sail was espied, which sent all the ships forward in pursuit-all but the English vessel. Here, his discontents availing themselves of Smith's absence, the confusion of the chase, and the approach of night, turned their prow for England; leaving "our Captaine in his cap, bretches, and waistcoat, alone among the Frenchmen." Smith asserts that his detention among the French was intentional, and induced in some degree by the machinations of two of his own seamen, Edward Chambers, the master, and John Miller, the mate, who had been discontents from the beginning of the voyage. They represented that he would “ revenge himself upon the Banke, or in Newfoundland, upon all the French he should there encounter." The mutineers reached Plymouth in safety, having divided Smith's personal property among them. A commission was instituted before the vice-admiral of England to investigate the proceedings, and the particulars thus given were derived from the statements, on oath, of six of the crew. Whether the mutineers were ever punished for this proceeding does not appear. The probabilities are against it. "The greatest losse," says Smith, "being mine,' ""the sailers did easily excuse themselves to the merchants in England that still provided to follow the fishing: much difference there was betwixt the Londoners and Westerlings to ingrosse it, who now would adventure thousands, that when I first went would not adventure a groat." Indeed, so completely had our Captain shown the way, that he might almost as justly claim to have founded New England as Virginia.

Smith remained during the whole summer a prisoner on board the Frenchman. He soon discovered that his captors were little better than pirates. They certainly sailed under a commission which conferred great privileges. They scrupled at no sort of game. Nothing came amiss

that promised to compensate the trouble and the cost of capture; and the cruise was one which promised to be profitable in a high degree. English ships were as frequently plundered as any other; and our Captain was frequently pained to see wrongs done to his countrymen, such as he himself had suffered, which he had not the power to prevent. But the English ships were sometimes hard customers for our French admiral; and Smith indulges in a tone of laudable exultation when he finds the courage of his tribe asserting itself, now and then, triumphant over the cunning and treachery of their enemies. The details of what he witnessed during his captivity will scarce concern us here. Our business is rather with himself. He was not idle during his captivity. Some time was spent by the French admiral in the neighborhood of the Azores. Here, "to keepe his perplexed thoughts from too much meditation of his miserable estate," he employed himself in writing a narrative of his voyages to New England, with an account of that country. His mind was never idle. His eye took in the details of a subject at a glance, and his thoughts compassed all its demands and necessities the moment after. Nor did our Frenchmen leave him unemployed. They were glad to use him whenever they fought with the Spaniards, and he seems to have been no ways unwilling to encounter the national enemy. But when the foe was English, then he was again made a prisoner. His readiness in these cases secured the favor of his captors. The French captain promised to put him ashore at the Azores, but broke his promise, and it was not till the summer was over that he was permitted to approach the land. Reaching Rochelle, the fair promises of the captain were forgotten, and Smith, instead of freedom and reward, was made a close prisoner, and charged with having burnt Port Royal in New France, in 1613 a deed that

was done by Capt. Argall. The object of this accusation was to scare him into giving them a discharge before the Judge of Admiralty.

Our hero was very much in their power. It was not easy to find justice for an Englishman in France, during the feeble foreign administration of any of the Stuart family. Besides, it was a time of great civil commotion among the French—“ a time of combustion, the Prince of Condy with his army in the field, and every poor lord or man in authority, as little kings of themselves."

Smith reasoned justly when he concluded that his chief hope must rest upon himself. He determined to escape, if possible. He watched his opportunities accordingly, and, one dark night, at the close of a storm, which had driven the Frenchmen into close cover below, he let himself down into their boat, and with a half pike instead of an oar, he set himself adrift in the hope to reach a contiguous islet. But the current was against nim, and carried him out to sea. Here, in a small boat, without even the proper implement by which to work his way, amidst gust, and rain, and darkness, for the space of twelve hours our fearless adventurer, struggling manfully all the while against his fate, looked momentarily to be hurried to the bottom. "But it pleased God that the wind should turn with the tide," and while many ships were driven ashore and divers split," his boat was drifted upon a marshy islet, where he was picked up the next day by certaine fowlers, neere drowned and halfe dead with water, cold and hunger.' His escape had been a narrow one. In flying from captivity he had also flown from death. The ship of his captors had been driven ashore

and her captain drowned with half of his crew.

CHAPTER III.

THUS preserved by the special mercies of Providence amidst so many disasters, and even against his own expec tations, Smith found the means for getting to Rochelle by pawning the boat which had borne him through his dangers. At this place he preferred his complaint to the Judge of Admiralty, against the Frenchman who had captured him, and was listened to with patience and many promises. Here he first received tidings of the wreck of the vessel in which he had been detained, and the drowning of her commander. Some of the survivors whom he encountered he caused to be arrested, and their story, on examination, confirmed his own. These particulars, properly put on record, he placed in the hands of the English ambassador, then at Bordeaux. But nothing seems to have come of his complaint. The foreign relations of the Government of Great Britain, under the feeble administration of James, were not of a sort to command much respect among the natives of the continent. Smith says

“of the wracke of the rich prize, some three thousand six hundred crownes worth of goods came ashore and were saved, with the caraval, which I did my best to arrest; the Judge promised I should have justice; what will be the conclusion as yet I know not. But, under the colour to take Pirats and the West Indie men (because the Spaniards will not suffer the French to trade in the West Indies), any goods from thence, though they take them upon the coast of Spaine, are lawfull prize, or from any of his territories out of the limits of Europe:-and as they