e
in nine weeks, of which two were spent becalmed, and upon his return
reported that it might be made in seven, "and no apparent inconvenience
in the way." He brought to the great Council of the Company a story of
necessity and distress at Jamestown, and the Council lays much of the
blame for that upon "the misgovernment of the Commanders, by dissention
and ambition among themselves," and upon the idleness of the general
run, "active in nothing but adhearing to factions and parts." The
Council, sitting afar from a savage land, is probably much too severe.
But the "factions and parts" cannot easily be denied.

Before Argall's return, the Company had commissioned as Governor of
Virginia Sir Thomas Gates, and had gathered a fleet of seven ships and
two pinnaces with Sir George Somers as Admiral, in the ship called the
Sea Adventure, and Christopher Newport as Vice-Admiral. All weighed
anchor from Falmouth early in June and sailed by the newly tried course,
south to the Canaries and then across. These seven ships carried five
hundred colonists, men, women, and children.

On St. James's day there rose and broke a fearsome storm. Two days and
nights it raged, and it scattered that fleet of seven. Gates, Somers,
and Newport with others of "rancke and quality" were upon the Sea
Adventure. How fared this ship with one attendant pinnace we shall come
to see presently. But the other ships, driven to and fro, at last found
a favorable wind, and in August they sighted Virginia. On the eleventh
of that month they came, storm-beaten and without Governor or Admiral
or Sea Adventure, into "our Bay" and at last to "the King's River and
Town." Here there swarmed from these ships nigh three hundred persons,
meeting and met by the hundred dwelling at Jamestown. This was the third
supply, but it lacked the hundred or so upon the Sea Adventure and the
pinnace, and it lacked a head. "Being put ashore without their Governor
or any order from him (all the Commissioners and principal persons being
aboard him) no man would acknowledge a superior."

With this multitude appeared once more in Virginia the three ancient
councilors--Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin. Apparently here came fresh
fuel for factions. Who should rule, and who should be ruled? Here is
an extremely old and important question, settled in history only to be
unsettled again. Everywhere it rises, dust on Time's road, and is laid
only to rise again.

Smith was still President. Who