This incident concluded his relations with the Indian emperor. He was nevermore to see him; indeed, he had transacted his present business through agents.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
Our brave Captain's career was over in Virginia. He fell asleep on his return voyage to Jamestown with his match lighted, and a bag of powder in his pocket was ignited, "burning him very shrewdly," says the quaint narrator. His agony was great, and there were no surgeons in Jamestown. He lay that night in the fort, and there an attempt was made to murder him, which failed. The murderer looked at him in his delirium, and the "steel dropped from his nerveless hand." His faithful soldiers flatly refused to submit to Ratcliffe, Archer, and their confederates, and George Percy was prevailed upon to surrender his hope of returning to England, and consented to remain as the President of the colony until news of the _Sea Venture_ could be had.
At Michaelmas, 1609, the stern soldier and strong writer and true patriot set sail for England. He had brought only his sword to Virginia, and he took thence nothing more. Not an inch of the ground he had dug nor a plank of the houses he had built belonged to him.
"What shall I say,"[60] writes the old historian, "but thus we lost him, that in all his proceedings made Justice his first guide, and experience his second, ever hating basenesse, sloath, pride, and indignitie more than any dangers; that never allowed more for himselfe than his soldiers with him; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead himselfe; that would never see us want, what he either had or by any means could get us; that would rather want than borrow or starve than not pay; that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose losse our deaths."
Nobody denies the services John Smith rendered to the infant colony--and yet such was his arrogance, his boastfulness, his intolerant, dogmatic temper, that men took offence, and grudgingly yielded him the honour which was his due. It is true he never failed to put himself well to the fore, and never omitted an opportunity to record his fine achievements. For this men hated him. Diligent as were his enemies, they could not crush him utterly. He filled positions of trust after he left Virginia, visited the northern colony, was allowed to name it "New England," gave the name to Boston and other places on the coast; and thus proved that his colonial career was highly esteemed at home. Whether he deserves it or not, he still holds the foremost place in the early history of Virginia.