But eventually the colonists learned of these spasmodic outrages; and all promptly decided that justice and the common weal alike dictated punishment. “After consultation with ‘the magistrates and ministers,’ Sir Harry Vane despatched ninety men down Long Island sound, in three small vessels, to the seat of war—Block island. The expedition was under the chief command of John Endicott, who was assisted by four subordinate officers, one of whom, Captain John Underhill, wrote an account of the foray and of the succeeding and more effective one. A sort of Friar Tuck—devotee, bravo, libertine, and buffoon—Underhill takes a memorable place among the eccentric characters who from time to time broke what has been altogether too easily assumed to have been the dead level of New England gravity in those days. He had been a soldier in Ireland, in Spain, and more recently in the Netherlands, where he ‘had spoken freely with Count Nassau.’ He came over with Winthrop, who employed him to train the Pilgrims in military tactics.”[939] The expedition, spite of Endicott’s skill and Underhill’s bravery and the number of men engaged in it, was an essential failure. A few savages were shot; some lodges were burned; several canoes were staved; and a number of acres of corn were despoiled. Indeed, just enough was done to madden the savages, but not enough to intimidate them.[940] In the summer of 1636, Endicott sailed into Boston harbor in bloodless triumph. Meantime, his irritating raid was revenged by a wide-spread assault upon the isolated Connecticut colonists.[941] Every tree became a covert. In the long grass, in the morasses, in the out-buildings of the settlers, lurked the envenomed savages. To step outside those block citadels to which all flocked for safety, was certain death. Men were kidnapped and roasted alive.[942] Traders were waylaid on the rivers and tortured to death; and two victims especially were cut into two parts lengthwise, each half being hung up on a tree by the bank of the Connecticut.[943] Women and children were captured and reserved for a fate worse than death. In the winter of 1637, thirty of the two hundred settlers who had colonized Connecticut, fell beneath the hatchets of the Pequods.[944] Everywhere the whites were worsted; even at Saybrook, their chief fort, the garrison was held in duress by a besieging band of demoniacal red men.[945] New England was trembling on the verge of death. For the distressed and harassed Pilgrims there seemed no alternative but speedy extermination, or such an exercise of courage and skill as should effectually overawe the Indians in the full flush of their success. Measures were at once matured. Massachusetts Bay acted with her accustomed vigor. It was declared that “the war, since it was waged on just grounds and for self-preservation, ought to be vigorously prosecuted.”[946] Six hundred pounds were levied; one hundred and sixty men were recruited.[947]