For the next few years Dale becomes, in effect, ruler of Virginia. He did
much for the colony, and therefore, in that far past that is not so distant
either, much for the United States - a man of note, and worth considering.

Dale had seen many years of service in the Low Countries. He was still in
Holland when the summons came to cross the ocean in the service of the
Virginia Company. On the recommendation of Henry, Prince of Wales, the
States-General of the United Netherlands consented "that Captain Thomas
Dale (destined by the King of Great Britain to be employed in Virginia in
his Majesty's service) may absent himself from his company for the space of
three years, and that his said company shall remain meanwhile vacant, to be
resumed by him if he think proper."

This man had a soldier's way with him and an iron will. For five years in
Virginia he exhibited a certain stern efficiency which was perhaps the best
support and medicine that could have been devised. At the end of that time,
leaving Virginia, he did not return to the Dutch service, but became
Admiral of the fleet of the English East India Company, thus passing from
one huge historic mercantile company to another. With six ships he sailed
for India. Near Java, the English and the Dutch having chosen to quarrel,
he had with a Dutch fleet "a cruel, bloody fight." Later, when peace was
restored, the East India Company would have given him command of an allied
fleet of English and Dutch ships, the objective being trade along the coast
of Malabar and an attempt to open commerce with the Chinese. But Sir
Thomas Dale was opening commerce with a vaster, hidden land, for at
Masulipatam he died. "Whose valor," says his epitaph, "having shined in the
Westerne, was set in the Easterne India."

But now in Maytime of 1611 Dale was in Virginian waters. By this day,
beside the main settlement of Jamestown, there were at Cape Henry and Point