The colony had never been in a better condition than now to make good progress. The settlers were well content with the rule of Smith and Scrivener, who always knew just what they wanted to do and how to do it. Work and rations were fairly apportioned. Gentlemen were required to take their turn at labor with the rest. A military company was formed and drilled, and the Indians were kept in check by the practice of diplomacy and a show of force. This happy state of things was completely upset by the return of Newport with instructions from his employers to discover the South Sea, to bring back gold, and to search for the survivors of the lost Roanoke colony. But this was not the sum of Newport’s mad mission. He was also charged with the coronation of Powhatan, to whom King James sent a present of a wash-basin and pitcher and an Elizabethan bed with its furnishings. Newport failed to bring the food and other things of which the settlers stood in such constant need, but instead landed seventy Dutchmen and Poles for the purpose of establishing manufactories of “pitch, tar, glass and soap-ashes.” By this time, Smith had been regularly elected President. He was thoroughly disgusted with the foolish instructions of the London company, and when Newport undertook to undo much of the good work that had been accomplished with so great trouble, even going so far as to restore Ratcliffe to the presidency, Smith bluntly gave him his choice of immediately taking himself and his ship off, or of being detained for a year that he might gain the experience that he was sadly in need of. Newport wisely chose the former alternative and sailed away, having, as before, sown the seeds of trouble from which the colonists were to reap a bitter crop before long. XX. DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND Smith goes on a foraging expedition and engages in a contest of wits with Powhatan--Doctor Russell and Captain Smith get into a tight place--And get out again--Powhatan plans to murder his adopted son--Pocahontas warns the Captain of the intended treachery--The feast and the disappointed waiters--How eight designing Indians afford goodly entertainment to three Englishmen--And how they are neatly laid by the heels by their intended victims--“The English sleep like the village dog, with one eye cocked”--How the ambushers were ambushed and the captors captured--“If there be one among you bold enough to essay a single combat, let him come out!”