"Tommy Eight Canoes," said the Pilot.
Another boat was removed in like manner, and the Pilot shouted, "And now you are Tommy Seven Canoes." Another, and the Pilot called again, "Now you are Tommy Six Canoes." Another. "Good-by, Tommy Five Canoes," said the Pilot, and he and his men drew all of the light canoes after them up the river.
Xerxes at Salamis could hardly have felt more crushed in heart than Tommy Ten Canoes. But hope revived; he was Tommy Five Canoes still. He was not quite so sure now, however, that the moon on that still June night had been eclipsed expressly for him.
The scene of the war now changed to the western border, as the towns of Hadley and Deerfield were called, for these towns in that day were the "great West," as afterwards was the Ohio Reserve. Tommy having lost five of his canoes, now used his swift feet as a messenger. He still had hopes of doing great deeds, else why had the moon been eclipsed on that beautiful June night?
But an event followed the loss of his five canoes that quite changed his opinion. As a messenger or runner he had hurried to the scene of the brutal conflicts on the border, and had there discovered that Captain Moseley, the old Jamaica pirate, was subject to some spell of enchantment; that he had two heads.
"Ugh! ugh! him no good!" said one of the Indians to Tommy; "he take off his head, and put him in his pocket. It is no use to fight him. Spell set on him—enchanted."
Tommy Ten Canoes' fear of the man with two heads, one of which he sometimes took off and put in his pocket, spread among the Indians. One day in a skirmish Tommy saw Moseley take off one of his enchanted heads and hang it on a blueberry-bush. Other Indians saw it. "No scalp him," said they. "Run!" And run they did, not from the open foe, but from the supposed head on the bush. Moseley did not dream at the time that it was his wig that had given him the victory.
Across the Mount Hope Bay, among the sunny headlands of Pocassett, there was an immense cedar swamp, cool and dark, and in summer full of fire-flies. Tommy Ten Canoes called it the swamp of the fire-flies. It was directly opposite Pokanoket, across the placid water. A band of Indians gathered here, and covered their bodies with bushes, so that they might not be discovered on the shore.
One moonlight night in September Tommy went to visit these masked Indians in four of his canoes. He rowed one of the canoes, and three squaws the others. On reaching the fire-fly cedar swamp the party met the masked Indians, and late at night retired to rest, the three Indian squaws sleeping on the shore under their three canoes.