"The restive soldier suddenly flamed out. He would be tried in Virginia as was his right--there was the charter! and the trial took place. The result was a ruinous commentary on the characters of Wingfield and the council. The testimony of their own witnesses convicted them of subornation of perjury to destroy Smith. He was acquitted by the jury of all the charges against him, and Kendall, who had conducted the prosecution, was condemned to pay him L200 damages. This sum was presented by Smith to the colony for the general use, and then the foes partook of the commission, and the soldier was admitted to his seat in the council." (Cooke's "History of Virginia.") By autumn the settlement was fearfully reduced in numbers and spirits. Fever, engendered by marshland malaria and famine, threatened utter extinction. "From May to September, those who escaped lived upon sturgeon and sea-crabs; 50 in this time were buried," writes one of the sufferers. "The rest, seeing the president's projects to escape these miseries in our pinnace by flight (who all this time had neither felt want or sickness), so moved our dead spirits as we deposed him and established Ratcliffe in his place." It was an exchange of inefficiency for deliberate wickedness, and in the excess of continued misery the more reasonable of the victims arose as a man and put Smith at the head of affairs. The "terrible summer" left hardly ten men who could wield axe or hoe. Smith himself was ill with malarial fever, yet nursed the sick, prayed with the dying, and kept up the hearts of all by brave words and braver action. He bought corn and meat of the Indians when they would sell, and when they refused, secured supplies by intimidation. Yet we find him, as soon as the immediate peril was over, again the subordinate of envious leaders, and volunteering to satisfy malcontents in America and in England, by heading a party in mid-December to attempt the discovery of the great "South Sea," for so long the _ignis fatuus_ of Western adventurers. The explorers sailed up the James, diverging here and there into the tortuous creeks of the Chickahominy. When stopped by shallows, Smith procured a canoe and Indian guides and pushed on with but two other white men (Robinson and Emry) into the unknown wilderness, teeming with spies jealous of the foreign intruders. Attempting to land at "Powhatan," one of "the emperor's" residences, he and his guide sank into the morass and were fired upon from the shore. "The salvages ... followed him with 300 bowmen, led by the king of Pamunkee, who, searching the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Emry by the fire-side. These they shot full of arrowes and slew."