my own must answer for it, yet he that
offendeth, let him assuredly expect his due punishment.

"I protest by that God that made me, since necessity hath no power to
force you to gather for yourselves, you shall not only gather for
yourselves, but for those that are sick. _They_ shall not starve."

Fields were tilled, the fort was repaired, wise Powhatan treated the
pale-faces kindly for Smith's sake, and the emigrants felt for the first
time firm ground beneath their feet. They had twenty-four pieces of
ordnance, and three hundred stand of small-arms; three ships, seven
boats, a store of more than two months' provisions, six hundred hogs,
with goats, fowls, and sheep, and an established trading-station with
the natives.

Like an aerolite from the summer sky came news from England that a fleet
was to be sent out with a new colony, a new charter, and new officers;
Smith's old enemy, Christopher Newport, was in command of the
expedition. Smith had been complained of at home as "dealing harshly
with the natives and not returning the ships full-freighted." His day
was over. The king so willed it.

Smith's last official act was the establishment of a colony at Powhatan,
renamed "Nonsuch," opposite where the city of Richmond was laid out over
a century later. On his way back to Jamestown, he was cruelly wounded by
the explosion of a bag of gunpowder. There was no good surgeon in the
colony. To return forthwith to England was but anticipating by a few
weeks what must be when the fleet arrived.

He returned to London at the age of thirty. "He had broke the ice and
beat the path, but had not there" (in Virginia) "one foot of ground, nor
the very house he builded, nor the ground he digged with his own hands."

In 1614 he returned to America, but now to the northern region assigned
to the Plymouth Company. He gave name to Boston; explored and made a
survey of the New England coast. On a second voyage he had a fight with
a French squadron, was captured, and taken to Rochelle. While there he
wrote a "Description of New England," for which service James I.
appointed him "Admiral of New England." He died in London, in 1631, at
the age of fifty-two, never having revisited Virginia. Upon his tomb, in
the Church of St. Sepulchre's, London, may be still traced the outlines
of the Three Turks' Heads and the inscription, beginning:

"_Here lies one conquered that hath conquered kings._"

Any sketch of his life, however brief, woul