“We have guns, Sam, and the Indians don’t,” Smith said. “And we had the benefit of surprise. I was confident of the outcome.”
Sam paused, trying to think of a way to express what else was on his mind. Isn’t it a crime to attack a village? Isn’t it stealing to take food by force? Those goods that we gave in exchange for all that food were of little value. What Sam really wanted to ask was: Now that we’ve treated the Indians so badly, mightn’t they resume their attacks on our fort?
Smith seemed to understand what was bothering Sam. “Lad, I’ve traveled in many lands,” he said, “and I’ve learned that people won’t respect you unless you show them your strength. When the Kecoughtan chief saw us coming peaceably—to offer goods in trade for food—he treated us like beggars and tossed a few crumbs at us. I knew we’d never get a fair trade as long as the Indians consider us weaklings. We had to show our might.
“Mark my words, Sam. The chief of Kecoughtan will respect us in the future. And news of our boldness will spread to the other Indian villages, as well.” Smith met the boy’s gaze. “Do you understand?”
Sam didn’t reply. He lowered his eyes. He didn’t dare offend Smith, but he did think his master had been reckless with the lives of his own men and cruel to the Indians.
Smith laughed. “You think I’m wrong, don’t you?” Smith clapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Well, Sam, wait and see how the Indians treat us next time we send out a trading party.”
During the autumn, English trading parties traveled up and down the river. Usually, John Smith led them, and Sam went along. Sam watched the Indian chiefs greet Smith with great courtesy. In fact, Smith was able to make much better deals than the other English traders. Among the Indians, Smith was treated as if he was the head of James Fort.
In the fort, Smith’s reputation grew among the laborers. Every time his trading parties returned with bushels of corn, the men cheered. The shelves in the storehouse filled up with food. Sam felt sure their settlement could now survive the winter, even if a supply ship from England did not reach Virginia before cold weather set in. The little plot of wheat that Smith had insisted the settlers plant yielded a small but welcome crop. The new buildings made the fort seem a sturdier place, a place with some permanence.
But Sam noticed an undercurrent of unrest in the fort. Not all of the settlers were satisfied. Conversations halted abruptly when Sam walked by. Some of the gentlemen were whispering about John Smith, Sam was sure of it. He asked Nate what the men were saying.
“That your master is bossy and arrogant!” Nate replied. “That he enjoys giving orders to men of higher status.”
“You don’t feel that way about Master Smith, do you?”
Nate paused. “No,” he said at last. “I respect Master Smith, Sam. I really do. But sometimes I’ve thought that he’s a hard man to like.”
Sam pretended that he didn’t notice the whispers about his master. But they made him nervous. These vague resentments had turned deadly before. How could he forget the gallows in the West Indies?
The lush green of summer began to thin, and at night the air became cool and pleasant. At last, the daytime weather turned crisp. Sam noticed that when he walked through the woods, the fallen leaves crunched beneath his feet. He had a clear view of Virginia’s blue sky, even when he was in dense forest. Soon the mornings were cold enough for Sam to see his breath when he left the sleeping quarters.
The autumn weather didn’t cool the men’s tempers, though. George Kendall was back to his old ways, stirring up discontent among the colonists. Sam often saw him talking with little clusters of gentlemen. Whenever Sam or John Smith came near, the men shifted their gaze and lowered their voices. Kendall wasn’t permitted to carry a gun because his name had never been completely cleared. But his words were just as persuasive as before.
Now that his master was out and about, Richard Mutton returned to his old habits, too. He snickered whenever he saw Sam at work. Sam wished he’d spoken his mind when Master Kendall was under arrest. If I’d given him a taste of his own medicine, Sam thought, maybe he wouldn’t act so snotty now.
Oddly enough, George Kendall was becoming very friendly with the colony’s new president, John Ratcliffe. He even moved into the president’s house. Ratcliffe went so far as to put Kendall in charge of the next trading expedition.
“How can Master Kendall lead a trading expedition?” Sam asked Smith. “I thought he wasn’t allowed to carry a weapon.”
Smith snorted, his nostrils flaring, but he didn’t answer. Sam noticed that his master’s jaw tightened whenever Kendall’s name was mentioned in a conversation. Since Kendall had become President Ratcliffe’s constant companion, Smith kept his distance from both men.
One day, an argument broke out between President Ratcliffe and one of the laborers, James Read the blacksmith. The argument grew heated, and Read insulted the president.
“Look here, man!” Ratcliffe shouted. “As president of this colony, I will not put up with insolence from a worker.” Ratcliffe slapped Read’s face. He called a guard and said, “I want you to restrain this man.”
When the guard reached for Read, the blacksmith became furious. He shoved aside the guard, punched Ratcliffe in the stomach, and knocked him to the ground. The president staggered to his feet, and Read lunged for Ratcliffe’s neck. It took several men to pull the blacksmith away.
“Come near me again, and I’ll shove this anvil down your throat!” Read screamed. “I’ll kill you—president or not!”
Ratcliffe gasped, “You’re threatening me? You scoundrel! I’ll have your tongue silenced once and for all!”
Read was quickly tried, found guilty of insubordination, and condemned to death. To save his life, he volunteered to reveal a mutiny.
According to the blacksmith, George Kendall was at the heart of the plot. Kendall had stolen supplies from the storehouse and loaded them aboard the Discovery. Under the guise of outfitting the ship for a trading party, Kendall was secretly planning to head for England!
Kendall was already aboard ship when the councilmen heard the blacksmith’s story. Rushing to the guard platform, they ordered Kendall to come ashore. He resisted until the fort’s cannon was pointed at the ship. After he surrendered, the councilmen searched the ship. Sure enough, they discovered letters, stolen goods, and other evidence. Kendall was bound, tried, and convicted. Found guilty of mutiny, he was shot to death.
Sam was stunned. “They’ve executed an Englishman! A gentleman!” he said to Nate. “Half of our men have already died from sickness or Indian attacks. With so few settlers left, I don’t think the council ought to put a man to death as a punishment. Do you? Master Kendall suffered through the seasoning, just like the rest of us.”
Nate shrugged. “George Kendall deserved to die. He was a spy and a traitor. He got caught stealing that ship and our supplies, didn’t he? He was planning to leave the rest of us here to starve. Why waste your pity on such a man?” Nate stared vacantly into the trees. “So many others have died. Innocent men, who suffered and died in pain—those are the men I pity.”
When Sam questioned John Smith about the matter, his master’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Kendall wasn’t the first criminal who disguised himself in the clothes of an English gentleman, Sam. And he won’t be the last. That matter is done, and good riddance, I say. We’ve got the future to look to. Our food stocks have been rescued from Kendall’s thieving hands, but we haven’t got enough in the storehouse to last the winter. We need to send out another trading party, and soon. It’s already December. I don’t know how long the weather will accommodate travel.”
Sam stared at John Smith. He’s happy! My master is happy that George Kendall was convicted and put to death, Sam realized. Then he examined his own feelings. It is a relief to know that Kendall isn’t walking around anymore, whispering behind Master Smith’s back, stirring up trouble. Sam shuddered. What’s happening to me? What’s happening to all of us?
9
John Smith took charge of the trading party. He set out on December 10 with nine men and the boys, Sam and Nate. His goal was to trade with the Indians and to explore the Chickahominy River in hopes of discovering gold and precious minerals.
The Chickahominy flowed into the James a few miles north and west of the fort. Its banks were lined with red and yellow clay and bounded by fields of rich, black soil. Sam had never seen as many fish as he found in these waters, and the waterfowl were just as plentiful as the fish. The shores were dotted by Indian villages whose inhabitants seemed to thrive on the richness of their land.
The party traveled forty miles up the Chickahominy, passing a large village that the Indians called Apokant. Ten miles further, the river narrowed into a swiftly flowing stream. Afraid their boat would run aground, Smith ordered the men to turn around and anchor near the village. He went ashore and hired a canoe and two Indian guides. He took two men with him, a gentleman named John Robinson and Thomas Emry, a carpenter. All three took their guns so they could hunt for wildfowl. Smith told the others to stay on the boat until he returned.
Sam and Nate waited aboard the boat with the seven remaining men. They fished and cooked over a little fire in an iron pot on deck. That night, they slept aboard the boat. All the next day, the boys watched the activity along the shore beside the village. By nightfall, both boys and men were as restless as caged animals.
“I say let’s have a look at the land around the village,” said a laborer named George Cassen. “We could be here for days waiting for the captain. We’ve got to do something while we wait.”
“Captain Smith told us to wait on the boat,” another man said. “Those were his orders.”
“That he did,” Cassen retorted. “But Captain Smith hates idleness more than he hates poison. What harm could come from doing a bit of hunting?”
In the end, Cassen won, mainly because the men were tired of being cooped up in the boat. They pulled up anchor and rowed the boat to shore fifty yards upriver from the village. Cassen cut seven small reeds and trimmed them to the same length, then shortened one of them. He told Sam to hold the reeds so the shortened end was concealed in his hand.
Each man drew a reed, and as luck would have it, Cassen drew the short one. He had to stay by the boat as guard, while the others divided into two groups to explore the woods near the river. The men took their guns, but they left their armor on board because the day was unseasonably warm and because the villagers seemed peaceful enough. Before the groups separated, they agreed to use a birdcall as a signal, in case somebody needed help or Smith’s canoe was spotted.
Two of the men told Sam and Nate to come with them. Sam was keenly aware of the noises they made as they tramped over the brittle twigs and dry leaves. He worried about leaving the boat against Master Smith’s orders and about hunting so close to the Indian village. But the men had made up their minds to go on shore, and they hadn’t given the boys any choice about going along.
After walking for about thirty minutes, Sam’s group stepped into a clearing with a pond in the middle. The pond was teeming with geese.
The hunters spread out. Sam moved to the right and crept through the trees to the far side of the pond. Taking care not to alarm the geese, he pushed through some bushes and waited. He thought he heard a far-off birdcall—the signal the men had agreed to use if somebody needed help. Sam crouched down and listened carefully, but he didn’t hear another birdcall. Has one of the men met some Indians? he wondered.
Suddenly a shot rang out. A clatter of honking and splashing came from the pond. Sam heard Nate’s voice: “Got it!”
Sam rushed into the clearing and spotted Nate by the side of the pond. He was dragging a limp goose out of the water with a branch. Running to Nate’s side, Sam helped his friend haul the big bird out of the water. The men joined them.
“The other birds have flown,” one of them said. “Heading west.” He turned to Nate. “Next time you go hunting, lad, wait until everybody’s ready before you shoot. The noise frightens the rest of the flock, and they all fly off.”
The group walked in a westerly direction for a few hours, but never came upon any signs of geese. When the sunlight slanted low through the trees, they turned back. They reached the shore of the Chickahominy as dusk was falling. The other group of hunters was already on board.
“Where’s Cassen?” they asked, as soon as Sam’s group climbed aboard.
“What do you mean? I thought he was guarding the ship.”
“He wasn’t here when we got back. We thought maybe he was with you.”
“How long have you been back here?”
“Less than an hour.”
Sam could tell that the men were worried, but nobody voiced what was on their minds.
“I thought I heard a birdcall when we were at that pond,” Sam said. “Did any of you signal?”
The men looked at each other. One man said, “It didn’t come from our group. Maybe it was Cassen.”
“Why didn’t you mention it before, lad?” asked a man from Sam’s group.
“I wasn’t sure if it really was a signal. Then Nate shot the goose, and I never thought about it again—until now.”
The men frowned. They glanced at the woods and squinted at the path leading toward the village.
“I knew we should’ve stayed on the river. Like the cap’n ordered,” one man grumbled, shaking his head.
“What’s done is done,” said another. “I say we pull up anchor and get out of here. Before them savages come after us.”
Sam was astonished. “We can’t just leave,” he gasped. “What will happen to Cassen? And Master Smith? He and Master Robinson and Emry may be back any time now. We told them we’d meet them here.”
One of the men scowled at Sam. “We can’t afford to put this boat in danger, boy. It looks to me like the savages ambushed George Cassen. I’m thinking that John Smith and the others are already taken prisoner. They could be dead by now, for all we know. I say we head back to the fort and thank our lucky stars if we make it alive.”
“I won’t abandon Master Smith!” Sam said in a voice so loud that he surprised himself. He looked at Nate for support.
Nate shrugged. “Cassen could be in Apokant,” he said reasonably. “The Indians could have invited him to eat with them. Shouldn’t we wait and find out what’s going on before we run away?”
The men’s voices were tense. “Cassen wouldn’t just leave the boat—against orders.”
“We all left the boat, against orders,” Sam blurted out.
“Look, boy, it’s easy to talk brave. Are you willin’ to go into the village and see if Cassen is there?” demanded one of the men.
Sam stared at them. They’re cowards, he thought. I wish I hadn’t gone along with them when they disobeyed my master’s orders. “Yes!” Sam said, his voice trembling. “I’ll go.”
Nate jumped to his feet and stepped to Sam’s side.
“No, Nate. I’m going alone,” Sam said. “Two will make more noise than one.”
Sam turned to the men. “I’ll sneak into the village. If I find Cassen and he’s safe, I’ll give a shout so you’ll know there’s no need to worry. But if Cassen is in trouble, I’ll come back as soon as I can. You take the boat out to the middle of the river and drop anchor to wait for me. I’ll throw rocks into the water to let you know where I am, so you can pick me up.”
“And since when does a servant boy give orders to grown men?” one man snarled.
Another man shrugged, “The lad’s plan sounds fine to me. If he’s willin’ to sneak into the savages’ village to look for Cassen, I say let him. Tell you one thing—I’m not about to volunteer for the job!”
One of the men glared at Sam. “If we don’t hear from you by daybreak, we’re taking the boat back to the fort.”
Sam nodded and locked eyes with Nate. He knew that Nate wouldn’t let the men break their word and leave without waiting for him. But if somethin
g happened and Sam couldn’t return by morning….
Knowing it was best to travel as lightly as possible, Sam put down the heavy gun that he’d been carrying. He took off his shoes and left them on the ship. Before he scrambled onto shore, Nate handed him a knife.
Sam picked his way through trees and underbrush toward the village. It would have been easier to make his way along the shore, but he didn’t want the Indians to see him coming. As soon as he left the sounds of the river and entered the woods, he could hear voices. They were continuous, sometimes rising into odd yips, sometimes falling into a low chant. When he reached the edge of the village, the houses looked deserted. Sam saw smoke rising from a clearing between the dwellings. The voices were coming from that direction. Darting from tree to tree, he finally got close enough to see.
George Cassen was standing naked in front of a large fire, his back against two stakes in the ground. His hands and feet were bound to the stakes with thick ropes, and his toes were practically touching the flames. Cassen’s body was shining in the firelight. Sweat plastered down his hair, and his head sagged on his chest. Blood ran in glistening streaks down his arms and legs.
Sam held his breath. The village women were circling the fire, holding large shells. As they danced in and out, they chanted. Every few minutes, one of the women raised her voice and make that odd yipping sound while she lunged and jabbed Cassen with the sharp edge of her shell. The Englishman screamed when the shells cut his skin. The men of the village sat on mats watching the spectacle. Their faces and chests were painted, and they chanted along with the women. Sam’s hand closed tightly over the handle of his knife, and he looked around wildly for something he could do to make the torture stop.
Suddenly, one of the women let out an ear-piercing shriek and made a stab at Cassen’s head. She swooped and tore at his ear-lobe, then waved her fist in front of Cassen’s eyes before heaving the bloody lump into the fire. Cassen roared, then cried out in a voice choked with sobs, “Stop, I beg of you!”
Sam backed up and stumbled into the trees, praying the Indians didn’t hear him. Trembling all over, he leaned against a trunk. His head began to swim, and he held onto the rough bark. Then he leaned over and vomited. The stench of his vomit mingled with the image of Cassen’s torture, and Sam heaved again and again until his stomach was empty.
Surviving Jamestown Page 11
