as
well-nigh drowned before his companions could rescue him. Arriving at
Jamestown in this helpless condition, he was again assailed by faction
and mutiny, and one of his enemies even presented a cocked pistol at him
in his bed; but the hand wanted the nerve to execute what the heart was
base enough to design.

Ratcliffe, Archer, and their confederates, laid plans to usurp the
government of the colony, whereupon Smith's faithful soldiers, fired
with indignation at conduct so infamous, begged for permission to strike
off their heads; but this he refused. He refused also to surrender the
presidency to Percy. For this, Smith is censured by the historian Stith,
who yet acknowledges that Percy was in too feeble health to control a
mutinous colony. Anarchy being triumphant, Smith probably deemed it
useless to appoint a governor over a mob. He at last, about Michaelmas,
1609, embarked for England, after a stay of a little more than two years
in Virginia,[80:A] to which he never returned.

Here, then, closes the career of Captain John Smith in Virginia, "the
father of the colony," and a hero like Bayard, "without fear and without
reproach." One of his comrades, in deploring his departure, describes
him as one who, in all his actions, made justice and prudence his
guides, abhorring baseness, idleness, pride, and injustice; that in no
danger would he send others where he would not lead them himself; that
would never see his men want what he had, or could by any means procure;
that would rather want than borrow, and rather starve than not pay; that
loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and avarice worse than
death; "whose adventures were our lives, and whose loss our deaths."
Another of his soldiers said of him:--

"I never knew a warrior but thee,
From wine, tobacco, debts, dice, oaths, so free."

From the time of Smith's departure from Virginia to the year 1614,
little is known of him. In that year he made his first voyage to New
England. In the following year, after many disappointments, sailing
again in a small vessel for that country, after a running fight with,
and narrow escape from, two French privateers, near Fayal, he was
captured, near Flores, by a half-piratical French squadron. After long
detention he was carried to Rochelle, in France, and there charged with
having burned Port Royal, in New France, which act had been committed by
Captain Argall. Smith, at length, at the utmost hazard, escap