iquor," said Bradford, while Winslow muttered in
Carver's ear,--

"Let not Alden leave the case-bottle within reach of the savage. Enough
will loosen his tongue, but a little more will bind it."

"True," assented the Governor, nodding to Alden, who quietly replaced
the bottle in the case whence he had taken it. Samoset followed it with
longing eyes, but his own dignity prevented remonstrance except by
finishing the flagon and ostentatiously turning it upside down.

After this, the meal was soon finished, and the conversation resumed,
partly by signs and inference, partly by Samoset's limited stock of
English. By one means and the other the Pilgrims presently learned that
Monhegan was a large island near to the mainland in a northeasterly
direction, and a great resort of fishing vessels, mostly English, with
whose masters Samoset, as sachem of the Indians in those parts, had both
traded and feasted, learning their language, their manners, and, what
was worse, their habits of strong drink and profanity, neither of which
however seemed to have taken any great hold upon him, being reserved
rather as accomplishments and proofs that he too had studied men and
manners.

The master of one of these fishing craft some few months previously had
invited the sachem to accompany him across the bay to Cape Cod, where
the sailor wished to traffic with the natives, and Samoset had since
remained in this part of the country visiting Massasoit, sachem of the
Wampanoags, who with a large party of his warriors was now lying in the
forest outside of the settlement, waiting apparently for the result of
Samoset's reconnoissance before he should determine on his own line of
action.

Farther inquiry elicited the fact that the former inhabitants of
Plymouth, or Patuxet, a people tributary to Massasoit, but living under
their own sachem, had been totally exterminated by a plague, perhaps
small-pox, which had swept over the country two or three years before
the landing of the Pilgrims, leaving, so far as Samoset could tell, only
one man alive; this man seeking refuge among the Nausets, the tribe to
the east of Patuxet, was one of the victims entrapped by Hunt, escaping
from whom, he lived a long time in England with a merchant of London
named Slaney, who finally sent him in a fishing vessel to Newfoundland,
whence he had made his way back to his friends on Cape Cod.

"And this man," demanded Winslow eagerly. "Where is he now? Do ye not
perce