d it, that
when her father intended to have surprised him, she by stealth in
the dark night came through the wild woods and told him of it.
But her marriage could in no way have entitled him by any right
to the kingdom, nor was it ever suspected he had such a thought, or
more regarded her or any of them than in honest reason and discretion
he might. If he would he might have married her, or have
done what he listed. For there were none that could have hindered
his determination."

It is fair, in passing, to remark that the above allusion to the
night visit of Pocahontas to Smith in this tract of 1612 helps to
confirm the story, which does not appear in the previous narration of
Smith's encounter with Powhatan at Werowocomoco in the same tract,
but is celebrated in the "General Historie." It is also hinted
plainly enough that Smith might have taken the girl to wife, Indian
fashion.

XIV

THE COLONY WITHOUT SMITH

It was necessary to follow for a time the fortune of the Virginia
colony after the departure of Captain Smith. Of its disasters and
speedy decline there is no more doubt than there is of the opinion of
Smith that these were owing to his absence. The savages, we read in
his narration, no sooner knew he was gone than they all revolted and
spoiled and murdered all they encountered.

The day before Captain Smith sailed, Captain Davis arrived in a small
pinnace with sixteen men. These, with a company from the fort under
Captain Ratcliffe, were sent down to Point Comfort. Captain West and
Captain Martin, having lost their boats and half their men among the
savages at the Falls, returned to Jamestown. The colony now lived
upon what Smith had provided, "and now they had presidents with all
their appurtenances." President Percy was so sick he could neither go
nor stand. Provisions getting short, West and Ratcliffe went abroad
to trade, and Ratcliffe and twenty-eight of his men were slain by an
ambush of Powhatan's, as before related in the narrative of Henry
Spelman. Powhatan cut off their boats, and refused to trade, so that
Captain West set sail for England. What ensued cannot be more
vividly told than in the "General Historie":

"Now we all found the losse of Capt. Smith, yea his greatest
maligners could now curse his losse; as for corne provision and
contribution from the salvages, we had nothing but mortall wounds,
with clubs and arrowes; as for our hogs, hens, goats, sheep, horse,
or what lived, o