John Smith looms large among them. John Smith has a mantle of marvelous adventure. It seems that he began to make it when he was a boy, and for many years worked upon it steadily until it was stiff as cloth of gold and voluminous as a puffed-out summer cloud. Some think that much of it was such stuff as dreams are made of. Probably some breadths were the fabric of vision. Still it seems certain that he did have some kind of an extraordinary coat or mantle. The adventures which he relates of himself are those of a paladin. Born in 1579 or 1580, he was at this time still a young man. But already he had fought in France and in the Netherlands, and in Transylvania against the Turks. He had known sea-fights and shipwrecks and had journeyed, with adventures galore, in Italy. Before Regal, in Transylvania, he had challenged three Turks in succession, unhorsed them, and cut off their heads, for which doughty deed Sigismund, a Prince of Transylvania, had given him a coat of arms showing three Turks' heads in a shield. Later he had been taken in battle and sold into slavery, whereupon a Turkish lady, his master's sister, had looked upon him with favor. But at last he slew the Turk and escaped, and after wandering many days in misery came into Russia. "Here, too, I found, as I have always done when in misfortune, kindly help from a woman." He wandered on into Germany and thence into France and Spain. Hearing of wars in Barbary, he crossed from Gibraltar.
Here he met the captain of a French man-of-war. One day while he was with this man there arose a great storm which drove the ship out to sea. They went before the wind to the Canaries, and there put themselves to rights and began to chase Spanish barks. Presently they had a great fight with two Spanish men-of-war, in which the French ship and Smith came off victors. Returning to Morocco, Smith bade the French captain good-bye and took ship for England, and so reached home in 1604. Here he sought the company of like-minded men, and so came upon those who had been to the New World--"and all their talk was of its wonders." So Smith joined the Virginia undertaking, and so we find him headed toward new adventures in the western world.
On sailed the three ships--little ships--sailing-ships with a long way to go.
"The twelfth day of February at night we saw a blazing starre and presently a storme . . . . The three and twentieth day [of March] we fell with the Iland of Mattanenio in the West Indies. The foure and twentieth day we anchored at Dominico, within fourteene degrees of the Line, a very faire Iland, full of sweet and good smells, inhabited by many Savage Indians ....
The six and twentieth day we had sight of Marigalanta, and the next day wee sailed with a slacke sail alongst the Ile of Guadalupa . . . . We sailed by many Ilands, as Mounserot and an Iland called Saint Christopher, both uninhabited; about two a clocke in the afternoone wee anchored at the Ile of Mevis. There the Captaine landed all his men . . . . We incamped ourselves on this Ile six days . . . . The tenth day [April] we set saile and disimboged out of the West Indies and bare our course Northerly ....
The six and twentieth day of Aprill, about foure a clocke in the morning, wee descried the Land of Virginia."*
* Percy's "Discourse in Purchas, His Pilgrims, vol. IV, p. 1684.
Also given in Brown's "Genesis of the United States", vol. I, p. 152.
During the long months of this voyage, cramped in the three ships, these men, most of them young and of the hot-blooded, physically adventurous sort, had time to develop strong likings and dislikings. The hundred and twenty split into opposed camps. The several groups nursed all manner of jealousies. Accusations flew between like shuttlecocks. The sealed box that they carried proved a manner of Ate's apple. All knew that seven on board were councilors and rulers, with one of the number President, but they knew not which were the seven. Smith says that this uncertainty wrought much mischief, each man of note suggesting to himself, "I shall be President--or, at least, Councilor!" The ships became cursed with a pest of factions. A prime quarrel arose between John Smith and Edward-Maria Wingfield, two whose temperaments seem to have been poles apart. There arose a "scandalous report, that Smith meant to reach Virginia only to usurp the Government, murder the Council, and proclaim himself King. The bickering deepened into forthright quarrel, with at last the expected explosion. Smith was arrested, was put in irons, and first saw Virginia as a prisoner.
