Don, where he found good friends.  In 1604, after some other adventures, he came again to England.  All London was talking of the doings of King James, who in one short year had managed to dissatisfy both Catholics and Protestants.  Since the voyages of Gosnold, Pring and Weymouth there was much interest in Virginia.  Ralegh was a prisoner in the Tower.  There was talk of a trading association to be called the London Company, and it was said that this company planned a new plantation somewhere north of Roanoke.  Smith could see the great future which might await an English settlement in that rich land.  He decided to join the adventurers going out in the fleet of Captain Christopher Newport.  Before sailing, he went to Lincolnshire to bid farewell to his own people, and in the shadow of the Tower of Saint Botolph’s he espied a tall lad whose look recalled something.

“Why,” he cried with a hearty clasp of the hand. “’t is thyself grown a man, Will!  And how goes the Latin?”

“I love it well,” the youth answered shyly.  “Master Brewster hath also instructed me in the Greek.  If—­if I had known where to send it I would have repaid the money you was so kind as to spare.”

“Nay, think no more o’t—­or rather, hand it on to some other young book-worm,” laughed the bearded and bronzed captain.  “And how be all your folk?”

The lad’s eyes rested wistfully upon the quaint old seaport streets.  “The Bishop rails upon our congregation,” he said.  “Holland is better than a prison, and we shall go there soon.”

Smith’s practical mind saw the uselessness of trying to get any Non-Conformist taken on by a royal colony in Virginia just then. “’Tis a hard case,” he said sympathetically, “but we may meet again some day.  There’s room enough in the Americas, the Lord knows, for all the honest men England can spare.”

Thus they parted, and on April 26, 1607, the Virginia voyagers saw land at the mouth of the Chesapeake.

The company was rather top-heavy.  Out of the hundred who were enrolled, fifty-two were gentlemen adventurers, each of whom thought himself as good as the rest and even a little better.  No sooner had the ship dropped anchor than thirty of them went ashore to roam the forest, laughing and shouting as if they had the country to themselves.  The appearance of five Indians sent them scurrying back to the ship with two of their number wounded, for they had no weapons with them.  That night the sealed orders of the London Company were opened, and it was found that the directors had appointed a council of seven to govern the colony and choose a president for a year.  The colonists were charged to search for gold and pearls and for a passage to the East Indies.  Nothing more original in the way of a colonial enterprise had occurred to the directors.  Success in these undertakings meant immediate profits with which the new Company could compete with Bristol, Antwerp, and the Muscovy Company’s rich fur trade.