Yet with all their treacherous rage, they showed themselves cowardly. Wherever they were opposed they fled. One old soldier, who had served under Captain John Smith, was severely wounded by his savage assailants. He clove the skull of one of them with an axe, and the others at once took to flight. In the same way a Mr. Baldwin, whose wife lay bleeding from many wounds before his eyes, drove away a throng of murderers by one well-aimed discharge from his musket. A number of fugitive settlers obtained a few muskets from a ship that was lying in a stream near their homes, and with these they routed and dispersed the Indians for a long distance around. The principal settlement, that of Jamestown, was a main point for the proposed Indian assault. Here the confidence and sense of security was as great as in any of the plantations, and only a fortunate warning saved the settlers from a far more terrible loss. One of the young converts among the Indians, moved by the true spirit of his new faith, warned a white friend of the deadly conspiracy, and the latter hastened to Jamestown with the ominous news. As a result, the Indian murderers on reaching there found the gates closed and the inhabitants on the alert. They made a demonstration, but did not venture on an assault, and quickly withdrew. Such was the first great Indian massacre in America, and one of the most unexpected and malignant of them all. It was the work of Opechancanough, who had laid his plot and organized the work of death in the most secret and skilful manner. Passing from tribe to tribe, he eloquently depicted their wrongs, roused them to revenge, pointed out the defenceless state of the whites, and worked on their passions by promises of blood and rapine. A complete organization was formed, the day and hour were fixed, and the savages of Virginia waited in silence and impatience for the time in which they hoped to rid the land of every white settler on its soil and win back their old domain. While they did not succeed in this, they filled the whole colony with terror and dismay. The planters who had survived the attack were hastily called in to Jamestown, and their homes and fields abandoned, so that of the eighty recent settlements only six remained. Some of the people were bold enough to refuse to obey the order, arming their servants, mounting cannon, and preparing to defend their own homes. One of these bold spirits was a woman. But the authorities at Jamestown would not permit this, and they were all compelled to abandon their strongholds and unite for the general defence.