“I heard once and again from Boston, and I sent a token to my poor girl, bidding my messenger lie, and say that I was safe and well; then I went on, and wandered for days, nay, for weeks, up and down, hither and yon, fevered, wounded, helpless, yet unbroken. I met natives who told me of a great river in the Pequod country,--Canaughticott they called it; but I could not cross it save by the favor of those savages, the most bloody and the most implacable of any in the country, and I saw it would be but madness to attempt it. Then I was minded to linger about in the forest until summer, when I might make my way north to Piscataqua, or perhaps ship aboard some vessel bound to the New Netherlands, or even come hither and ask shelter,--in very truth I knew not what I would be at, for every way seemed barred, and I was too dazed and fevered much of the time to concoct a plan beyond the next meal, or the next lodging. At last the Massachusetts runner who had dogged the path to Piscataqua for two or three weeks tried another trail and came upon me. I since hear that he would have murthered me but for your influence, and I am beholden to you, one and all; for, sad as is my plight, I am not yet ready to make venture of a country even stranger to me than New England. But since the Bay had set a reward upon my head it might not safely rest even upon the dank leaves of the forest; and two days ago, while Samson so slept, the Philistines came upon him; that is to say, I wakened suddenly with a most uncomely savage bending over me, and trying to steal my snaphance which I hugged close to my breast. Alive in a moment, I sprang to my feet, dashed my fist into the fellow’s mouth and heard his teeth split off like icicles, even as I sprang for the other side of the thicket to make ready to shoot him. Now beyond that thicket lay a stream whose name I know not, but broader than the Thames at London”-- “Taunton River, we have named it,” again suggested Alden.