Saturday, October 11, 2014

A miraculous deliverance!


More from JAMESTOWN: THE NOVEL:        
         
          But at last they could see that it was neither a galleon nor a pinnace, but a smaller craft, a longboat with a single spritsail. In her bow, her commanding officer began waving both arms and shouting.
         “I come from Lord de la Warr! Is Sir Thomas Gates aboard?”
         “Good God!” Aboard the Deliverance, Thomas Gates was thunderstruck. “I don’t believe it! De la Warr!”
         Around him and on the decks of the other three ships arose a hubbub of voices that filled the air like the humming of beehives suddenly disturbed....
        
          Miracle of miracles: the relief expedition, with Sir Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, the new governor of Virginia and three ships-- the flagship De La Warr, the Blessing, and the Hercules-- bearing a hundred and fifty new colonists and “great store of victuals” for the Virginia colony--had come! That meant food at last: dried beef, cheese, salted codfish, peas, oats, oil and vinegar, cider, beer--enough to gladden hungry hearts. As soon as De La Warr had heard from Davis’s men at Algernon Fort what had happened at Jamestown he had dispatched a longboat upriver to intercept the little fleet of pinnaces.
He ordered Gates and the whole company to return at once to Jamestown.  One can only imagine what the emaciated colonists thought of this plan.

 Lieutenant Governor Gates, thinking of the Indians, was glad he had buried the cannons. They could be dug up.

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