The morning of the day after the sailing, the people of Jamestown whom one happened to meet on the road had a strange expression of countenance, and I doubt not that a man skilled in such matters could have read as truly the signs of an eruption of those forces of human passion in the hearts of men, as of an earthquake by the belching forth of smoke and fire from the mouth of a volcano.  Everybody looked at his neighbour with either a glare of doubt and wariness, or with covert understanding, and some there were who had a pale seriousness of demeanour from having a full comprehension of the situation and of what might come of it, though not in the least drawing back on that account, and some were all flushed and glowing with eagerness and laughing from sheer delight in danger and daring, and some were like stolid beasts of the field watching the eye of a master, ready at its wink to leap forth to the strain of labour or fury.  Many of these last were of our English labourers, whom I held in some sort of pity, and doubt as to whether it were just and merciful to draw them into such a stew kettle, for in truth many of them had not a pound of tobacco to lose by the Navigation Act, and no more interest in the uprising than had the muskets stacked in Major Robert Beverly’s first wife’s tomb.  Yet, I pray, what can men do without tools, and have not tools some glory of their own which we take small account of, and yet which may be a recompense to them?

Nevertheless, I saw with some misgivings these honest fellows plodding their ways, ready to leap to their deaths maybe at the word of command, when it did not concern their own interests in the least, and especially when they had not that order of mind which enables a man to have a delight in glory and in serving those broad ends of humanity which include a man to his own loss.

Early that morning the news spread that Colonel Kemp of the Gloucester militia and a troop of horse and foot had been sent secretly against some plant-cutters in Gloucester County who had arisen before us, and had taken prisoners some twenty-two caught in the act.  The news of the sending came first, I think, from Major Robert Beverly, the Clerk of the Assembly, who had withheld the knowledge for some time, inasmuch as he disliked the savour of treachery, but being in his cups that night before at Barry Upper Branch, out it came.  ’Twas Dick Barry who told me.  I fell in with him and Captain Jaynes on the Jamestown road that morning.  “Colonel Kemp hath ridden against the rioters in Gloucester with foot and horse, by order of the general court, and Beverly hath been knowing to it all this time,” he said gloomily.  Then added that a man who served on two sides had no strength for either, and one who had raised his hand against Bacon had best been out of the present cause.  But Captain Jaynes swore with one of his broadsides of mighty oaths that ’twas best as ’twas, since Beverly had some influence over the militia, and that he was safe enough not to turn traitor with his great store of tobacco at stake, and that should the court proceed to extremes with the Gloucester plant-cutters, such a flame would leap to life in Virginia as would choke England with the smoke of its burning.