No doubt it was so to his bleeding spirit; for, with all his savage propensities, this prince was susceptible of some of the finest feelings of our nature. He sat down mournfully on the beautiful Mount, on which were now the ruins of his fortress and camp; but he could not remain long here, for the feet of his pursuers were nigh, and he was compelled to seek his distant retreats again:—there was a greater agony in store for him than the sight of his ruined home.
Early one morning, his quarters were surprised by the English, most of his followers slain, and his wife and son made captive. The chief fled, broken-hearted, but unsubdued, leaving all he loved on earth in the hands of those who had no mercy. “This was no small torment to him,” quaintly says the historian. “Wo to him that spoileth! His peag, or silver belt, the ensign of his princedom, also remained in our hands, so hardly did he escape.” The measure of his woes was not yet full. The Indian princess of Pocasset was warmly attached to his cause, and had more than once aided him in his extremity; she had received him beneath her roof, soothed his sorrows, and, what was more, summoned her people to fight for him; and saved him and his people in her canoes the year before. Now, she followed him in his flight, and, as the more devout said, as if by a judgment, could not find a canoe to transport her, and, venturing over the river upon a raft, it broke under her, and she was drowned. Her body was soon after washed on shore, and the English, forgetful of all decency and delicacy to a woman of her rank, though a savage, cut off her head, and placed it on high, which, when the Indians who were her people saw, they gathered round, and gave way to the most sad and touching lamentations.
Philip now began, like Saul of old, when earth was leaving him, to look to the powers beyond it, and to apply to his magicians and sorcerers, who, on consulting their oracles, assured him that no Englishman should ever kill him. This was a vague consolation, yet it seems to have given him, for a while, a confidence in his destiny, and he took his last stand in the middle of a distant and almost inaccessible swamp. It was a fit retreat for a despairing man, being one of those waste and dismal places to which few ever wandered, covered with rank and dense vegetation. The moist soil was almost hidden by the cypress and other trees, that spread their gloomy shades over the treacherous shallows and pools beneath.
In the few drier parts, oaks and pines grew, and, between them, a brushwood so thick, that the savage could hardly penetrate: on the long rich grass of these parts, wild cattle fed, unassailed by the hand of man, save when they ventured beyond the confines of the swamp. There were wolves, deer, and other animals; and wilder men, it was said, were seen here; it was supposed that the children of some of the Indians had either been lost or left here, and had thus grown up like denizens of this wild. Here the baffled chieftain gathered his little band around him, like a lion baited by the hunters, sullenly seeking his gloomy thickets, only to spring forth more fatally; despair was his only friend; for what other was now left: his love was turned to agony; his wife was in the hand of his enemies; and would they spare her beauty? His only son, the heir of his long line, must bow his head to their yoke; his chief warriors had all fallen, and he could not trust the few who were still with him.
Quanonchet, whose fidelity and attachment were stronger than death, was in the land of spirits, chasing the shadowy deer, and solaced with many wives; for Philip, to the last, believed in the religion of his country. In this extremity, an Indian proposed to seek peace with the English;—the prince instantly laid him dead at his feet. This man had a friend, who, disgusted with the deed, soon after fled from the place to Rhode Island, where the English were recruiting their weary forces, and betrayed the place of his retreat. On this intelligence, a body of forces instantly set out.
DEATH OF PHILIP.
The night before his death, Philip, “like him in the army of Midian,” says the historian, “had been dreaming that he was fallen into the hands of the English; he awoke in great alarm, and told it to his friends, and advised them to fly for their lives, for that he believed it would come to pass.” The place was well suited to awake all the terrors of the imagination; to any eye but that of the savage, it was like the “valley of the shadow of death;” the cypress and oak trees hung heavy and still, over the accursed soil; the faint gleam of the pools and sluggish lakes on every side, in the starlight, and the howl of the wolf, fitfully, as if it warned that the hour was nigh. “Now, just as he was telling his dream, Captain Church, with his company, fell in upon them.” They had been guided by the deserter to the swamp, and, with great difficulty, across some felled trees, into its labyrinths. The battle was fierce and short: Philip fought till he saw almost every follower fall in his defence, then turned, and fled; he was pursued by an Englishman and an Indian; and, as if the oracle was doomed to be fulfilled, the musket of the former would not go off; and the latter fired, and shot him through the heart.
With his death, all resistance ceased; his dominions fell into the hands of the colonists, and peace was restored to the settlements, but prosperity came not with it. It was a cruel blow to Eliot, nearly all whose life had been given his beloved cause, to look around on the plantations ravaged, the dwellings empty, the defences broken, and, more than all, the spirit of his people in despair. Of twelve towns, at the beginning of the war, four only were now undestroyed.