Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians
  Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest,
  Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bowstrings, 790
  Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of their ambush. 
  But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them smoothly;
  So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers. 
  But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt and the insult,
  All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston
      de Standish, 795
  Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. 
  Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife
      from its scabbard,
  Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage
  Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it. 
  Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the
      war-whoop, 800
  And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December,
  Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows. 
  Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning,
  Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it. 
  Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket, 805
  Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattawamat,
  Fled not; he was dead.  Unswerving and swift had a bullet
  Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching
      the greensward,
  Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers.

  There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors lay, and
      above them, 810
  Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man. 
  Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart Captain of Plymouth: 
  “Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his strength
      and his stature,—­
  Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little man; but I see now
  Big enough have you been to lay him speechless before you!” 815

  Thus the first battle was fought, and won by the stalwart
      Miles Standish. 
  When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth,
  And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat
  Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church
      and a fortress,
  All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage. 820
  Only Priscilla averted her face from this spectre of terror,
  Thanking God in her heart that she had not married Miles Standish;
  Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from his battles,
  He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and reward of his valor.