THE FIRST ISLAND


It is to be remembered that our fleet left London on the twentieth
day of December, and, as I have since heard Captain Smith read
from the pages which he wrote concerning the voyage, it was on the
twenty-third of March that we were come to the island of Martinique,
where for the first time Nathaniel Peacock and I saw living savages.

When we were come to anchor, they paddled out to our ships in frail
boats called canoes, bringing many kinds of most delicious fruits,
which we bought for such trumpery things as glass beads and ornaments
of copper.

It was while we lay off this island that we saw a whale attacked and
killed by a thresher and a swordfish, which was a wondrous sight.

And now was a most wicked deed done by those who claimed to be in
command of our company, for they declared that my master had laid
a plot with some of the men in each vessel of the fleet, whereby
the principal members of the company were to be murdered, to the
end that Captain Smith might set himself up as king after we were
come to the new world.

All this was untrue, as I knew full well, having aided him in such
work as a real clerk would have done, and had there been a plot,
I must have found some inkling of it in one of the many papers I