Ratcliffe, Archer, and their confederates, laid plans to usurp the government of the colony, whereupon Smith's faithful soldiers, fired with indignation at conduct so infamous, begged for permission to strike off their heads; but this he refused. He refused also to surrender the presidency to Percy. For this, Smith is censured by the historian Stith, who yet acknowledges that Percy was in too feeble health to control a mutinous colony. Anarchy being triumphant, Smith probably deemed it useless to appoint a governor over a mob. He at last, about Michaelmas, 1609, embarked for England, after a stay of a little more than two years in Virginia,[80:A] to which he never returned. Here, then, closes the career of Captain John Smith in Virginia, "the father of the colony," and a hero like Bayard, "without fear and without reproach." One of his comrades, in deploring his departure, describes him as one who, in all his actions, made justice and prudence his guides, abhorring baseness, idleness, pride, and injustice; that in no danger would he send others where he would not lead them himself; that would never see his men want what he had, or could by any means procure; that would rather want than borrow, and rather starve than not pay; that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and avarice worse than death; "whose adventures were our lives, and whose loss our deaths." Another of his soldiers said of him:-- "I never knew a warrior but thee, From wine, tobacco, debts, dice, oaths, so free." From the time of Smith's departure from Virginia to the year 1614, little is known of him. In that year he made his first voyage to New England. In the following year, after many disappointments, sailing again in a small vessel for that country, after a running fight with, and narrow escape from, two French privateers, near Fayal, he was captured, near Flores, by a half-piratical French squadron. After long detention he was carried to Rochelle, in France, and there charged with having burned Port Royal, in New France, which act had been committed by Captain Argall. Smith, at length, at the utmost hazard, escaped from his captors, and being assisted by several of the inhabitants of Rochelle, especially by Madame Chanoyes, he was enabled to return to England. The protective sympathy exhibited toward him, at several critical conjunctures, is thus mentioned in some complimentary verses prefixed to his History of Virginia:-- "Tragabigzanda, Callamata's love, Deare Pocahontas, Madam Shanoi's too, Who did what love with modesty could do."