Yeardley had done all he could do, more than
most men would have dared to do, in procuring this delay. There
was no further help in him; nor would I have asked it. Already out
of favor with the Warwick faction, he had risked enough for me
and mine. I could not flee with my wife to the Indians, exposing
her, perhaps, to a death by fierce tortures; moreover,
Opechancanough had of late strangely taken to returning to the
settlements those runaway servants and fugitives from justice
which before we had demanded from him in vain. If even it had
been possible to run the gauntlet of the Indian villages, war parties,
and hunting bands, what would have been before us but endless
forest and a winter which for us would have had no spring? I could
not see her die of hunger and cold, or by the teeth of the wolves. I
could not do what I should have liked to do, - take, single-handed,
that King's ship with its sturdy crew and sail with her south and
ever southwards, before us nothing more formidable than Spanish
ships, and beyond them blue waters, spice winds, new lands,
strange islands of the blest.
There seemed naught that I could do, naught that she could do.
Our Fate had us by the hands, and held us fast. We stood still, and
the days came and went like dreams.
While the Assembly was in session I had my part to act as Burgess
from my hundred.
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