John Smith and the Jamestown Colony: Percy and Smith's

It so happened that before Smith's vessel had dropped a mile and a half down the river she ran aground, where-upon, making a virtue of necessity, he summoned the mutineers to a parley, and they, now seized with a panic on account of the assault of a mere handful of Indians, submitted themselves to his mercy. He again arrested the ringleaders, and established the rest of the party at Powhatan, in the Indian palisade fort, which was so well fortified by poles and bark as to defy all the savages in Virginia. Dry cabins were also found there, and nearly two hundred acres of ground ready to be planted, and it was called Nonsuch, as being at once the strongest and most delightful place in the country. Nonsuch was the name of a royal residence in England.

When Smith was now on the eve of his departure, the arrival of West again threw all things back into confusion. Nonsuch was abandoned, and all hands returned to the falls, and Smith, finding all his efforts abortive, embarked in a boat for Jamestown. During the voyage he was terribly wounded, while asleep, by the accidental explosion of a bag of gunpowder, and in the paroxysm of pain he leaped into the river, and was wellnigh drowned before his companions could rescue him. Arriving at Jamestown in this helpless condition, he was again assailed by faction and mutiny, and one of his enemies even presented a cocked pistol at him in his bed; but the hand wanted the nerve to execute what the heart was base enough to design.

Ratcliffe, Archer, and their confederates laid plans to usurp the government of the colony, whereupon Smith's faithful soldiers, fired with indignation at conduct so in-famous, begged for permission to strike off their heads; but this he refused. He refused also to surrender the presidency to Percy. For this Smith is censured by the historian Stith, who yet acknowledges that Percy was in too feeble health to control a mutinous colony. Anarchy being triumphant, Smith probably deemed it useless to appoint a governor over a mob. He at last, about Michaelmas, 1609, embarked for England, after a stay of a little more than two years in Virginia, to which he never returned.

Here, then, closes the career of Captain John Smith in Virginia, "the father of the colony," and a hero like Bayard, "without fear and without reproach."