The "prosperous Rebel" was never to see the fulfilment of his hopes and purposes, however. The week of exposure to the damps and vapors of the Jamestown swamps, during the siege, added to the physical and mental strain he had been under since the beginning of the Rebellion, had done its deadly work. The dauntless and brilliant young General met an unexpected and, for the first time during his career, an unprepared-for enemy in the deadly fever, against which he had no weapon of defense. It is written that he was "besieged by sickness" at the house of Mr. Pate, in Gloucester. He made the brave struggle that was to be expected from one of his fibre, but at length, upon the first day of October, he who had seemed invincible to human foes "surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep into the hands of that grim and all-conquering captain, Death." He died much dissatisfied in mind at leaving his work unfinished, and "inquiring ever and anon after the arrival of the frigates and forces from England." Sir William Berkeley, writing of his enemy's illness and death in a tone of great satisfaction, says that Bacon swore his "usual oath"--"God damn my blood!"--at least "a thousand times a day," and that "God so infected his blood" that it bred vermin in "an incredible number," to which "God added" his sickness. Sir William adds that "an honest minister"--evidently one of the Governor's own adherents--wrote an epitaph upon Bacon declaring that he was "sorry" at his "heart" that vermin and disease "should act the hangman's part." Was this "honest minister" the Reverend Mr. Wading--the same whom Bacon had arrested and debarred from "preaching in camp"? Perhaps, but the deponent saith not. Those who had loved the Rebel in life were faithful to him in death, and tenderly laid his body away beyond the reach of the insults of his enemies. So closely guarded was the secret of the place and manner of his burial that it is unto this day a mystery; but tradition has it that stones were placed in his coffin and he was put to bed beneath the deep waters of the majestic York River, whose waves chant him a perpetual "_requiescat in pace_."