The night before his death, Philip, “like him in the army of Midian,”
says the historian, “had been dreaming that he was fallen into the hands
of the English; he awoke in great alarm, and told it to his friends,
and advised them to fly for their lives, for that he believed it would
come to pass.” The place was well suited to awake all the terrors of the
imagination; to any eye but that of the savage, it was like the “valley
of the shadow of death;” the cypress and oak trees hung heavy and still,
over the accursed soil; the faint gleam of the pools and sluggish lakes
on every side, in the starlight, and the howl of the wolf, fitfully, as
if it warned that the hour was nigh. “Now, just as he was telling his
dream, Captain Church, with his company, fell in upon them.” They had
been guided by the deserter to the swamp, and, with great difficulty,
across some felled trees, into its labyrinths. The battle was fierce
and short: Philip fought till he saw almost every follower fall in his
defence, then turned, and fled; he was pursued by an Englishman and an
Indian; and, as if the oracle was doomed to be fulfilled, the musket of
the former would not go off; and the latter fired, and shot him through
the heart.
With his death, all resistance ceased; his dominions fell into the
hands of the colonists, and peace was restored to the settlements, but
prosperity came not with it. It was a cruel blow to Eliot, nearly all
whose life had been given to his beloved cause, to look around on the
plantations ravaged, the dwellings empty, the defences broken, and, more
than all, the spirit of his people in despair. Of twelve towns, at the
beginning of the war, four only were now undestroyed.