"
The Sea Adventure was but a wreck pinned between the reefs. No sail was
seen upon the blue water. Where they were thrown, there Gates and Somers
and Newport and all must stay for a time and make the best of it. They
builded huts and thatched them, and they brought from the wrecked ship,
pinned but half a mile from land, stores of many kinds. The clime proved of
the blandest, fairest; with fishing and hunting they maintained themselves.
Days, weeks, and months went by. They had a minister, Master Buck. They
brought from the ship a bell and raised it for a church-bell. A marriage, a
few deaths, the birth of two children these were events on the island. One
of these children, the daughter of John Rolfe, gentleman, and his wife, was
christened Bermuda. Gates and Somers held kindly sway. The colonists lived
in plenty, peace, and ease. But for all that, they were shipwrecked folk,
and far, far out of the world, and they longed for the old ways and their
own kin. Day followed day, but no sail would show to bear them thence; and
so at last, taking what they could from the forests of the island, and from
the Sea Adventure, they set about to become shipwrights.
And there two gallant pynases,
Did build of Seader-tree,
The brave Deliverance one was call'd,
Of seaventy tonne was shee,
The other Patience had to name,
Her burthen thirty tonne . . . .
. . . The two and forty weekes being past
They hoyst sayle and away;
Their shippes with hogges well freighted were,
Their harts with mickle joy.
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