'em, that if they would courageously fall upon the English, all was their own. 

 The speech being ended, they fell to the wor , and with an horrid shout and shot, 

 made their assault pon the feeble garrison; but the English answered with a 

 brisk volley, and sent such a leaden shower among them, that they retired from 

 the garrison to spend the storm of their fury upon the sloops. 



You must know that Wells harbor is rather a creek than a river for 'tis very 

 narrow, and at low tide in many places dry; nevertheless, where the vessels ride 

 it is deep enough, and so far off the bank, that there is from thence no leaping 

 aboard. But our sloops were sorely incommoded by a turn of the creek, where 

 the enemy could iye out of danger so near 'em as to throw mud aboard with their 

 hands. The enemy was also priviledged with a great heap of plank lying on the 

 bank, and with an hay stock, which they strengthened with the posts and rails; 

 and from all these places, they poured in their vengenance upon the poor sloops, 

 while they so placed smaller parties of their salvages, as to make it impossible 

 for any of the garrison to afford 'em any relief. Lying thus within a dozen 

 yards of the sloops, they did with their fire arrows, divers times desperately set 

 the sloops on fire: but the brave defendants, with a swab at the end of a rope 

 tied unto a pole, and so dipt into the water, happily put the fire out. In brief, 

 the sloops gave the enemy so brave a repulse, that at night they retreated; and 

 when they renewed their assault, finding that their fortitude would not assure the 

 success of the assault unto them, they had recourse unto their policy. First, an 

 indian comes on with a slab for a shield before him; when a shot from one of the 

 sloops pierced the slab, which fell down instead of a tombstone with the dead 

 Indian under it: on which, as little a fellow as he was, I know not whether some 

 will not reckon it proper to inscribe the epitaph which the Italians used to bestow 

 upon their dead Popes: When the dog is dead, all his malice is dead with him. 

 Their ne.xt stratagem was this: They brought out of the woods a kind of a cart, 

 which they trimm'd and rigg'd, and fitted up into a thing that might be called, a 

 chariot: whereupon they built a platform, shot-proof in the front, and placed 

 many men upon the platform. Such an engine they understood how to shape, 

 without having read (I suppose) the description of the Pluteus in Vegetius! This 

 chariot they push'd on towards the sloops, till they were got, it may be, within 

 fifteen yards of them; when lo one of their wheels, to their admiration, sunk into 

 the ground. A Frenchman stepping to heave the wheel with an helpful shoulder, 

 Storer shot him down; another stepping to the wheel, Storer with a well-placed 

 shot, sent him after his mate: so the rest thought it was best to let it stand as it 

 was. The enemy kept gauling the sloop from their several batteries, and calling 

 'em to surrender, with many fine promises to make them happy, which ours 

 answered with a just laughter, that had now and then a mortiferous bullet at the 

 end of it. The tide rising, the chariot overset, so that the men behind it lay open 

 to the sloops, which immediately dispenced an horrible slaughter among them ; 

 and they that could get away, got as fast, and as far off as they could. In the 

 night the enemy had much discourse with the sloops: they enquired, who were 

 their commanders? and the English gave an answer, which in some other cases 

 and places would have been too true, that they had a great many commanders: 

 but the Indians replied you lie, you have none but Converse, and we will have 

 him too before morning! They also knowing that the magazine was in the 

 garrison, lay under an hill-side, pelting at that by times, but Captain Converse 

 once in the night, sent out three or four of his men into a field of wheat for a 

 shot, if they could get one. There seeing a black heap lying together, ours all at 

 once let fly upon them a shot, that slew several of them that were thus caught in 

 the corn, and made the rest glad that they found themselves able to run for it. 

 Capt. Converse was this while in much distress about a scout of six men which he 

 had sent forth to Newichawannick the morning before the arrival of the enemy, 

 ordering them to return the day following. The scout return'd in the very 

 mouth of the enemy that lay before the garrison; but the corporal having his 

 wits about him, call'd out aloud, (as if he had seen Capt. Converse making a sally 

 forth upon 'em) Captain, wheel about your men round the hill, and we shall catch 

 'em; there are but a few rogues of 'em! Upon which the Indians imagining that 



Capt. Converse had been at their heels, betook themselves to their heels; and our 

 folks got safe into another garrison. On the Lord's day morning there was for a 

 while a deep silence among the assailants; but at length getting into a body, they 

 marched with great formality towards the garrison, where the captain ordered 

 his hand-ful of men to lye snug and not make a shot, until every shot might be 

 likely to do some execution. While they thus beheld a formidable crew of 

 dragons, coming with open mouth upon them to swallow them up at a mouthful, 

 one of the soldiers began to speak of surrendering: upon which the Captain 

 vehemently protested, that he would lay the man dead who should so much as 

 mutter that base word any more! and so they heard no more on it: but the 

 valiant Storer was put upon a like protestation, to keep 'em in good fighting trim 

 aboard the sloops also. The enemy now approaching very near, gave three 

 shouts that made the earth ring again; and crying out in English, fire, and fall on 

 brave boys! the whole body drawn into three ranks, fired at once. Captain 

 Converse immediately ran into the several flankers, and made their best guns fire 

 at such a rate, that several of the enemy fell, and the rest of 'em disappeared 

 almost as nimbly as if there had been so many spectres: particularly a parcel of 

 them got into a small deserted house: which having but a board-wall to it, the 

 Captain sent in after them those bullets of twelve to the pound, that made the 

 house too hot for them that could get out of it. The women in the garrison upon 

 this occasion took up the Amazonian stroke, and not only brought ammunition to 

 the men, but also with a manly resolution fired several times upon the enemy. 

 The enemy finding that things would not yet go to their minds at the garrison, 

 drew off to try their skill upon the sloops, which lay still abreast in the creek, 

 lash'd fast one to another. They built a great fire-work about eighteen or 

 twenty f oat square, and fill'd it up with combustible matter, which they fired; 

 and then set it in the way for the tide now to float it up unto the sloops, which had 

 now nothing but an horrible death before them. Nevertheless their demands of 

 both the garrison and the sloops to yield themselves, were answered no other 

 wise than with death upon many of them, spit from the guns of the besieged. 

 Having tow'd their fire-work as far as they durst, they committed it unto the 

 tide; but the distressed Christians that had this deadly fire swimming along upon 

 the water towards them, committed it unto God: and God looked from heaven 

 upon them in this prodigious ai-ticle of their distress. These poor men cried, and 

 the Lord heard them, and saved them out of their troubles; The wind, unto their 

 astonishment, immxediately turn'd about, and Vi^ith a fresh gale drove the machin 

 ashore on the other side, and split it so, that the water being let upon it, the fire 

 went out. So the Godly men that saw God from heaven thus fighting for them, 

 oriel out with an astonishing joy, if it had not been the Lord, who was on our 

 side, they had swallowed us up quick: blessed be the Lord who has not given us 

 as a prey to their teeth: our sotil is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the 

 fowlers! The enemy were now in a pitiful pickle with toiling and moiling in the 

 mud, and black'ned with it, if mud could add blackness to such miscreants; and 

 their ammunition was pretty well exhausted: so that now they began to draw 

 off in all parts, and with rafts get over the river: some whereof breaking, there 

 did not a few cool their late heat, by falling into it. But first they made all the 

 spoil they could upon the cattle about the town: and giving one shot more at the 

 sloops, they killed the only man of ours that was killed aboard 'em. Then after 

 about half an hour's consultation, they sent a flag of truce to the garrison, 

 advising 'em with much flattery to surrender; but the captaid sent 'em word, 

 that he wanted for nothing but for men to come and fight him. The Indians 

 replied unto Captain Converse being you are so stout, why don't you come and 

 fight in the open field like a man, and not fight in a garrison like a squaw? The 

 captain rejoined, what a fool are you? do you think thirty men a match for five 

 hundred? No (says the captain, counting, as well as he might, each of his fifteen 

 men to be as good as two!) Come with your thirty men upon the plain and I 

 will meet you with my thirty as soon as you will. Upon this the Indian answered, 

 nay, we own English fashion is all one fool, you kill me, me kill you! no, better 

 lye somewhere and shoot a man, and he no see! that the best soldier. Then they 



