Pioneers of the Old South | Page 8

blacksmith, a tailor, a barber, a drummer, other craftsmen, and
nondescripts. Up and down and to and fro they pass in their narrow

quarters, microscopic upon the bosom of the ocean.
John Smith looms large among them. John Smith has a mantle of
marvelous adventure. It seems that he began to make it when he was a
boy, and for many years worked upon it steadily until it was stiff as
cloth of gold and voluminous as a puffed-out summer cloud. Some
think that much of it was such stuff as dreams are made of. Probably
some breadths were the fabric of vision. Still it seems certain that he
did have some kind of an extraordinary coat or mantle. The adventures
which he relates of himself are those of a paladin. Born in 1579 or 1580,
he was at this time still a young man. But already he had fought in
France and in the Netherlands, and in Transylvania against the Turks.
He had known sea-fights and shipwrecks and had journeyed, with
adventures galore, in Italy. Before Regal, in Transylvania, he had
challenged three Turks in succession, unhorsed them, and cut off their
heads, for which doughty deed Sigismund, a Prince of Transylvania,
had given him a coat of arms showing three Turks' heads in a shield.
Later he had been taken in battle and sold into slavery, whereupon a
Turkish lady, his master's sister, had looked upon him with favor. But
at last he slew the Turk and escaped, and after wandering many days in
misery came into Russia. "Here, too, I found, as I have always done
when in misfortune, kindly help from a woman." He wandered on into
Germany and thence into France and Spain. Hearing of wars in Barbary,
he crossed from Gibraltar. Here he met the captain of a French
man-of-war. One day while he was with this man there arose a great
storm which drove the ship out to sea. They went before the wind to the
Canaries, and there put themselves to rights and began to chase Spanish
barks. Presently they had a great fight with two Spanish men-of-war, in
which the French ship and Smith came off victors. Returning to
Morocco, Smith bade the French captain good-bye and took ship for
England, and so reached home in 1604. Here he sought the company of
like-minded men, and so came upon those who had been to the New
World--"and all their talk was of its wonders." So Smith joined the
Virginia undertaking, and so we find him headed toward new
adventures in the western world.
On sailed the three ships--little ships--sailing-ships with a long way to
go.
"The twelfth day of February at night we saw a blazing starre and

presently a storme . . . . The three and twentieth day [of March] we fell
with the Iland of Mattanenio in the West Indies. The foure and
twentieth day we anchored at Dominico, within fourteene degrees of
the Line, a very faire Iland, full of sweet and good smells, inhabited by
many Savage Indians .... The six and twentieth day we had sight of
Marigalanta, and the next day wee sailed with a slacke sail alongst the
Ile of Guadalupa . . . . We sailed by many Ilands, as Mounserot and an
Iland called Saint Christopher, both uninhabited; about two a clocke in
the afternoone wee anchored at the Ile of Mevis. There the Captaine
landed all his men . . . . We incamped ourselves on this Ile six days . . . .
The tenth day [April] we set saile and disimboged out of the West
Indies and bare our course Northerly .... The six and twentieth day of
Aprill, about foure a clocke in the morning, wee descried the Land of
Virginia."*
* Percy's "Discourse in Purchas, His Pilgrims," vol. IV, p. 1684. Also
given in Brown's "Genesis of the United States", vol. I, p. 152.
During the long months of this voyage, cramped in the three ships,
these men, most of them young and of the hot-blooded, physically
adventurous sort, had time to develop strong likings and dislikings. The
hundred and twenty split into opposed camps. The several groups
nursed all manner of jealousies. Accusations flew between like
shuttlecocks. The sealed box that they carried proved a manner of Eve's
apple. All knew that seven on board were councilors and rulers, with
one of the number President, but they knew not which were the seven.
Smith says that this uncertainty wrought much mischief, each man of
note suggesting to himself, "I shall be President--or, at least,
Councilor!" The ships became cursed with a pest of factions. A prime
quarrel arose between John Smith and Edward-Maria Wingfield, two
whose temperaments seem to have been poles apart. There arose a
"scandalous