twelve Indians for escort. He had
leagues to go, a night or two to spend upon the march. Lying in the
huge winter woods, he expected, on the whole, death before morning.
But "Almighty God mollified the hearts of those sterne barbarians with
compassion." And so he was restored to Jamestown, where he found more
dead than when he left. Some there undoubtedly welcomed him as a strong
man restored when there was need of strong men. Others, it seems, would
as lief that Pocahontas had not interfered.

The Indians did not get their guns and grindstones. But Smith loaded a
demi-culverin with stones and fired upon a great tree, icicle-hung. The
gun roared, the boughs broke, the ice fell rattling, the smoke spread,
the Indians cried out and cowered away. Guns and grindstone, Smith told
them, were too violent and heavy devils for them to carry from river to
river. Instead he gave them, from the trading store, gifts enticing to
the savage eye, and not susceptible of being turned against the donors.

Here at Jamestown in midwinter were more food and less mortal sickness
than in the previous fearful summer, yet no great amount of food, and
now suffering, too, from bitter cold. Nor had the sickness ended, nor
dissensions. Less than fifty men were all that held together England
and America--a frayed cord, the last strands of which might presently
part....

Then up the river comes Christopher Newport in the Francis and John, to
be followed some weeks later by the Phoenix. Here is new life--stores
for the settlers and a hundred new Virginians! How certain, at any
rate, is the exchange of talk of home and hair-raising stories of this
wilderness between the old colonists and the new! And certain is
the relief and the renewed hopes. Mourning turns to joy. Even a
conflagration that presently destroys the major part of the town can not
blast that felicity.

Again Newport and Smith and others went out to explore the country. They
went over to Werowocomoco and talked with Powhatan. He told them things
which they construed to mean that the South Sea was near at hand, and
they marked this down as good news for the home Council--still impatient
for gold and Cathay. On their return to Jamestown they found under way
new and stouter houses. The Indians were again friendly; they brought
venison and turkeys and corn. Smith says that every few days came
Pocahontas and attendant women bringing food.

Spring came again with the dogwood and the honeysu