And in answer to their questions Samoset told them many things about that country. As for the Nauset Indians, who had attacked them so fiercely at The Place of the First Encounter, he said that these Nausets hated all white men because a certain Englishman, one Captain Hunt, a short time before the Pilgrims landed, had cruelly deceived the Nauset Indians, kidnapping twenty of them, and selling them to other white men.
All this and much more, Samoset told the Pilgrims. He stayed with them that night. The next day they sent him away with a gift of a knife, a ring, and a bracelet. He went off promising that he would come soon again and bring other Indians to trade with them.
But the Pilgrims were troubled, for they had not found the owners of the buried corn.
LOST! LOST! A BOY!
There were children on the Mayflower—Oceanus Hopkins who was born at sea, Peregrine White who gave his first baby-cry soon after the Mayflower reached the New World, Francis Billington who almost blew up the Mayflower, while trying to make fireworks, and John Billington.
John was a mischievous youngster, and so lively that the Pilgrim Fathers had to keep a stern eye upon him. But in spite of their watching, he got lost. For one day, soon after the Pilgrims were settled in Plymouth, he slipped out of the town, and into the woods that stretched farther than eye could see from the top of the highest tree.
That night when John did not come home, the Plymouth folk were worried. Where was the boy? they asked. How had he managed to slip from the town without being seen? Had he strayed into the woods? Had a savage caught him and carried him off?
Governor Bradford sent a party to look for him. They scoured the woods about, but there was no John.
Five days went by,—five anxious days for the Plymouth folk. And John had not returned when a message came from the friendly Indian, King Massasoit, saying that the Nausets had the lad. The Nauset Indians were the same fierce savages who had attacked the Pilgrims at The Place of the First Encounter.
A shallop was launched and victualed; and the next morning ten of the Pilgrims, with Tisquantum, their Indian interpreter, set sail for Nauset.