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 read aloud to him,
or copied down on other sheets that the work of the quill might be more
pleasing to the eye.
Besides that, I had been with the captain a goodly portion of the time
while the ships were being made ready for the voyage, and if he had
harbored so much of wickedness, surely must some word of it have come to
me, who sat or stood near at hand, listening attentively whenever he had
speech with others of the company of adventurers.