The Indians around Plymouth laughed at the little red-headed white captain because he was so small. He was so quick-tempered that they named him “Little-Pot-That-Soon-Boils-Over.” Once when a tall, wiry Indian north of Plymouth insulted him, the fiery little captain had all he could do to control himself. Standish and three other white men had gone up to that place for the purpose of punishing the Indians who were threatening the whole colony with death. Watching his chance, the white captain sprang upon the big Indian chief who had sneered at him, snatched the savage’s own knife, and killed him with a single stab. The other white men dispatched their Indians. The account of this brave deed of the Captain of Plymouth was reported among the Indians far and near, and the Pilgrims had long years of peace because the red men had gained a wholesome respect for Myles Standish, whose name they now changed to Sword-of-the-White-Man. JOHN WINTHROP, A PURITAN MAKER OF MASSACHUSETTS John Winthrop can not be called a boy’s hero; yet he was a hero, and his life was strange and interesting. He was a son of a good Puritan family in England. When a young man he met Oliver Cromwell, who became Lord Protector of England. He was acquainted with John Milton, the blind Puritan poet who wrote “Paradise Lost,” one of the greatest poems in the English language. John Winthrop had also to transact certain business with Cromwell’s cousin, John Hampden, the great English patriot who opposed King Charles when he sought to impose taxation upon the people without their consent. [Illustration: GOVERNOR JOHN WINTHROP.] Young Winthrop was married the first time when he was seventeen, and his son Henry was born when the young father was eighteen. In 1629, the father decided to go to America where he could worship God as he thought best. He and four hundred men and women set sail from England in a fleet of small ships, intending to join the settlement at Salem, started a year before. One of these ships was the _Mayflower_, in which the Pilgrims of Plymouth had sailed nine years before. On their second morning out from England they spied eight ships coming behind them. The captain of the _Arabella_, the ship on which Winthrop sailed (as he wrote in the logbook or journal of the voyage), “caused the gun-room and gun-deck to be cleared. After noon we still saw those eight ships to stand towards us. Having more wind than we, they came up apace. We all prepared to fight with them, and took down some cabins which were in the way of our ordnance [cannon] and out of every ship were thrown such bed matters as were subject to take fire. We drew forth our men and armed them with muskets and other weapons and instruments for fireworks. To try it our captain shot a ball of wildfire fastened to an arrow, out of a crossbow, which burnt in the water a good time.