Guided by this Indian the Pilgrim traders went farther and farther afield. In September ten armed men sailed up to Boston Harbor in a shallop and obtained a quantity of beaver from the Massachusetts Indians. So successful was the barter that the women of the tribe impulsively removed their beaver coats to exchange them for the bright baubles of the white men. Giggling maidens, bedecked only with strings of beads we are told, were left behind by the “sober-faced” Pilgrims when they sailed away. By November, when the first “supply” ship, the _Fortune_, arrived from England, the colony at Plymouth had acquired enough beaver and otter skins to pack two great hogsheads worth 300 pounds sterling for export. These pelts represented over sixty per cent of the total value of the vessel’s return cargo, the remainder consisting of clapboard. By this one shipment the Pilgrim Fathers estimated they were paying off almost half of their debt to Weston and his partners and insuring the prompt return of the additional supplies they so much needed by then. But unfortunately, as they later learned, the _Fortune_ was intercepted by a French privateer before she reached England and all her cargo confiscated! Long before this first supply ship came to Plymouth the Pilgrims had been in want of food. Their meal was gone, and other rations were rapidly dwindling under their communalistic system. But when the ship arrived it brought only letters of gratuitous counsel from their merchant backers in England and more “hungrie bellies” to be fed. There was practically nothing aboard in the way of food and clothing or truck for barter with the savages. Already half-starved, the colonists were in really dire straits as winter approached. Many of them sickened and death stalked the huts and cottages at Plymouth. With Indian alarms and unaccountable fires creating a general state of anxiety, fear and suspicion lay heavy on those who lived. Probably the only thing that prevented a complete collapse was the diversion brought about by enforced labor on strengthening the fortifications of the plantation. Before the first snow, the Narragansett tribe which had not suffered from the plague boldly sent in a bundle of arrows wrapped in a snakeskin. It was an open challenge to war. The Pilgrims were plucky enough to replace the arrows with bullets and send the snakeskin back to the Narragansett, but they were nevertheless thoroughly frightened and hastened to palisade their fort and buildings with a strong wall of high pales. Relations with the natives was under constant strain. Most of the early commerce with them for pelts and food was a bloody business. But, as explosive and unprincipled as was the red-headed little military captain, Miles Standish, it was Squanto who caused much of the trouble.