“Thou must have heard, sir, that they are dead,” he replied.  “Poor lads!  Disobedience was the end of them.  Had they but followed my commands they had returned alive to Jamestown many days ago; but they must needs land on the shore, instead of keeping in the stream as I bade them, and they were slain by the savages after I was captured.”

“That is easily answered, Captain Smith,” Wingfield solemnly remarked, and turning his head over his shoulder to speak as he walked off, he added:  “The Council will require their lives at thy hands this day.  See that thou art present in the Government House this afternoon at three by the clock to answer their questions.”

“So that is what their next step is,” Smith remarked to his friend Guy, a youth of much promise, as they walked off together.  “They will accuse me of murder and try to hang me or to send me back to England in chains.  But I have not been saved from death by a young princess to come to any such end, friend.”

And as they walked to his house he told the story of his captivity and made plans for getting the better of those who sought to injure him.

The councillors, on their side, were not unanimous as to the course to adopt.  Some were for putting him in safe-keeping—­they did not mention the word imprisonment—­until a ship should arrive and return with him to England.  Others, who perhaps felt a doubt of their own ability to manage the settlement, were willing to acknowledge that they had misjudged him and suggested that at least he had better be given a chance to help them; and other timorous members, having witnessed the warmth of the greeting accorded him, advised that it would be wiser not to rush into any course of action which would displease the majority of the colonists.  Thus it came to pass that Smith found the three o’clock meeting like a tiger that has had its claws drawn.

In the days that followed his spirit of encouragement, the willingness with which he put his shoulder to the wheel everywhere that aid was needed, his boldness in defying those leagued against him, completely changed the aspect of Jamestown.  The gentlemen who had refused to wield axe or spade or bricklayer’s trowel because of their gentility were shamed by his example.

    “When Adam delved and Eve span
    Who was then the gentleman?”

he demanded and swung the axe with lusty strokes against some hoary walnut tree.

But though he enjoyed the triumph over his enemies and the knowledge that his return, the provisions he had brought and the inspiration of his courage and activity were of great benefit to his fellows, nevertheless at times he experienced a feeling of loneliness.  He thought of Pocahontas and wondered whether she would not come to Jamestown.