Some turned cannibals, and an Indian who had been slain was dug out of the ground and devoured.

Others crazed with hunger dogged the footsteps of their comrades; and one man cut his wife into pieces and ate her up, for which barbarous act he was executed.

Even religion failed to afford any consolation, and a man threw his Bible into the fire and cried out in the market-place, "There is no God in heaven." Only Daniel Tucker, afterwards governor of Bermuda, seemed able to take any thought.

He built a boat and caught fish in the river, and "this small relief did keep us from killing one another to eat," says Percy.

Out of more than five hundred colonists in Virginia in the summer of 1609 there remained about the latter part of May, 1610, not above sixty persons--men, women, and children--and even these were so reduced by famine and disease that had help been delayed ten days longer all would have perished.[24] The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates relieved the immediate distress, and he asserted order by the publication of the code of martial law drawn up in England.[25] Then he held a consultation with Somers, Newport, and Percy, and decided to abandon the settlement.