Oldham was last seen alive starting in a vessel of his own on a trading excursion up the Connecticut River, and a little later a fisherman named Gallop, at work on Block Island, caught sight of the boat drifting out to sea, crowded with Indians, who were evidently at a total loss how to manage their capture. In a moment Gallop, accompanied by one man and two boys, started in pursuit; the vessel was boarded, and, without pausing to inquire into the rights of the matter, the four newcomers laid about them right and left, till the Indians were driven off, leaving many of their number dead or dying on the deck. This summary vengeance inflicted, Gallop looked about him for its justification, and found Oldham and his men lying in their own blood, covered with ghastly wounds. The news of their death spread like wildfire far and near; and though, to the calm judgment of lookers-on, reconciliation with the Pequods still seemed possible to those who were exposed to a fate such as that which had overtaken the Puritan captain, nothing short of the extermination of the whole tribe of the offenders appeared to meet the necessities of the case. The colonial leaders, however, observed the forms of civilized warfare, and, before a blow was struck, formally demanded the yielding up of the murderers of Stone and Oldham, with the restitution of all property stolen from the whites. As we know, those who had slain Oldham had most of them shared his fate. Evasive answers were returned as to the murderers of Stone and the stolen property, and it appeared evident that nothing could be accomplished by negotiation. In August, 1636, hostilities commenced by the dispatch to Block Island of one hundred men, under the command of John Endicott of Salem, whose orders were that he should kill all the Pequod warriors he met with, but spare their women and children. A landing was effected on Block Island in the midst of a shower of arrows, and a fierce struggle ensued, in which only one Englishman was wounded. The Indians were hopelessly defeated, and fled into woods and fields of the island, where they were soon overtaken by the English, who put them to death without mercy. Not content with this wholesale slaughter, Endicott also burned two villages of sixty wigwams each, the stacks of maize in the course of being harvested, and all the standing corn, so that the unlucky Pequods who had escaped the sword would be compelled either to starve or to flee their country.