Weston was anxious to know the worst. He also hoped that something might yet be saved. He sailed in a shallop for the seat of his downfallen venture. But misfortune dogged him. He was shipwrecked, and cast ashore with nothing but the clothes upon his person. Soon after, being discovered by the Indians, he was stripped even of these, and left to find his way nude to the coast of Maine. This he did; and borrowing a suit of clothes from the fishermen, he returned to Plymouth in a pitiable plight, and begged the loan of some beaver-skins as a stock in trade to commence life anew.[435] The Pilgrims were themselves in a sad strait, “but they pitied his case, and remembered former courtesies. They told him he saw their want, and that they knew not when they should have a supply; also how the case stood betwixt the Merchant-adventurers and themselves, which he well knew. They said they had not much beaver, and if they should let him have it, it might create a mutiny, since the colony had no other means of procuring food and clothes, both which they sadly needed. Yet they told him they would help him, considering his necessity, but must do it secretly; so they let him have one hundred beaver-skins. Thus they helped him when all the world failed him, and he was enabled to go again to the ships, buy provisions, and equip himself. But he requited his benefactors ill, for he proved afterwards a bitter enemy on all occasions, and repaid his debt in nothing but reproaches and evil words. Yea, he divulged it to some that were none of their best friends, while he yet had the beaver in his boat, and boasted that he could now set them all by the ears, because they had done more than they could answer in letting him have the skins. But his malice could not prevail.”[436] Strangled by this episode, Weston was now dead to the Pilgrims, and he disappears from the after-history of Plymouth.[437] Through all these months, hunger continued to gnaw the vitals of the Pilgrim colony. To secure a plentiful future, they decided to plant a large grain-crop this spring. But the labor of the settlers was hampered by an abnormal social arrangement. Plymouth fretted under an agreement which robbed work of its spur and its crown. Up to the month of April, 1623, a community of interest was strictly maintained. This did not arise from any peculiar fantastic notions among the colonists, but was required by a clause—reluctantly assented to—of their engagement with the Merchant-adventurers in England.[438] The contract tied the Pilgrims to the communal plan for a specified season.[439] Land was not to be owned by individuals; it was common; each man cultivated what he pleased, and threw the product of his labor into the general store. From the stock thus gained overseers supplied the settlers in equal quantities.[440]