On the 21st of August, a fresh start was made. This time a hundred leagues of sea were passed, and the vessels were just rounding Land’s End, when lo, the “Speedwell” again bore up under pretence of unseaworthiness. Once more the shores of England were regained, and anchor was dropped in Plymouth harbor. The captain of the recusant ship, backed by his company, was dismayed at the dangers of the enterprise, and gave out that the “Speedwell” was too weak for the voyage. “Upon this,” says Bradford, “it was resolved to dismiss her and part of the company, and to proceed with the ‘Mayflower.’ This, though it was grievous and caused great discouragement, was put into execution. So after they had taken out such provision as the ‘Mayflower’ could stow, and concluded both what number and what persons to send back, they had another sad parting, the one ship going back to London, and the other preparing for the voyage. Those that returned were such as, for the most part, were willing to do so, either out of discontent or some fear conceived of the ill-success of a voyage pressed against so many crosses, and in a year-time so far spent. Others, in regard to their own weakness and the charge of many young children, were thought least useful, and most unfit to bear the brunt of this hard adventure; unto which work of God and judgment of their brethren they were content to submit. And thus, like Gideon’s army, this small number was divided, as if the Lord thought even these few too many for the great work he had to do.”[125] But though Cushman wrote, “Our voyage thus far hath been as full of crosses as ourselves of crookedness,”[126] no dangers could appal the dauntless; and “having thus winnowed their numbers, the little band, not of resolute men only, but wives, some far gone in pregnancy, children, infants, a floating village, yet in all but one hundred souls, went on board the single ship, which was hired only to carry them across the Atlantic; and on the 6th of September, 1620, thirteen years after the first colonization of Virginia, two months before the concession of the grand charter of Plymouth, without any warrant from the sovereign of England, without any useful charter from a corporate body, the Pilgrims in the ‘Mayflower’ set sail for the New World, where the past could offer no favorable auguries.”[127] But these Christian heroes of a grander venture than that classic voyage which Virgil has sung of old Æneas, “Trojæ qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit Litora,”[128] unawed by the abounding perils of the sea and land, unchilled by the desertion of their comrades, kept on their solitary way, and “bated no jot of heart or hope.”