ndians were slain in this conflict.

These successes wonderfully elated the Indians. They sent a defiant
and derisive message to Plymouth:

"Have a good dinner ready for us, for we intend to dine with you on
election day."

In this awful warfare, every day had its story of crime and woe.
Unlike the movement of powerful armies among civilized nations, the
Indians were wandering every where, burning houses and slaughtering
families wherever an opportunity was presented. They seemed to take
pleasure in wreaking their vengeance even upon the cattle. They would
cut out the tongues of the poor creatures, and leave them to die in
their misery. They would shut them up in hovels, set fire to the
buildings, and amuse themselves in watching the writhings of the
animals as they were slowly roasted in the flames. Nearly all the men
who were taken captive they tortured to death. "And that the reader
may understand," says Cotton Mather, "what it is to be taken by such
devils incarnate, I shall here inform him. They stripped these unhappy
prisoners, and caused them to run the gauntlet, and whipped them after
a cruel and bloody manner. They then threw hot ashes upon them, and,
cutting off collops of their flesh, they put fire into their wounds,
and so, with exquisite, leisurely, horrible torments, roasted them out
of the world."

On the 20th of April a band of fifty Indians made an attack upon
Scituate, and, though the inhabitants speedily rallied and assailed
them with great bravery, they succeeded in plundering and burning
nineteen houses and barns. They proceeded along the road, avoiding the
block-houses, and burning all that were unprotected. They approached
one house where an aged woman, Mrs. Ewing, was alone with an infant
grandchild asleep in the cradle. As she saw the savages rushing down
the hill toward her dwelling, in a delirium of terror she fled to the
garrison house, which was about sixty rods distant, forgetting the
child. The savages rushed into the house, plundered it of a few
articles, not noticing the sleeping infant, and then hastened to make
an assault upon the garrison. A fierce fight ensued. In the midst of
the horrid scene of smoke, uproar, and blood, Mrs. Ewing, with heroism
almost unparalleled, stole from the garrison unperceived, by a
circuitous path reached the house, rescued the babe, still
unconsciously sleeping, and bore it in safety to the garrison. Soon
after this, the savages, repelled from their a