Only one of the Englishmen noticed a peculiar thing at this moment. Nothing seemed to escape the keen eyes of Captain Smith. Shifting his glance from the little boat speeding up stream, he looked to the left, or south. The shore was a long distance away, for the river is very wide at this point, and he saw a thin column of smoke filtering upwards from among the trees on a wooded elevation, a little way inland. It was not an ordinary column of vapor, such as burning brushwood makes, but it had a wavy motion from side to side. The same clear vision which noted this, noted also that the column of smoke was broken so as to show two distinct gaps between the base and the top, where it melted into the clear atmosphere against the blue sky beyond.