Captain Moseley had sent the old Jamaica pilot to try to discover the hiding-place of this mysterious band of Indians. The Pilot had seen the four canoes crossing the bay from Pokanoket under the low September moon, and had hurried with a dozen men to the place of landing. He surprised the party early the next morning, when they were disarmed and asleep.
The crack of his musket rang out in the clear air over the bay. A naked Indian was seen to leap up.
"Stop! I am Tommy Ten Canoes."
"No, Tommy Five Canoes," answered the old Pilot; "and now you are only Tommy Four Canoes." Saying which, the Pilot seized the sixth canoe.
A shriek followed; another, and another. Three canoes hidden in the river-weeds were overturned, and three Indian squaws were seen running into the dark swamp.
"And now you are Tommy Three Canoes," said the Pilot, seizing the seventh canoe. "And now Tommy Two Canoes," seizing the eighth.
"And only Tommy One Canoe," taking possession of the ninth canoe. "And now you are Tommy No Canoes, as I told you you would be if you went to war," said the Pilot, taking according to this odd reckoning the Indian's last canoe.
But Tommy had one canoe left, notwithstanding the dark Pilot had taken his tenth. He was glad that it was not here. It would have been his eleventh canoe, although he had but ten. He knew that the Pilot was one of Moseley's men, the Captain who put his head at times in his pocket or hung it upon a bush. Poor Tommy Ten Canoes! He uttered a shriek, like the fugitive squaws, and fled.
"Don't shoot at him," said the old Pilot to his men. "I have taken from him all of his ten canoes; let him go."
Tommy had not a mathematical mind or education, but he knew that somehow he had no eleventh canoe, and that one of his ten canoes yet remained. And even the old Pilot must have at last seen that his count often was only nine. Tommy fled to a point on the Titicut River at which he could swim across, and then made his solitary way back to the shores of Pokanoket and to his remaining canoe, which did not belong to mathematics.