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Richard of Jamestown: A Story of the Virginia Colony

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<h2> CAPTAIN SMITH'S DEPARTURE </h2> It is not well for me to dwell upon our parting with the master whom we had served more than two years, and who had ever been the most friendly friend and the most manly man one could ask to meet. Our hearts were sore, when, after having done what little we might toward carrying him on board the ship, we came back to his house, which he had said in the presence of witnesses should be ours, and there took up our lives with Master Hunt. But for that good man's prayers, on this first night we would have abandoned ourselves entirely to grief; but he devoted his time to soothing us, showing why we had no right to do other than continue in the course on which we had been started by the man who was gone from us, until it was, to my mind at least, as if I should be doing some grievous wrong to my master, if I failed to carry on the work while he was away, as it would have been done had I known we were to see him again within the week. With Captain Smith gone, perhaps to his death; with half a dozen men who claimed the right to stand at the head of the government until Lord De la Warr should come; and with the savages menacing us on every hand, sore indeed was our plight. With so many in the town, for there were now four hundred and ninety persons, and while the savages, because of having been so sorely wronged, were in arms against us, it was no longer possible to go abroad for food, and as the winter came on we were put to it even in that land of plenty, for enough to keep ourselves alive. <h2> THE "STARVING TIME" </h2> We came to know what starvation meant during that winter, and were I to set down here all of the suffering, of the hunger weakness, and of the selfishness we saw during the six months after Captain Smith sailed for home, there would not be days enough left in my life to complete the tale. As I look back on it now, it seems more like some wonderful dream than a reality, wherein men strove with women and children for food to keep life in their own worthless bodies. It is enough if I say that of the four hundred and ninety persons whom Captain Smith left behind him, there were, in the month of May of the year 1610, but fifty-eight left alive. That God should have spared among those, Nathaniel Peacock and myself, is something which passeth understanding, for verily there were scores of better than we whose lives would have advantaged Jamestown more than ours ever can, who died and were buried as best they could be by the few who had sufficient strength remaining to dig the graves. I set it down in all truth that, through God's mercy, our lives were saved by Master Hunt, for he counseled us wisely as to the care we should take of our bodies when our stomachs were crying out for food, and it was he who showed us how we might prepare this herb or the bark from that tree for the sustaining of life, when we had nothing else to put into our mouths. We had forgotten that Lord De la Warr was the new governor; we had heard nothing of the ship in which it was said Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers had sailed. We were come to that pass where we cared neither for governor nor nobleman. We strove only to keep within our bodies the life which had become painful. Then it was, when the few of us who yet lived, feared each moment lest the savages would put an end to us, that we saw sailing up into the bay two small ships, and I doubt if there was any among us who did not fall upon his knees and give thanks aloud to God for the help which had come at the very moment when it had seemed that we were past all aid. <h2> OUR COURAGE GIVES OUT </h2> But our time of rejoicing was short. Although these two ships were brought by Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, having in them not less than one hundred and fifty men, they did not have among them food sufficient to provide for the wants of our company until another harvest should come. The vessel in which these new comers had sailed was, as I have said, wrecked in a hurricane near the Bermuda Isles, where, after much labor, they had contrived to build these two small ships. It needed not that we, who of all our people in Jamestown remained alive, should tell the story of what we had suffered, for that could be read on our faces. Neither was it required that these new comers should study long in order to decide upon the course to be pursued, for the answer to all their speculations could be found in the empty storehouse, and in the numberless graves 'twixt there and the river bank. Of provisions, they had so much as might serve for a voyage to England, if peradventure the winds were favorable; and ere the ships had been at anchor four and twenty hours, it was resolved that we should abandon this town of James, which we had hoped might one day grow into a city fair to look upon. An attempt to build up a nation in this new land of Virginia, of which ours was the third, had cost of money and of blood more than man could well set down, and now, after all this brave effort on the part of such men as Captain Smith, Master Hunt and Master Percy, it was to go for naught. Once more were the savages to hold undisputed possession of the land which they claimed as their own. <h2> ABANDONING JAMESTOWN </h2> Now even though Nathaniel Peacock and I had known more of suffering and of sorrow, than of pleasure, in Jamestown, our hearts were sore at leaving it. It seemed to me as if we were running contrary to that which my master would have commanded, and there were tears in my eyes, of which I was not ashamed, when Nathaniel and I, hand in hand, followed Master Hunt out of the house we had helped to build. Those who had come from the shipwreck amid the Bermudas, were rejoicing because they had failed to arrive in time to share with us the starvation and the sickness, therefore to them this turning back upon the enterprise was but a piece of good fortune. Yet were they silent and sad, understanding our sorrow. It was the eighth day of June, in the year 1610, when we set sail from Jamestown, believing we were done with the new world forever, and yet within less than three hours was all our grief changed to rejoicing, all our sorrow to thankfulness. <h2> LORD DE LA WARR'S ARRIVAL </h2> At the mouth of the river, sailing toward us bravely as if having come from some glorious victory, were three ships laden with men, and, as we afterward came to know, an ample store of provisions. It was Lord De la Warr who had come to take up his governorship, and verily he was arrived in the very point of time, for had he been delayed four and twenty hours, we would have been on the ocean, where was little likelihood of seeing him. It needs not I should say that our ships were turned back, and before nightfall Master Hunt was sitting in Captain Smith's house, with Nathaniel Peacock and me cooking for him such a dinner as we three had not known these six months past. I have finished my story of Jamestown, having set myself to tell only of what was done there while we were with Captain John Smith. And it is well I should bring this story to an end here, for if I make any attempt at telling what came to Nathaniel Peacock and myself after that, then am I like to keep on until he who has begun to read will lay down the story because of weariness. For the satisfaction of myself, and the better pleasing of Nathaniel Peacock, however, I will add, concerning our two selves, that we remained in the land of Virginia until our time of apprenticeship was ended, and then it was, that Master Hunt did for us as Captain Smith had promised to do. <h2> THE YOUNG PLANTERS </h2> We found ourselves, in the year 1614, the owners of an hundred acres of land which Nathaniel and I had chosen some distance back from the river, so that we might stand in no danger of the shaking sickness, and built ourselves a house like unto the one we had helped make for Captain Smith. With the coming of Lord De la Warr all things were changed. The governing of the people was done as my old master, who never saw Virginia again, I grieve to say, would have had it. We became a law abiding people, save when a few hotheads stirred up trouble and got the worst of it. When Nathaniel Peacock and I settled down as planters on our own account, there were eleven villages in the land of Virginia, and, living in them, more than four thousand men, women, and children. It was no longer a country over which the savages ruled without check, though sad to relate, the brown men of the land shed the blood of white men like water, ere they were driven out from among us. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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