Something came whizzing over their heads. The next moment the branch of a tree came tumbling down in the midst of them.
"It is thunder," they thought. "The Great Spirit is angry with us."
They fled from the place as fast as their legs would carry them. They did not stop to look around to see what had happened. If they had seen, they would not have understood.
But the white men knew. Some of their friends on board of the ship had seen their danger. They had fired a cross-bar shot from a cannon. That was a bar of iron with a cannon-ball at each end. Such shot are not allowed to be used now-a-days.
Although John Smith and his friends were saved at this time, many other troubles were waiting for them.
They made some houses to live in, but made them so poorly that they leaked and were very damp. They had brought food with them, but there was not enough to last long. It is not strange that many of the party became sick and died.
Those who still lived looked at the gardens of the Indians with a great longing. They watched the fields of corn waving in the breeze, and when it was ripe they tried to buy the grain.
They could not get it by offering money to the Red Men, for the savages had no use for money—that is, for our kind of money. John Smith said to his people:
"I will tell you what I will do. I will take some beads and other cheap trinkets and will go up the river in a boat. I can surely get some corn if I am willing to give the trinkets in return."
When the Indians saw the beads, bits of looking-glass, and other ornaments, they longed to have them. They wanted them so much that they gladly gave Smith a boatload of corn. In this way he saved his people from sickness and death.