626 A MASSACRE OF INDIANS.

three bodies, and to set three houses on fire in three parts of the
town, and as the men came out, to seize them and bind them (if
any resisted, they need not be asked what to do then), and so to
search the rest of the houses for plunder; but they resolved to
march silently first. through the town, and see what dimensions it
was of, and if they might venture upon it or no.

They did so, and desperately resolved that they would venture
upon them; but while they were animating one another to the
work, three of them that were a little before the rest called out
aloud to them, and told them they had found Thomas Jeffery.
They all ran up to the place, and so it was indeed; for there they
found the poor fellow hung up naked by one arm, and his throat
cut. There was an Indian house just by the tree, where they
found sixteen or seventeen of the principal Indians who had been
concerned in the fray with us before, and two or three of them
wounded with our shot ; and our men found they were awake, and
talking one to another in that house, but knew not their number.

The sight of their poor mangled comrade so enraged them, as
before, that they swore to one another they would be revenged,
and that not an Indian who came into their hands should have
quarter; and to work they went immediately, and yet not so madly
as by the rage and fury they were in might be expected. Their
first care was to get something that would soon take fire, but after
a little search they found that would be to no purpose; for mort
of the houses were low, and thatched with flags or rushes, of which
the country is full; so they presently made some wild-fire, as we
call it, by wetting a little powder in the palms of their hands, and
in a quarter of an hour they set the town on fire in four or five
places, and particularly that house where the Indians were not
gone to bed. As soon as the fire began to blaze, the poor frighted
creatures began to rush out to save their lives, but met with their
fate in the attempt, and especially at the door where they drove
them back, the boatswain himself killing one or two with his pole-
axe. The house being large and many in it, he did not care to
go in, but called for a hand-grenado, and threw it among them,
which at first frightened them, but when it burst, made such havoc
among them, that they cried out in a hideous manner.