by her means, among the Patawomekes.”  Spelman says not a word about Pocahuntas.  On the contrary, he describes the visit of the King of the Patawomekes to Powhatan; says that the King took a fancy to him; that he and Dutch Samuel, fearing for their lives, escaped from Powhatan’s town; were pursued; that Samuel was killed, and that Spelman, after dodging about in the forest, found his way to the Potomac, where he lived with this good King Patomecke at a place called Pasptanzie for more than a year.  Here he seems to have passed his time agreeably, for although he had occasional fights with the squaws of Patomecke, the King was always his friend, and so much was he attached to the boy that he would not give him up to Captain Argall without some copper in exchange.

When Smith returned wounded to Jamestown, he was physically in no condition to face the situation.  With no medical attendance, his death was not improbable.  He had no strength to enforce discipline nor organize expeditions for supplies; besides, he was acting under a commission whose virtue had expired, and the mutinous spirits rebelled against his authority.  Ratcliffe, Archer, and the others who were awaiting trial conspired against him, and Smith says he would have been murdered in his bed if the murderer’s heart had not failed him when he went to fire his pistol at the defenseless sick man.  However, Smith was forced to yield to circumstances.  No sooner had he given out that he would depart for England than they persuaded Mr. Percy to stay and act as President, and all eyes were turned in expectation of favor upon the new commanders.  Smith being thus divested of authority, the most of the colony turned against him; many preferred charges, and began to collect testimony.  “The ships were detained three weeks to get up proofs of his ill-conduct”—­“time and charges,” says Smith, dryly, “that might much better have been spent.”

It must have enraged the doughty Captain, lying thus helpless, to see his enemies triumph, the most factious of the disturbers in the colony in charge of affairs, and become his accusers.  Even at this distance we can read the account with little patience, and should have none at all if the account were not edited by Smith himself.  His revenge was in his good fortune in setting his own story afloat in the current of history.  The first narrative of these events, published by Smith in his Oxford tract of 1612, was considerably remodeled and changed in his “General Historie” of 1624.  As we have said before, he had a progressive memory, and his opponents ought to be thankful that the pungent Captain did not live to work the story over a third time.

It is no doubt true, however, that but for the accident to our hero, he would have continued to rule till the arrival of Gates and Somers with the new commissions; as he himself says, “but had that unhappy blast not happened, he would quickly have qualified the heat of those humors and factions, had the ships but once left them and us to our fortunes; and have made that provision from among the salvages, as we neither feared Spaniard, Salvage, nor famine:  nor would have left Virginia nor our lawful authority, but at as dear a price as we had bought it, and paid for it.”