There was then, for some time, silence. At length Canacum asked the opinion of all who were present. When Hobbomak was questioned, he said: “I am a stranger; but it seems to me better that one should die than many, especially since that one deserves death, and the many are innocent.” Canacum then directed the messengers to inform their sachem that in his opinion the murderer should be put to death. The Governor returned to Plymouth, intending to send Captain Standish in the shallop, to fetch the corn which he had purchased. Just after his arrival, a messenger came from John Sanders, in Weymouth, stating that the colonists there were actually in a starving condition; that they could obtain no corn from the Indians, as the Indians would not lend it to them, and that they had no means of buying. Under these circumstances he said that he should be under the necessity of taking it from them by force. Weak as the colonists were, by the aid of powder and bullets, they could, without difficulty, rob the comparatively defenceless Indians. The Governor remonstrated in the strongest terms against this plan of robbery. He assured Sanders that such an act would inevitably combine all the tribes in a coalition against both colonies, and might lead to the utter extirpation of the English from this continent. From his own scanty store of corn he sent to Weymouth a small supply, entreating them to make shift to live, as they did at Plymouth, upon ground-nuts, clams, and muscles. In the mean time, Captain Standish took the shallop and sailed to Sandwich harbor, to get the corn which the Governor had purchased and ordered to be stored there. It was in the severest of winter weather. Icy gales swept the ocean, and dashed the surge upon the snow-drifted beach. They succeeded in entering the harbor, but the first night they were frozen up there. The outrageous conduct of the Weymouth colonists, and the threats which they had openly uttered of their intention to rob the Indians, had spread far and wide, producing great exasperation; and the natives who were adverse to the colonists were taking advantage of it to form a general coalition against them. Captain Standish, upon landing, perceived at once that there was a change coming over the minds of the Indians. The friendliness they affected appeared to him constrained and insincere. He was frozen in, and large numbers of Indians began to gather around him, some manifestly unfriendly; and there were not a few indications that a conspiracy was being formed for his destruction. The weather was so cold that the Pilgrims could not sleep in the shallop, but were constrained to accept the shelter and the fires found in the Indian wigwams.