certain Captain Argall, who brought intelligence that the Virginia government had been reorganized and Smith removed. The reasons for his disgrace were his "hard dealings with the savages, and not returning the ships freighted"-a bitter charge against a man who had derided the yellow dirt and only seized the corn necessary to save the life of the colony. But all was now decided a new charter from the King (May 23, 1609) had changed the whole face of affairs. The limits of the colony were extended to two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of the mouth of James River; the London Council was to be chosen by the Company, not appointed by the King; and Virginia was to be ruled by a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Admiral, who were empowered in case of necessity to declare martial law. These officers were already appointed: Sir Thomas West, Lord Delaware, was to be Governor and Captain-General; Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-Governor; and Sir George Somers, Admiral all of them men of character. They were to go with a considerable fleet: nine vessels, containing full supplies and five hundred new settlers, men, women, and children -a great contrast to the little trio, the Susan Constant, the Good Speed, and the Discovery, which had dropped down the Thames in December, 1606.

The fleet sailed at the end of May (1609) and went by the Azores. Lord Delaware remained in England, but was to follow a little later, and the ships were under command of Smith's old enemy, Newport. In the same vessel with him sailed Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers with the letters-patent; but this ship, called the Sea-Venture, was never to reach Virginia.

When the fleet was within about eight days' sail of Virginia, misfortune came. They were "caught in the tail of a hurricane," one of the vessels was lost, and the Sea-Venture, with the rulers and one hundred and fifty persons, men, women, and children, was separated from the rest and went on her way elsewhere.

X.

THE SEA-VENTURE.

LET us follow the lonely Sea-Venture on her pathway through the troubled waters, allowing the rest to make their way to Virginia, where we shall rejoin them.

History is after all a story only - the picture of men and their experiences, the scenes they passed through, their hazards, sufferings, and fortunes, good or bad, in their life pilgrimage. "Purchas his Pilgrimmes" is the title of one of the oldest collections of sea voyages. The adventurers of that age were in fact pilgrims making their way through unknown lands, stormy seas, and new experiences. The very name of the Sea-Venture expressed the period; let us therefore glance at this curious episode in the early annals of Virginia, to which it properly belongs.

The rest of the fleet had been driven toward the Chesapeake. The great storm lashing the Sea-Venture, containing the future rulers and the letters-patent, swept her off on her separate way, and "with the violent working of the seas she was so shaken and torn" that she sprung a leak; and then the vivid old chronicle by Jordan and others details what followed. The

crew pumped day and night, but finally gave themselves up for lost. They resolved to "commit themselves to the mercy of the sea, which is said to be merciless, or rather to the mercy of Almighty God, whose mercy far exceeds all his works." But hope came at last. Sir George Somers, the brave old Admiral, who was seated, like Gilbert, at the helm, "scarce taking leisure to eat nor sleep," saw land, toward which the ship was driven. Would she reach it? That seemed doubtful. Their "greedy enemy the salt water entered at the large breaches of their poor wooden castle, as that in gaping after life they had well-nigh swallowed their death." At last the Sea-Venture struck. She lifted, was carried forward on the summit of a wave, and jammed firmly between two ledges of rock, where she rested.

They were cast away on the Bermudas, " two hundred leagues from any continent," and looked with fear on the unknown realm. Now and then the buccaneers had landed, and another English ship had once suffered shipwreck there. One and all had agreed that the islands were "the most dangerous, forlorn, and unfortunate place in the world.” They were called the "Isles of Devils," says Henry May, and the use has been noticed of this popular belief in regard to them in "The Tempest." On the moonlit strand of these "still vext Bermoothes" the hag-born Caliban might roll and growl; Sycorax, the blue-eyed witch, might hover in the cloud wracks; and the voices of the wind whisper strange secrets.1

1 The wreck of the Sea-Venture certainly suggested The Tempest. The phrase "the still vext Bermoothes" indicates the stage, and Ariel's description of his appearance as a flaming light on the shrouds

Seen with the real eye the famous Isles of Devils were very innocent in appearance. They might be full of enchantment, but it was the enchantment of tropical verdure, sunshine, and calm. The fury of the storm had passed away. The Sea-Venture was held fast between the two ledges of rock, and the crew were safely landed in the boats. The summer was at hand, and the air was full of balm. There was food in abundance, fish, turtle, and wild-fowl, with hogs, left probably by the Spanish buccaneers. The stores of the ship were brought off; huts were built, and thatched with palmetto; and then the leaders began to devise means of escape. The Sea-Venture was going to pieces, but the long-boat was fitted with hatches, and a party of nine men set out in it for Virginia. They were never again heard of. However the eyes of the shipwrecked mariners might be strained toward the far-off continent, no succor came. It might never come; they were no doubt given up for lost. There was nothing to do but accept their fate and bear it with fortitude.

It did not seem so hard a fate. The voluptuous airs of the most delicious of climates caressed them. The long surges of the Atlantic, rolling from far-off England and Virginia, had tossed them once, but could not harm them now. The islands were green with foliage and

of the King's ship is nearly identical with the "little round light like a faint star trembling and streaming along in a sparkling blaze, on the Admiral's ship," mentioned by Strachey in his True Repertory of the Wreck and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, published in 1610. The dispersion of both fleets, their arrival in the Chesapeake and the "Mediterranean flote," the safety of the King's ship and the Admiral's ship, the Sea-Venture, these and many incidental details clearly indicate that Shakespeare based his drama on the real occurrence, and used Strachey's True Repertory, and the relations of Jordan, May, and others, as his material.

alive with the songs of birds, and we are told that " they lived in such plenty, peace, and ease that they never wished to go back to the hard Old World, with its hard work, any more. It was an earthly paradise, and they were content to live for the senses; but those worthy gentlemen and true Englishmen, Gates and Somers, would have them perform their religious duties. They had a clergyman, Mr. Bucke, to succeed the good Mr. Hunt, who had died in Virginia, and a bell was brought from the Sea-Venture and set up. When this rang, morning and evening, the people assembled and the roll was called, then prayer was offered up; and on Sunday there was religious service, and two sermons were preached.

So the days went on, and it seemed that the castaways were doomed to remain forever in their enforced paradise. One "merry English marriage" took place, two children were born, and six persons died, among them the wife of Sir George Somers, who was to die himself in these strange islands where the decree of Providence had cast him ashore. The children, a boy and a girl, received the names Bermudas and Bermuda, and Bermuda was the daughter of Mr. John Rolfe, who afterwards became the husband of Pocahontas.

At last discord entered into the terrestrial paradise, and marred all the harmony. Gates and Somers had a misunderstanding, and lived apart from each other. The men and women were no doubt weary of their sweet donothing, and longed to escape. A new effort was made, and Somers succeeded in constructing, of cedar and the bolts and timbers of the Sea-Venture, a bark of eighty tons, and another smaller, which were named the Patience and the Deliverance. A reconciliation then en