f purpose, recklessness, and
insubordination as from the hostility of the Indians. The majority spent
their time in idleness, quarreling, and plotting mutiny.

The ships departed for England in December, 1608. When Smith returned
from his expedition for food in the winter of 1609, he found that all
the provision except what he had gathered was so rotted from the rain,
and eaten by rats and worms, that the hogs would scarcely eat it. Yet
this had been the diet of the soldiers, who had consumed the victuals
and accomplished nothing except to let the savages have the most of the
tools and a good part of the arms.

Taking stock of what he brought in, Smith found food enough to last till
the next harvest, and at once organized the company into bands of ten or
fifteen, and compelled them to go to work. Six hours a day were devoted
to labor, and the remainder to rest and merry exercises. Even with this
liberal allowance of pastime a great part of the colony still
sulked. Smith made them a short address, exhibiting his power in the
letters-patent, and assuring them that he would enforce discipline and
punish the idle and froward; telling them that those that did not work
should not eat, and that the labor of forty or fifty industrious men
should not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.
He made a public table of good and bad conduct; but even with this
inducement the worst had to be driven to work by punishment or the fear
of it.

The Dutchmen with Powhatan continued to make trouble, and confederates
in the camp supplied them with powder and shot, swords and tools.
Powhatan kept the whites who were with him to instruct the Indians in
the art of war. They expected other whites to join them, and those not
coming, they sent Francis, their companion, disguised as an Indian, to
find out the cause. He came to the Glass house in the woods a mile from
Jamestown, which was the rendezvous for all their villainy. Here they
laid an ambush of forty men for Smith, who hearing of the Dutchman, went
thither to apprehend him. The rascal had gone, and Smith, sending twenty
soldiers to follow and capture him, started alone from the Glass house
to return to the fort. And now occurred another of those personal
adventures which made Smith famous by his own narration.

On his way he encountered the King of Paspahegh, "a most strong, stout
savage," who, seeing that Smith had only his falchion, attempted to
shoot him. Smith gr