The massacre of Block Island over, Endicott repaired to the mainland, where dwelt the warriors who had murdered Stone. Halting at the mouth of the Pequod River, now the Thames, the English leader sent a message to the natives, demanding that Sassacus, their chief, should be sent to him immediately; and when no answer was returned, the attack was begun. As on Block Island, the natives fell an easy prey to the well-armed white men; and having slain all he found, and burned their villages, Endicott set sail for Boston, where he arrived safely, after an absence of one month only. Illustration: JOHN ENDICOTT. Thanksgivings were held in all the churches, in gratitude for the “signal mercy” which had preserved the little band of avengers, of whom two only had been left behind, in their terrible work; but that work had in reality only begun. The unhappy survivors of the “signal mercy,” driven to bay, had joined the inland members of their tribe, and the tale of the two massacres at which Endicott had presided roused a deadly enmity against the whites throughout the length and breadth of Pequod land; nay more, even the Narragansetts and the Mohegans, who had long since sworn allegiance to the English, and were the bitter foes of the Pequods, began to show signs of making common cause with the sufferers. Had they done so, the very existence of the colonies would have been in peril, and the history of the United States of America might never have begun. It was our old friend, Roger Williams, who saved from extermination the brethren who had cast him out from among them. More familiar than any other emigrant with the ways of the Indian, he read the signs of the times truly, and determined, at whatever risk to himself, to prevent the coalition of the Pequods with the Mohegans and Narragansetts. To quote his own account of the matter――“The Lord helped me immediately to put my life into my hand, and, scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself, all alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the sachem’s (the Narragansett chief’s) house. Three days and nights,” he adds, “my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequod ambassadors (come to agree on the terms of alliance against the whites), whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen.”