But arrived within hailing distance, Gallop perceived the deck of the pinnace to be crowded with savages, who, so far from returning his hail, at once dropped their occupation of loading another canoe, and proceeded to make sail in so clumsy a fashion that the pilot’s fears of the pinnace having been seized by Indians were reduced to certainty, and putting his own bark before the wind blowing off the land he pursued the captured craft, now driving wildly toward the Narragansett shore. Bringing up the two guns and two pistols comprising his entire armament, Gallop charged them with the duckshot he had brought along for purposes of sport, and so soon as they came within range began firing with no farther formalities into the dense throng of Indians, who on their part stood armed with guns, pikes, and swords, and as Gallop’s bark drew near fired a scattering volley, happily of no effect; and then, as the incessant rain of duckshot—for the two boys loaded as fast as their father fired—became intolerable, they all fled below hatches, leaving the vessel to drift as she would. Seeing this, the pilot hit upon a new method of attack, and standing off a little he set his craft dead before the wind, now blowing half a gale, and coming down with full force upon the pinnace “stemmed her upon the quarter,” as Winthrop has it, “and almost overset her. This so frighted the Indians that five or six ran on deck, and leaping overboard were drowned.” Encouraged by this beginning, the pilot repeated his manœuvre, only this time so fitting his anchor to the heel of his bowsprit as to make a very good imitation of an iron-clad ram; then again striking the pinnace he crushed in her forward bulwarks, and sticking fast, began pouring in charges of his heaviest shot at such short range that they penetrated decks and sheathing, and reached the pirates skulking below. Finding that they refused to be driven out, and his two guns growing too warm to work, Gallop disengaged his anchor and again stood off; but this was enough, and five more Indians rushed up and threw themselves into the sea, preferring a death they well understood, to the tender mercies of a man who fought in such unknown fashions.
There being now but four of the savages left, Gallop boarded the pinnace, whereupon one of the survivors yielded, and was bound and stowed in the cabin for safe-keeping; another yielded, but leaving Zebedee to bind him the pilot dragged away a seine huddled in the stern sheets under which he had from his own deck perceived some horror to be hidden. It was the body of a white man, still warm, the head cleft, the hands and feet nearly cut off, and the face so covered with blood as to be unrecognizable, until Gallop, dipping one of the garments stripped off but lying near, into the salt water flooding the decks, washed it and put aside the long hair; then gazing down into the staring eyes, he said as if in answer to their piteous appeal, “Ah, Brother Oldhame, is it thou! Truly I am resolved to avenge thy blood!” And, while Zebedee managed as best he could to fasten a tow-rope to the pinnace and make sail upon the bark, and John and James, pistol in hand, watched the hatches in case the Indians below should make a sortie, the pilot bound the mangled body of his friend in its clothes and in the private ensign lying at the foot of the mast, and launched it overboard.
“This man is wriggling his hands free, father,” reported John Gallop, presenting his pistol at the last captive, a sachem of the Narragansetts and a very determined fellow.
“Say you so, Jack!” replied his father, turning back from the bulwark over which he had just reverently dropped the shrouded form of his murdered friend. “We’ll take no chances! Lift you his feet and I his head and we’ll put him in John Oldhame’s keeping. Jim, stand you to your watch till our hands are free.” And the sachem, stolid and silent now that the worst had come, went to rejoin his comrades. Two of the pirates remained below, but as they were armed and entrenched in the hold Gallop left them there as prisoners, although the night coming on and the sea and wind growing very violent, he was after a time compelled to cast off the pinnace, which drove ashore on the Narragansett coast.
Arriving in Boston, Gallop at once placed the matter in the hands of the government, who through Roger Williams and Miantonimo demanded the surrender of the murderers who had come safely ashore in the pinnace. In the end, Oldhame’s two cousins, who had been kept prisoners at Block Island, were safely returned, and some of the stolen goods; but tedious negotiations revealed the fact that nearly all the Narragansett sachems had been privy to the conspiracy, and that some of them were in alliance with the Pequots to cut off the English and resume the country only sixteen years before absolutely their own. Not unnaturally alarmed at this report, Governor Vane and his council resolved upon what they at first called reprisals, but which soon became a stern scheme of extermination involving the entire Pequot nation, and such of the Narragansetts as refused to become tributaries and subjects of the English.
The murder of Captain Stone, the death by torture of Butterfield, and John Tilley and his man, came into the account and gave the air of righteous retribution to the Puritan severities; but the wrongs of the Indians, their natural temperament, their standard of morality, their ignorance of the gracious influences of Christianity,—none of these seem to have been considered or weighed in the councils of Vane and his associates, although more liberal Plymouth had set them the example of making friends rather than enemies of a people who had surely great cause of complaint in the loss of their homes and rights, and who simply sought to defend themselves according to their traditional methods.
It was in pursuance of this resolve that Winthrop, acting this year as deputy to Governor Vane, had written to Plymouth, setting forth all the causes of the war already begun, and requesting of Plymouth that aid and coöperation which one colony of white men and Christians would naturally afford to another.
The letter was read and laid upon the council board, and Bradford in his own grave, thoughtful, and well-considered manner took up the word:—