He was asleep when the ship sighted the Virginia coast and was awakened by the noise and excitement of their arrival in Jamestown. Bertram Hobert hammered on the little wooden shutters around John’s bunk and shouted, ‘Up, man! We’ve arrived!’ and John tumbled out to find the ship in its usual chaos as sailors slackened off the sails and the look-out man shouted directions, and the passengers still battened-down below the hatches tried to repack their goods which had been scattered during the long voyage.

‘Better this time than last,’ Bertram said optimistically. ‘At least we know the dangers now, eh, John?’

John looked into the face of his old friend. The dreadful hollowed face of hunger had gone, replaced by a rosy round prosperity, but most of Bertram’s teeth were missing and the remainder were black.

‘We were greenhorns,’ John said. ‘We knew nothing.’

‘Now we do,’ Bertram said. ‘I will be a man of substance in this land yet, John. I will be a burgess and leave a five-hundred acre plantation.’

‘I wonder what changes have taken place since we were last here?’

‘Nothing but good,’ Mrs Hobert said over her shoulder, throwing linen into a bag. ‘I hear that the savages are quite driven back and there is a road made through the woods from Jamestown down to the sea and westwards along the riverbank inland.’

A sailor lifted the hatch above them and shouted that they could come up on deck. John hefted his chest through the hatchway, and took his bundle of clothing.

‘You’re travelling light,’ Bertram remarked.

‘It is going home that I hope to be laden,’ John said.

They scrambled out on deck and then paused in amazement. For a moment John thought that something had gone ludicrously wrong and they had come to the wrong place. But then he saw that the old wooden fort had gone, the mixture of garrison and town had changed. Before him now was a new town, an elegant town, beautiful and solid and built to last.

A line of stone-built houses with small ornamental gardens before them lined the front road alongside the river and looked down to the quay. Great trees had been left in place to shade the road, and around each tree they had built graceful circular seats so that passers-by could rest in the shade. Each house had a bright new wooden fence before it, one or two even had low stone walls to mark the division between the garden and the street.

There was a pavement slightly raised with wooden beams to keep the ladies’ shoes dry and a gutter for storm water and sewage which drained away into the river.