“Who shall deem the spot unblessed Where Nature’s younger children rest, Lulled on their sorrowing mother’s breast? Deem ye that mother loveth less These bronzed forms of the wilderness She foldeth in her long caress? As sweet o’er them her wild-flowers blow, As if with fairer hair and brow The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.”[229] CHAPTER IX. IN THE WOODS. “Actions rare and sudden, do commonly Proceed from fierce necessity.” SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. Two or three days after the return of Winslow and Hopkins from Massasoit’s forest rendezvous, the routine life of the colonists was broken by the sudden disappearance of one of the younger members of the Plymouth commonwealth. John Billington was nowhere to be found. Though he was a vicious lad, the pest of the colony, his absence caused great anxiety. Whither had he gone? Was he drowned? Had he been kidnapped? Had he wandered away and lost his course in the tangled cross-paths of the forest? Though the season, already declining towards autumn, called for the active labor of the settlers, the supposed peril of the lost boy swallowed up all other considerations, and a squad of ten men was recruited to go in search of him.[230] The clumsy shallop was rigged, and, led by Standish, all embarked. They had not sailed far ere a sudden squall, accompanied by a severe thunderstorm, peculiar to the season and the latitude, struck them, as it were, with clenched fists. A water-spout, the first they had ever seen, flung up the hissing sea to a sheer height of fifty feet within a stone’s toss of the shallop, already half capsized.[231] Drenched and weary, they landed in Cummaquid, now Barnstable harbor, where they bivouacked.[232] Here an Indian runner, despatched by Massasoit, met them, and said that the lad they sought might be found at Nauset, some miles farther down the coast. In the morning, as they were about to embark, they espied two Indians, strangers, whom they hailed. Squanto and another friendly sachem named Tokamahamon were with the scouting party, and they now acted as interpreters. These natives corroborated Massasoit’s report of the whereabouts of young Billington; and at their invitation, six of the Englishmen accompanied them to an interview with their chief, Iyanough, who lurked in the vicinity. When they met the sagamore, they found him to be a handsome man, in the May of youth, courteous in his manners, and unlike an Indian save in his costume.[233] The entertainment to which he invited his pale-face guests was in harmony with his decorous appearance, being various and abundant.[234]