There were not quite enough men to complete the circle of the ambuscade. However, Captain Church took his aide, Major Sanford, by the hand, and said: "Sir, I have so placed the men that it is scarce possible Philip should escape them." There was no thought of sparing King Philip's life. He was an outlaw.
Just as the captain finished his hopeful speech, a gun-shot echoed through the misty gray. Captain Golding's men had come upon one Indian, and had fired, and then had poured a volley into the sleeping camp.
Again from the harried band rose the cry "Awannux! Awannux! (English! English!)" and into the swamp they plunged.
Caleb Cook and Alderman the guide had been stationed together behind a tree. At the first gun-shot, says the Captain Church story, King Philip "threw his petunk (shot pouch) and powder-horn over his head, catched up his gun, and ran as fast as he could scamper, without any more clothes than his small-breeches and stockings."
And here he came, directly for the tree. The two behind it let him come "fair within shot." Then Caleb took the first fire upon him. But the gun only flashed in the pan. He bade the Indian fire away, and Alderman did so true to purpose; sent one musket bullet through King Philip's heart, and another not above two inches from it. The gun had been loaded with two balls.
King Philip "fell upon his face in the mud and the water, with his gun under him." He was dead, at last, on the soil of his long-time home land from which he had sallied to do battle in vain.
"By this time," reads the Captain Church story, "the enemy perceived that they were waylaid on the east side of the swamp, and tacked short about. One of the enemy, who seemed to be a great, surly old fellow, hallooed with a loud voice, and often called out, 'I-oo-tash, I-oo-tash.' Captain Church called to his Indian, Peter, and asked him who that was that called so? He answered, that it was old Annawan, Philip's great captain, calling on his soldiers to stand to it and fight stoutly. Now the enemy finding that place of the swamp which was not ambushed, many of them made their escape in the English tracks."
When the pursuit had quit, Captain Church let his men know that King Philip had been killed, and they gave three cheers.
Then the captain ordered the body to be pulled out of the mud. So some of the Indians "took hold of him by his stockings, and some by his small breeches (being otherwise naked) and drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great, naked, dirty beast he looked like," according to their opinion.
"Forasmuch as you have caused many an Englishman's body to be unburied, and to rot above ground, not one of your bones shall be buried," pronounced Captain Church. And he ordered an old Indian, who acted as executioner, to behead and quarter King Philip.