Lieutenant-General Thomas Gates, whose
commission made him governor of the Virginia colony, was “much grieved” at the
sight of Jamestown Fort. He walked slowly to the desolate-looking little church
in the center of the palisade. Spying the church bell, Gates asked that it be
rung. Then he stepped inside, and the shocked castaways from Bermuda trooped
into the small wooden structure after their leader. The deep, clangorous notes
of the bell rang above their heads. After that, as William Strachey remembered
(he would soon become the colony’s secretary) in a few moments “all such as
were able to come forth of their houses repaired to church.”
Many
of the sixty men, women, and children at Jamestown were too weak to “come
forth.” Those who were able to shuffle into the church looked, as Percy had
described them, as thin as bare trees, their ragged clothes hanging on them
like dead leaves.
But on that day, amid the horrors,
there was inexpressible joy for a few. At least two Jamestown wives were
reunited with Sea Venture survivors: husbands
they had thought never to see again. Temperance and George Yeardley found each
other. William Pierce embraced Joan and their four-year-old daughter, Jane. The
young husbands’ happiness was dimmed only by their loved ones’ pitiful,
malnourished conditions, by the sunken eyes in gray, gaunt faces, the
once-rounded bodies wasted to stick-figure shapes.
Months
of slow starvation had taken a toll: Temperance Yeardley would not bear a child
for eight years; Joan Pierce, never again.
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