It is a matter of melancholy interest to know, that the sachem, wretched and hopeless as he had become in his last days, was still surrounded by a band of his faithful and affectionate followers. At the very moment of his fatal surprise by the English, he is said to have been telling them of his gloomy dreams, [FN-1] and advising them to desert him and provide for their own safety. A few minutes after this, he was shot in attempting to escape from the swamp. An Englishman,--one Cook,--aimed at him, but his gun missed fire; the Indian who was stationed to watch at the same place, discharged _his_ musket, and shot him through the heart. The news of this success was of course received with great satisfaction; Church says, that "the whole army gave three loud huzzas." It is to be regretted that the honest captain suffered his prejudices to carry him so far, that he denied the rites of burial to his great enemy. He had him quartered, on the contrary, and his head carried to Plymouth, where, as Mather is careful to tell us, it arrived on the very day when the church there were keeping a solemn thanksgiving. The conqueror's temper was soured by the illiberality of the Government toward himself. For this march he received but four and sixpence a man, together with thirty shillings a head for the killed. He observes that Philip's head went at the same price, and he thought it a "scanty reward and poor encouragement." The sachem's head was carried about the Colony in triumph; [FN-2] and the Indian who killed him was rewarded with one of his hands. To finish the wretched detail, several of his principal royalties were soon after given up by one of his chief captains; and the lock of the gun which was fatal to him, with a _samp-dish_ found in his wigwam, are still to be seen among the antiquities of the Historical Society of Massachusetts. Montaup, which became the subject of a dispute between the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies, was finally awarded to the latter by a special decision of King Charles. * * * * * [FN-1] The violent prejudice existing against Philip, unmitigated even by his sufferings and death, appears singularly in a parenthetical surmise of Hubbard, "whether the devil appeared to him that night in a dream, foreboding his tragical end, _it matters not._" So Mather says, he was hung up like _Ahag,_ after being shot through his "venomous and murderous heart." Church, generally an honorable and humane man, speaks of his fallen foe, in terms which we regard his reputation too much to repeat. [FN-2] It was kept many years at Plymouth, Dr. Mather says in 1700.--"It is not long since the hand which now writes upon a certain occasion took off the jaw from the exposed skull of _that blasphemous leviathan._"