The colonists experience hard times and a touch of starvation--Fever seizes the settlement and one-half the settlers die--The entire charge of affairs devolves upon Captain Smith--President Wingfield is deposed and Ratcliffe appointed in his place--Smith leads an expedition in search of corn--Returns to find trouble at Jamestown--The blacksmith to be hanged for treason--At the foot of the gallows he divulges a Spanish plot--Captain Kendall, a Councilman, is involved--His guilt is established--He seizes the pinnace and attempts to sail away--Smith trains a cannon upon the boat and forces the traitor to land--He is hanged. Just before the departure of Captain Newport with the two larger ships--the pinnace, _Discovery_, was left for the use of the colonists--Mr. Hunt had administered the communion to the company in the hope that the joint participation in the holy sacrament might create a bond of amity between them. On that occasion Captain Smith had modestly addressed the assembled settlers, urging them to forget past disagreement, as he was ready to do, and address themselves energetically to the important business of the community. “You that of your own accord have hazarded your lives and estates in this adventure, having your country’s profit and renown at heart,” he said with earnestness, “banish from among you cowardice, covetousness, jealousies, and idleness. These be enemies to the raising your honors and fortunes and put in danger your very lives, for if dissension prevail among us, surely we shall become too weak to withstand the Indians. For myself, I ever intend my actions shall be upright and regulated by justice. It hath been and ever shall be my care to give every man his due.” The plain, frank speech moved his hearers, but in the evil times that quickly fell upon them good counsel was forgotten and strife and ill-nature resumed their sway. The colonists had arrived too late in the year to plant and they soon began to experience a shortage of provisions. The grain which had lain six months in the holds of leaky vessels was wormy and sodden, unfit for horses and scarcely eatable by men. Nevertheless, for weeks after Newport left, a small allowance of this formed the principal diet of the unfortunate settlers. The woods abounded in game, it is true, but they were yet unskilled in hunting and dared not venture far from their palisades, whilst the unaccustomed sounds of axe and hammer had driven every beast and most of the birds from the neighborhood. They must have starved but for the sturgeon that they secured from the river. On these they dined with so little variation that their stomachs at last rebelled at the very sight of them. One of this miserable company, describing their condition, says with melancholy humor: “Our drink was water; our lodgings castles in the air.”