"Stay to teach the little bird to fly away, or until I return with my warriors. Sassacus goes now like a brook just starting from the ground; but he will come back like a mighty river when angry 'Hpoon pours its swollen waters into the salt lake. Sassacus hath said."
The words were pronounced with a dignity and gravity that impressed those who heard them, and seemed to communicate some of the daring of the speaker; but the wiser Knight saw the rashness of their import, and determined to convince the Sagamore of the impolicy of the course proposed. Taking him for that purpose on one side, that the chief might speak uninfluenced by the presence of his follower, he represented to him the superior strength of the English, and the impossibility of prevailing in any contest until a complete union was established among the tribes.
"Behold!" he said: "these strangers are as one man, and across the salt lake come in ships from time to time fresh forces. They are clad in armor thy arrows' cannot pierce, and wield the thunder and the lightning. What have the Pequots to oppose, but naked bodies and uncertain arrows?"
"Owanux are few, and the Indians many," replied the Sagamore. "Sassacus will bury the tomahawk with the Narraghansetts, and exchange wampompeag with the Taranteens, and they unite against the strangers. The eyes of Sassacus are opened. There can be no peace with Owanux."
"Good!" answered the Knight, whose apprehensions, lest plans which he cherished might be defeated by the precipitancy of the chief, were quieted by the answer, knowing that the pacification of the tribes among themselves was no easy matter, and would require time. "Good! the eyes of the Sagamore are sharp. He is wise when he says that he will do nothing until he has made friends with the Narraghansetts and the Taranteens. Farewell, then, and be that the compact between us."
The chief now turned away, and, calling Towanquattick, the two began to dig a hole in the ground with pointed sticks. The white men, looked on in silence, rightly judging it to be some ceremony, and waiting for its explanation. After a cavity of a foot in depth, and about the same diameter was dug, the Indians ceased their labor, and the chief answered the wondering eyes of his friends.
"This hole," he said, "shall tell all Indians who see it of the captivity of Sassacus, and of the white men, his deliverers."
"I never heard before of a hole talking," said Joy.
"It will talk," said the chief. "When Sassacus passes by with his Paniese he will tell them that here was a great parting, and Towanquattick will do so also, and they shall tell it it to their children, and so the tale shall run, as the waters of a spring follow one another until they become a lake. So the hole shall speak, long after I have departed with my friends for the happy hunting grounds. Hole!" he added, addressing it as if it were capable of understanding what he said, "Sassacus is sad because he leaves Neebin behind, but say thou not that. Say to all who behold thee, that Soog-u-gest and Sassacus were friends; say that when Owanux put Sassacus into a box, Soog-u-gest and two other white men, and Towanquattick, let him out; say that Soog-u-gest and the other white men, and Towanquattick, remain to watch that no harm shall happen to Neebin, whom Owanux have made a prisoner; and say that Sassacus has gone after his warriors. This is enough for thee, O hole, to remember. Forget not lest thou be ashamed."
While the Pequot chief was speaking, the Paniese paid the strictest attention, evidently striving to fasten the speech in his memory. It was a custom common among the natives, though witnessed by the Knight and Joy for the first time, whereby, on the same principle that more civilized communities erect monuments to perpetuate the memory of events, the Indians transmitted to posterity matters of interest. The hole was usually dug either by the side of some traveled path or on the spot where the event desired to be commemorated took place. They who passed by naturally inquired into its meaning, and the facts, known to few at first, became of public notoriety.