eplied Standish, who was already able to
converse freely with the red men in their own tongue. "Keep you to that
mind, and hold your tribe to it, and no harm's done. And now men, all
aboard, and we will be off."

With a fair wind the shallop soon made Barnstable or Mattachiest, and
here Iyanough (or Janno) met them on landing with protestations of
welcome so profuse and unusual that the captain was at once upon his
guard, especially as he noticed among the crowd many new faces which he
was confident belonged to Massachusetts Indians. Night falling before
the corn could be loaded, and ice making so suddenly as to freeze the
shallop in before she fairly floated, the captain was obliged to accept
an invitation for himself and crew to sleep in one of the Indian huts;
but as the chief with some of his principal men escorted them to it,
Standish's quick eye surprised a glance between one of the strangers and
a Pamet Indian called Kamuso, who had always appeared to be one of the
warmest friends of the white men, but in whose manner to-night Standish
felt something of treachery and evil intention.

And he was right, for Kamuso had been won over to the conspiracy
beginning with the Narragansetts and extending all the way down the
Cape, and so soon as runners from the Nausets had warned the Mattakees
that Standish and a small crew were about to land among them, it was
agreed that now was the best time to cut off The-Sword-of-the-White-Men,
and so deprive the colony of one of its principal safeguards. Janno
himself would fain have spared Standish, with whom he had ever been on
friendly terms; but Kamuso so wrought upon the Mattakee warriors that
their sachem was forced either to drop the reins altogether or to suffer
his unruly steeds to take their own course. Like Pontius Pilate he chose
the latter course, and to his own destruction. Before the pinnace was
anchored, the plan of the massacre was fully laid, and Kamuso had
claimed the glory of killing The Sword with his own hand.

But the subtle instinct which was Standish's sixth sense warned him of
some unknown danger, and having carefully inspected the wigwam offered
to his use, he directed that the fire newly kindled outside the door
should be extinguished; and while the Indians officiously busied
themselves in doing this, the captain by a word, a look, a sign, drew
his men inside the hut, and rapidly conveyed to them his suspicions, and
enjoined the greatest caution upon all