new who he was; but he called
to them to follow him, as a captain calls to his men, and they obeyed
him. The astonished Indians turned and ran. When, after all was over,
the whites looked for their brave leader, he had gone; they never
saw him again. Many thought that he was an angel who had been sent
to save them. But the angel was Colonel Goffe, an Englishman, who
was one of the judges who had sentenced King Charles the First to
death during a great war in England. He had escaped to America; and,
luckily for the people of Hadley, he was hiding in the house of a
friend in that village when the Indians attacked it.

[Illustration: INDIAN ATTACK ON A SETTLEMENT. The building on the
right is a block-house, or fort made of hewn logs. These block-houses
were built as places of refuge for the settlers, in case of an attack
on the town by the Indians.]

[Footnote 6: Colonel (kur'nel): the chief officer of a regiment of
soldiers.]

[Footnote 7: Goffe (Gof): and see List of Books at the end of this
book.]

[Footnote 8: War-whoop (war-hoop): a very loud, shrill cry made by
the Indians when engaged in war, or as a shout of alarm.]

92. How a woman drove off an Indian.--In this dreadful war with the
savages there were times when even the women had to fight for their
lives. In one case, a woman had been left in a house with two young
children. She heard a noise at the window, and looking up, saw an
Indian trying to raise the sash. Quick as thought, she clapped the
two little children under two large brass kettles which stood near.
Then, seizing a shovel-full of red-hot coals from the open fire, she
stood ready, and just as the Indian thrust his head into the room,
she dashed the coals right into his face and eyes. With a yell of
agony the Indian let go his hold, dropped to the ground as though
he had been shot, and ran howling to the woods.

[Illustration: WOMAN THROWING COALS.]

93. The great swamp fight; burning the Indian wigwams; what the Chief
Canonchet[9] said.--During the summer and autumn of 1675 the Indians
on the west side of Narragansett Bay[10]took no open part in King
Philip's War. But the next winter the white people found that these
Indians were secretly receiving and sheltering the savages who had
been wounded in fighting for that noted chief. For that reason, the
settlers determined to raise a large force and attack them. The
Indians had gathered in a fort on an island in a swamp. This fort
was a very