Pecksuot also indulged in similar language and gesture of insult and menace, brandishing his gleaming knife, boasting that it could eat, though it could not speak, and telling the Captain that he was so small in stature that he ought to go and live with the women. Meanwhile many Indians were seen stealthily creeping around, from bush to bush in the forest, with the evident design of making a simultaneous attack upon the little band of white men. Some of these Indians were armed with muskets, others with arrows set on their bow strings. Nearer and nearer they were approaching, to enclose him in the net of an ambush from which there could be no escape. As Captain Standish watched with his eagle eye these proofs of treachery, and listened to the insults and threats of the herculean chiefs, who, he knew, were only waiting for the fit moment to leap upon him, “All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish, Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart; and, reeling backward, the savage Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiend-like fierceness upon it. Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop, And, like a flurry of snow, on the whistling wind of December, Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows.” This was followed by a discharge of musketry from the Pilgrims. A bullet pierced the brain of Pecksuot, and he fell dead. The savages, having lost both of their chiefs, fled like deer. As the head of Wattawamat, the gory trophy of war, was sent to Plymouth, and was exposed on the roof of the fort, Priscilla averted her face with terror and, shuddering, thanked God she had not married such a man of war as Captain Standish. Month after month passed away, while the captain is represented as scouring the land with his forces, watching the movements of the hostile Indians, and thwarting their intrigues. Though Priscilla had refused his hand, the bashful John Alden did not feel that he could, in honor, take advantage of the absence of his friend, the Captain, and seek her for his bride. So assuming simply the attitude of friendship, the two lovers lived, with some degree of tranquility and in constant intimacy, side by side. “Meanwhile, Alden at home had built him a new habitation, Solid, substantial, of timber, rough-hewn from the firs of the forest. Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was covered with rushes, Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes were of paper, Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were excluded.”