred armed sav- ages. Seizing the wily chieftain by the scalp-lock, Smith held a pistol to his breast, and- demanded a cargo of corn and safe-conduct for his party to James- town. The fifty men, without loss of a single life, took back enough food to victual the town. Early in the spring of 1609, the president thus made known his policy to his constituents : " Countrymen ! You see now that power resteth wholly in myself. You must obey this now for a law he that wili not work shall not eat. And though you presume that authority here is but a shadow and that I dare not touch the lives of any, but my own must answer for it, yet he that offendeth, let him assur- edly expect his due punishment. " I protest by that God that made me, since necessity hath no power to force you to gather for yourselves, you shall not only gather for yourselves, but for those that are sick. They shall not starve." Fields were tilled, the fort was repaired, wise Powhatan treated the pale-faces kindly for Smith's sake, and the emigrants felt for the first time firm ground be- neath their feet. They had twenty-four pieces of ordnance, and three hundred stand of small-arms ; three ships, seven boats, a store of more than two months' provisions, six hundred hogs, with goats, fowls, and sheep, and an established trading-station with the natives. Like an aerolite from the summer sky came news from England that a fleet was to be sent out with a new colony, a new charter, and new officers ; Smith's old enemy, Christopher Newport, was in command of the expedition. Smith had been complained of at home as " dealing harshly with the natives and not re- turning the ships full-freighted." His day was over. The king so willed it. Smith's last official act was the establishment of a colony at Povvhatan, re- named " Nonsuch," opposite where the city of Richmond was laid out over a century later. On his way back to Jamestown, he was cruelly wounded by the explosion of a bag of gunpowder. There was no good surgeon in the colony. To return forthwith to England was but anticipating by a few weeks what must be when the fleet arrived. He returned to London at the age of thirty. " He had broke the ice and beat the path, but had not there " (in Virginia) " one foot of ground, nor the very house he builded, nor the ground he digged with his own hands." In 1614 he returned to America, but now to the northern region assigned to the Plymouth Company. He gave name to Boston ; explored and made a sur- vey of the New England coast. On a second voyage he had a fight with a French squadron, was captured, and taken to Rochelle. While there he wrote a " Description of New England," for which service James I. appointed him