Wellfleet, deprived of its fisheries, was all but ruined; Provincetown, with its few inhabitants who had not fled, was entirely at the disposal of the enemy fleet when it rode snugly at anchor in the harbor. But even these towns struggled to furnish their quota to feed the desperate need; and Mashpee Indians, as we know, played their part so nobly that the war’s end saw seventy widows in the little community. But there were malcontents enough to induce precaution, and the Provincial Congress had immediately provided for disarming the disaffected. In Barnstable there had been so many of little courage that in 1776 it had voted against supporting the Congress if it should declare for independence rather than stand out simply for constitutional liberty; and when the draft was resorted to and some men “refused to march,” their fines and costs were paid by the loyalists of Barnstable and Sandwich. In August Colonel Joseph Otis and Nathaniel Freeman were appointed to round up suspects on the Cape, a task, we may guess, much to their liking. In December Major Dimmock, who had fought at Ticonderoga in the French War, was commanded to “repair to Nantucket and arrest such as are guilty of supplying the enemy with provisions.” Tories from the mainland had fled thither, and they were not only in constant communication with British ships, but manned many of the ships that harried the coast. The Cape made a brave attempt to keep up its trade, and voyages were made with the permission of the General Court, “always provided that the said fish &c., shall not be cleared out for any of his Britannic Majesty’s dominions.” But affairs were in desperate case, and loyalists plotted with some show of reason that they had chosen the winning side. Otis reports on October 2: “Yesterday the Tories in the Sound, about a league off Highano’s harbor, took a vessel bound out of said harbor to Stonington and drove another ashore on the eastward part of Falmouth. In short the refugees have got a number of Vineyard pilot-boats (about twenty) and man them, and run into our shores and take everything that floats.” Nevertheless, he engages to get two small vessels, if they will give him guns, and “scour the Sound.” On October 12 the head of “a refugee gang in the Sound” sent a flag of truce to ask an exchange of prisoners. And in this same month the General Court appropriated money for four cannon, four to nine-pounders—no formidable armament for the long coast-line of the Cape. But the Sound, especially, was the scene of many an adventure, and enemy raids upon its shores seem to have been prompted largely by a desire for fresh meat. In 1779 marauders drove away some cattle from farms near Wood’s Hole, but were surprised and put off to their ships without their booty; an attack in force was planned against Falmouth, but was received by such hot fire from the shore that the ships were driven out into the Sound; at Wood’s Hole, again, they met with a like reception.