← catalogue

Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish

by Beulah Marie Dix · English · Gutenberg #44165 · 422,840 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish

Author: Beulah Marie Dix

Illustrator: Reginald B. Birch


        
Release date: November 12, 2013 [eBook #44165]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44165

Credits: Produced by sp1nd, Emmy, and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOLDIER RIGDALE: HOW HE SAILED IN THE MAYFLOWER AND HOW HE SERVED MILES STANDISH ***

SOLDIER RIGDALE

[Illustration]

[Illustration: "As if he knew the place and held he had the right to
come there."]




Soldier Rigdale

HOW HE SAILED IN THE "MAYFLOWER"

AND HOW HE SERVED MILES STANDISH

    BY

    Beulah Marie Dix
    AUTHOR OF "HUGH GWYETH: A ROUNDHEAD CAVALIER"


    _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY REGINALD B. BIRCH_


    New York
    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
    LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
    1899

    _All rights reserved_




    COPYRIGHT, 1899,
    BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

    _Norwood Press
    J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
    Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._




Contents


    CHAPTER I                            Page
    Playing with Powder                     1

    CHAPTER II
    The Name of Miles                      17

    CHAPTER III
    Thievish Harbor                        30

    CHAPTER IV
    Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water    45

    CHAPTER V
    News from the Shore                    61

    CHAPTER VI
    The Going Landward                     74

    CHAPTER VII
    The Man of the Family                  81

    CHAPTER VIII
    In the Time of the Sickness            95

    CHAPTER IX
    Master Hopkins's Guest                108

    CHAPTER X
    The Lords of the Soil                 125

    CHAPTER XI
    When the Good Ship Sailed             141

    CHAPTER XII
    The Sowing of the Fields              156

    CHAPTER XIII
    The Two Edwards                       171

    CHAPTER XIV
    A Mighty Resolution                   187

    CHAPTER XV
    In the Southward Country              202

    CHAPTER XVI
    The House of Bondage                  217

    CHAPTER XVII
    How they kept the Sabbath             228

    CHAPTER XVIII
    At Nauset Village                     243

    CHAPTER XIX
    Fallen among Friends                  257

    CHAPTER XX
    A Son of Perdition                    270

    CHAPTER XXI
    Between Man and Man                   283

    CHAPTER XXII
    The Bearer of Tidings                 296

    CHAPTER XXIII
    The Captain's Soldier                 311




List of Illustrations


    "As if he knew the place, and held he had the right to
          come there" (p. 111)                        _Frontispiece_

                                                      Opposite Page
    "With his arm up to shut out the glare of the lanterns"      14

    "Dolly plaited a fold of her apron between her fingers"      66

    "'Do you like to do it, Captain Standish?'"                 102

    "Saw the two young men close in combat"                     184

    "'Oh, Miles, 'tis the savages come for us!'"                214

    "Miles made out the figures of the men in the shallop"      254

    "The breath came gripingly in his throat"                   308




SOLDIER RIGDALE




CHAPTER I

PLAYING WITH POWDER


WITH the approach of sunset, the wind that all day had ruffled the
waves to white edges died down, till there was left on the water only
a long, heaving motion, that rudely swayed the old ship _Mayflower_.
One moment from her broad deck could be seen the steel-like gleam of
the fresh-water pond on the distant beach; the next moment, as the ship
rolled between the waves, the shore presented nothing but solid sand
dunes and shrubby pine trees. But always overhead the sky, athwart
which the yards, bulging with the furled sails, were raking, remained
the same,--a level reach of thick gray that, as twilight drew on,
seemed to brood closer over earth and ocean.

How those yards seesawed up and down with the rolling of the ship, and
the mastheads, they dipped too, quite as if they might pitch down upon
a body! Miles Rigdale, standing with legs craftily planted and head
thrown well back, stared and stared at their measured movement till,
dizzy with the feeling that the great spars were tottering loose, he
was glad to straighten his aching neck once more.

"Did you see a goose, all roasted, flying for your mouth?" Francis
Billington called from the waist of the ship, where he perched jauntily
upon the bulwark.

Sauntering from his place near the companion way, Miles halted beside
the speaker; not that he had a great liking for Francis Billington, but
he was a sociable lad, who must talk to some one, and, as the bleak air
had driven the women and children into the great cabin, while the men
were absent,--the leaders conferring in the roundhouse and the lesser
men seeking firewood on shore,--he could for the moment find no comrade
save young Billington.

The latter was an unprepossessing lad, stunted and small for his
fourteen years, with elfish eyes which he now turned sharply on Miles.
"I take it, Jack Cooke is ill, and Giles Hopkins has packed you
about your business, that you've come to spend the time with me," he
suggested disagreeably.

"I take it, maybe you've spoke the truth," Miles answered unruffled,
as he propped his chin on his fists and braced his elbows against the
bulwark.

Gazing thus northward, he could see all about him green hills, wooded
to the water's edge, now higher, now lower, as the ship mounted upon
the waves, and the strip of sand beach, off which rode the bobbing
longboat. "I wish my father had taken me with him when they went to
fetch the wood," Miles broke out at that sight; "it's weeks and weeks
since I set foot on land."

"Pooh! I've been ashore thrice already," bragged Francis, setting one
arm akimbo, though he took good care to grip the shrouds tightly with
the other hand, for the bulwark was not the safest of perches.

Miles tried to swallow down his envy, but he could not help saying,
with a touch of triumph: "Anyhow, you saw no savages, and my father saw
'em when he went exploring with Captain Standish,--six Indians and a
dog, he saw."

"So did my father," Francis sought to crush him; but Miles, declaring
sudden truce, was asking, with civil interest: "You did not see any
lions when you went ashore, did you, Francis?"

"N--no, but Ned Dotey thought he heard one roar the other night."

"Father would not take our mastiff Trug on land lest they kill him.
Trug would give 'em a fight for it, though. But he couldn't fight the
serpents; nobody could. Did you know, Francie, there's a serpent here
in America,--they call it the rattlesnake,--and if it but breathe on
you, you die presently."

"How do you know?" asked Francis, awed, but incredulous.

"My father read it in a book about plantations in Virginia. Maybe
the serpents lie close in cold weather, though, so you did not see
them." Miles was silent a long instant, while he gazed fixedly at
the mysterious shore yonder, where all these rarities were to be met
with. "The trees do not look like our English trees," he said, half
to himself, "but I'd fain go in among them. Perhaps you found conies
there, Francis? There were a plenty of them on the common at home; Trug
and I used to chase them, and 'twas brave sport."

"Mayhap if you had Trug with you, you could start some here," suggested
Francis. "Tell you, Miles, you beg your father let you go ashore
to-morrow, and I'll go too, and we'll seek for conies together. Will
you?"

"'Tis no use," Miles answered, scowling straight ahead.

"Why not?"

"Father says I cannot go," the boy blurted out. "I answered him saucily
this morning, and he said for that I should not stir foot off the ship
for a week. I think--I think he might let me go ashore. Along the first
I was coughing, so my mother said I must not venture in the boat; and
then my sister Dolly was ailing, and I must stay to bear her company;
and then it stormed; and now he will not let me go. And I am so weary
of this ship!"

"I'd not bear such usage from any man," Francis boasted grandly. "If
'twere my daddy treated me so harshly, I'd tell him to his face 'a' was
a sour old curmudgeon, and--"

"You need not talk so of my father," Miles interrupted sullenly, though
he held his eyes fixed upon the shore line, not on the speaker. It was
hard, while he looked toward the land of wonders, still unknown to him,
to think quite kindly of the father who had arbitrarily shut him out
from the enjoyment of it. "If you miscall him so again, Francis, I'll
fight you," he added, conscience-stricken, in the hope of making amends
for the disloyalty of his thoughts.

Francis bent his sharp eyes on his companion, but did not take up the
challenge; indeed, a less discreet lad than he might have considered
an instant before coming to fisticuffs with Miles Rigdale. The boy,
for his scant eleven years, was of a proper height, with straight
back and sturdy limbs, a stocky, yet not clumsy, little figure, that
promised a vigorous stature when he came to man's age. His deeply
tanned face, that was lightly sprinkled with brown freckles, was
square and resolute; his blue eyes were very level and honest; and his
tousled brown hair tumbled about his forehead in a way to make more
women than his mother think him a bonny boy. For the rest, he was clad
humbly enough in doublet and breeches of dark gray frieze, with long
gray stockings and stout shoes; he wore neither cloak nor hat, and his
clenched fists, that now rested firmly on the bulwark, were bare and
chapped red by the wind.

It was the sight of the aggressive fists that made Francis use a
different tone: "You're a pretty comrade, Miles, to fly out at me so."

"You may leave my father in peace, then."

"Perhaps you'd wish me to leave you in peace too. I know Goodman
Rigdale has forbid his little son speak to me."

"I'm still speaking to you, am I not?" answered Miles, and bent to
adjust one of his shoes, so Francis could not see his face; those last
words had hit dangerously near.

"But you'll show me a clean pair of heels very speedily," sneered his
companion, "for yonder the boat with your good father is putting off
from shore, and when he comes--"

"That's how the wind blows, is it?" struck in a new voice close at
hand. Looking over his shoulder, Miles saw, lounging on a coil of
rope by the foremast, a certain Edward Lister, one of the servants
of Master Stephen Hopkins. He was a slim, dark fellow of some twenty
years, whom Miles admired for a tall swaggerer, because he always wore
his red cap rakishly on one side, and, since the rules about lighting
tobacco aboard ship were strict, was ever chewing at a long pine
splinter instead of a pipe. "So if your father catch you with Master
Billington here, he'll swinge you soundly, eh, Miles Rigdale?" he
asked, with his mouth quite grave, but a glancing mockery in his black
eyes. "Better show us how briskly you can run into the cabin."

Miles ostentatiously leaned his shoulders against the bulwark and
crossed one leg over the other, as if he thought to finish the
afternoon in that position. Shifting round thus, his gaze travelled
beyond his companions to the high quarter-deck, where he spied several
men trudging forth from the roundhouse. "Has the conference broken
off?" he asked, forgetting in his curiosity that he was angry with both
Francis and Ned Lister.

"How else?" the latter answered dryly, and, rising to his feet,
sauntered over to the two boys. "D'ye think they would confer without
the great Master Hopkins? And he quit the roundhouse long since.
Wearied out, doubtless, with such vigorous labor. It has taken them an
hour to determine no more than to send forth a gang to-morrow and try
a third time for a place where we may settle."

"Another exploration? Is my father to go on it, do you know?" Miles
questioned.

"They won't let any but the great folk have a hand therein; daddy said
'twould be so," commented Francis.

"True enough," scoffed Lister; "the Governor, and Captain Standish,
Master Bradford, Master Winslow, Master Hopkins, and--the worshipful
Master Edward Dotey."

"Aha!" jeered Francis. "They're taking old Hopkins's other man Dotey
along, and Ned Lister is jealous of him."

"Hold your tongue!" cried Lister, catching the lad by the scruff of the
neck, "else I'll heave you over the bulwark."

Francis twisted up his face and opened his mouth in a prodigious,
dry-eyed howl, which would have set Miles laughing, had he not been
intent just then upon the approaching boat. He could see her visibly
growing larger, as she bounded nearer and nearer over the swell of the
water, and each moment he recalled more distinctly in what terms his
father had forbidden him have to do with "that Satanish brood of the
Billingtons." Miles shuffled one foot uneasily; perhaps he really ought
to go into the cabin now and see how his sick friend, Jack Cooke, was
faring.

He turned away and had idled a few paces along the deck, when Francis,
who had been suffered wrest out of Lister's hold, called after him:
"Ah, Miles daren't let his father find him with me. I knew so."

"It's not so, neither," Miles flung back, and made a great show of
stopping by the mainmast, where he stood gazing down the open hatchway
which led to those cabins that were in the depth of the hold. "Aren't
you coming with me, Francis?" he asked presently.

The other, quite undeceived, came snickering up to him: "Have no fear;
I'll take myself off ere your father come. Sure, you're a stout-hearted
one, Miles."

"You're a pretty fellow to talk of courage," Miles was goaded into
replying, "after the way you howled out but now. You might have known
Ned Lister'd do you no hurt."

"No doubt you'd not have been afraid," his tormentor scoffed. "You're
not afraid of anybody save your father."

"So are you, if you told the truth of it," Miles took him up. "You'd
not have Goodman Billington hear you vaporing so for all the silver
crowns in England, and if Goodwife Billington came by and heard you,
she'd cuff your ears smartly."

Francis's sallow face reddened. "Much she would!" he said angrily.
"I'll show you I be no milksop to stand in fear of my father and
mother. Maybe now you think I'd not dare to--" he paused, his eyes
half-closed, while he tried to concoct some peculiarly wicked sounding
project--"to take some of my father's gunpowder and make squibs?" he
concluded, with a triumphant look at his companion.

"No, I don't think you dare," Miles answered stolidly.

"Come, then, I'll show you," the other cried, and headed for the
companion way that descended beneath the quarter-deck.

Four steps down, and, passing through a narrow door, they entered
into the stifle and stir of the "great" or main cabin. On every hand
murmured the ceaseless confusion that always filled the straitened
space: underfoot, sometimes with fretful wrangling, children were at
play; women were passing to and from their cabins, or dressing their
meat for the evening meal at the long table; upon the benches several
sick men, whose heavy voices were audible through the shriller tones of
those about them, sat together in talk. Over all, the brightness from
the narrow skylights fell wanly, so the corners of the low apartment
were dusky with thick shadows, and the dim outline of the great timbers
overhead, and the slits of doors into the double tier of little cabins
adjoining, could only just be made out.

Miles was glad of the half light, for he knew well that if his mother
should chance to be there and see him with Francis, she would make
a pretext of some task to call him to her. He caught sight of her
now, as she stood by the table in speech with Constance Hopkins, and,
almost treading on Francis's heels in his hurry, he slipped into the
Billingtons' cabin.

It was the veriest closet of a room in which he found himself, black,
save for a glint of sickly light that crept through an opening in the
door, by which Miles contrived presently to discern the unmade bunk
along the wall, the mattress, still spread out upon the floor, and the
iron kettle and other vague household stuff that littered untidily
the narrow space. Comparing it with his father's ordered cabin, he
recalled his mother's indignant comment to Mistress Hopkins, that Ellen
Billington was a poor, thriftless body, who would better be tidying her
quarters than gossiping with her neighbors.

"Now you'll see what I dare, Master Miles," Francis broke in, as, with
much panting, he dragged from beneath the bunk a small keg. "This is
gunpowder, if you be not afraid of the sight of it."

"It does not take much courage to touch gunpowder," said Miles, bending
forward from the bunk, where he had seated himself, and plunging his
fist into the keg. "Let's see your squibs, Francis."

Young Billington stretched himself on his stomach and, grubbing once
more beneath the bunk, drew out a fistful of rustling papers. "These
are leaves I tore from a jest book of daddy's," he bragged. "No doubt
you won't believe I durst."

Miles made no reply; after all, he scarcely cared to prolong his
differences with a boy who had such a delightful plaything as a keg of
powder. "Let me make a squib too, Francie," he begged, squatting down
on the mattress beside his host.

For a space there was silence, while, with some hard breathing, the
two, guided more by touch than by any sight they had in the dark cabin,
labored industriously. Blacker and blacker it grew all round them, till
they struck their hands together as they groped in the keg, when a
ray of faint yellow light, that must fall from a lantern in the great
cabin, stole through the door.

Now they could see how they were faring at their work, and Francis,
who had laid his handfuls of powder on the papers and folded them
quite dexterously, laughed in provoking fashion at Miles, who, new to
this game, had spilt the powder and failed to make his papers stay
folded. "It's all very well," the boy retorted irritably, as one of his
painfully made squibs, bursting open, scattered powder between his
knees, "but after you've made these mighty squibs what else do you do?"

"Why, I'll light a bit of match," said Francis, scrambling to his feet,
"and then we'll touch 'em off."

Miles jumped up delightedly, and, reasoning that a really satisfactory
squib should be set off in darkness, took from the bunk a blanket which
he fastened by two nails across the opening in the door.

Meantime Francis had struck his father's flint and steel together, till
at length he succeeded in catching a spark upon the piece of "match" or
twisted tow steeped in saltpetre. Miles could see the little red point
shimmering in the dark and, picking up the squibs, he moved warily
toward it. "Gi' me a squib," came Francis's voice, close at his feet.
More accustomed to the dimness now, Miles could make out the boy's
crouching figure and saw him lean far forward with one arm outstretched
to touch off the powder.

Then he felt Francis crowd up against his knees, and instinctively he
drew back so his own body was pressed against the wall. Out of the dark
on the floor, right at his feet, started a little flicker of flame
which, with a sudden whishing sound, leaped up, a broad, bluish puff
of fire, almost in his eyes; then, before the exclamation had left his
lips, died sizzling away.

"That was brave, wasn't it?" spoke Francis, in a rather quavering
voice. "You can touch off one now."

[Illustration: "With his arm up to shut out the glare of the lanterns."]

Miles eagerly seized the match and, setting it to a squib, flung the
twisted paper a pace from him. The same whiz, burst, sizzle, but this
time he lost the keen pleasure in a sudden hideous thought that, even
as the squib left his hand, came over him. "Francis," he cried, before
the flame died down, "is this safe, think you? Say the powder in the
keg took fire?"

"Pshaw! You're afraid; I knew you'd be," replied Francis, his own
courage quite restored.

Thereupon Miles lit a third squib to show his fearlessness, and then
together they set off the remaining two. "That's the last, and I've no
more paper," sighed Francis, and Miles echoed the sigh.

They were sitting now on the edge of the bunk; the cabin seemed very
black to their eyes, still dazzled with the last flash, and the air
was hot and heavy with the pungent odor of burnt powder. Miles sniffed
it contentedly. "This is what 'twould be like in a great battle," he
began. "Sometime I mean to be a soldier and have a musket. Did you ever
shoot with a musket, Francis?"

"No, but I've shot off a fowling piece," answered the other. He
clambered upon the bunk, groping audibly in the dark, and presently
dropped down again beside his companion with something long and
slender and heavy in his arms. "Look you, Miles, here's daddy's fowling
piece now," he said exultantly. "What say if I shoot her off?"

"'Twould make a mighty big noise in so small a room," Miles answered
longingly.

"Give me the match, then."

Later Miles remembered clearly how Francis had sprung to his feet at
the word, but after that all was a confusion of dire noises,--a rending
crash, then a sound of women screaming, of children crying, and of
men running with clattering footsteps across the great cabin. Through
it all he felt the weight of Francis Billington, who had pitched back
against him, and he saw a little spurt of yellow fire that licked along
the boards. Though he did not remember snatching a blanket from the
bunk, one was in his hand, and he was down upon the floor, smothering
the flames that would press out beyond the edges. A powder keg was
somewhere near, he recollected, and he beat out one little jet of flame
with his hand, that smarted fiercely.

It all must have taken a long, long time, but still the women screamed,
and the heavy footsteps had only just reached the door. The latch
rattled beneath a rough hand, the light streamed into the cabin, and
Miles dropped back against the bunk, with his arm up to shut out the
glare of the lanterns, and the sight, too, of the angry faces in the
doorway. "Francis, Francis," he found himself saying, in a poor whisper
that he realized was not meant for Francis Billington's ears, "we must
'a' killed some one."




CHAPTER II

THE NAME OF MILES


IN the great cabin two huge, smoky lanterns, that swayed from the beams
overhead, cast blending white circles in the middle space, while the
corners still remained dusky. Somewhere, there in the dark, a woman
was crying hysterically, and others, calmer, but with startled, white
faces, were standing beyond the group of men, who were gathered round
the door of the Billingtons' cabin. Miles saw about him all the faces,
terrified or menacing, but it was blurrily, as in a dream. He kept
telling himself it was all a dream, an ugly dream, and presently he
would awake to find he had never gone with Francis Billington, and very
glad he would be to awake so.

But the grasp on his neck--it was big John Alden, the cooper from
Southampton, who had dragged him out into the great cabin--was real,
and so, he now found, were the faces of the men who confronted him. The
Elder, William Brewster, with his gray hair, and grave Governor Carver,
he noted among them, with a hopeless feeling that all the majesty of
the company was come thither to judge him. Close by, he heard Francis
Billington crying, with tearful sobs, not dry howls alone, but Miles
dropped his shamed eyes to the floor of the cabin and did not look at
his companion. He heard Goodman Billington's rough voice, thick with
abuse and threats against his son, and then he heard the Elder cut him
short: "Peace now, friend. Maybe the lad is hurt."

Just then, from within the Billingtons' cabin, whence a light smoke
still drifted, spoke a quick, deep voice: "Come you in and lend a hand,
Alden. There is work for two needs despatch. The floor here is over
shoe thick with powder."

"Ay, Captain Standish," the young man answered promptly, and loosed his
hold on Miles's collar.

There was a little movement in the group of men, and Master Stephen
Hopkins, stepping closer to the cabin door, peered in and spoke
solemnly: "A full keg of powder broke open! 'Tis by the mercy of Heaven
alone the ship was not blown into atoms."

"I did not have it in mind to blow up the ship," Miles faltered,
raising his eyes. "I did but touch off a squib--because it would burn
bravely." There the words choked in his throat, for, a little back from
the other men, he caught sight of his father, and Goodman Rigdale's
arms were folded, his heavy brows drawn close together, and his lips,
beneath his beard, set in a way Miles knew of old. "I did not mean it,"
he repeated huskily, and, gazing at the floor again, began crushing a
fold of his doublet in his hand.

About him there was questioning and answering, he knew, and he heard
Francis whimper: "'Twas Miles. He touched off squibs, he did."

"Squibs do not make such a noise as that we heard," Governor Carver
interrupted sternly.

"'Twas daddy's fowling piece. Miles Rigdale and I shot her off, and
he--"

"Let Miles Rigdale rest," the Elder admonished. "Do you tell us of
Francis Billington."

Bit by bit a fairly accurate story was drawn from the two boys, though
by such slow and woful stages that before it was ended Captain Miles
Standish and John Alden, with their hands all grimed with powder,
came out from the cabin. Miles stole a fearful side-glance at the
Low Country soldier, who, being trained in the brutal discipline of
the camps, was likely to prove a harsher judge than the Elder or
the Governor, but, to his relief, he saw the Captain halt beside
Goodman Billington, to whom he growled out some pithy advice as to
the expediency of keeping his powder covered up and out of reach of
mischievous hands.

Miles took heart a little then, as much as he could take heart while he
knew Goodman Rigdale was frowning in the background, and even ventured
to look up when he heard Elder Brewster say, in a tone which a trace
of amusement and much relief made almost kindly: "Well, well, 'twas no
Guy Fawkes conspiracy, it seems, only the folly of two scatter-brained
lads. Your Excellency scarce will set them in the bilboes?"

"Nay, I leave it to their fathers to teach them not to meddle with such
tools in future," Governor Carver answered gravely; and thereupon, with
a surly mutter or so from other fathers in the company as to what the
two culprits deserved to get, the men scattered to weightier affairs.

As the group thinned, Miles was left face to face with his father, who,
making a curt sign for him to come after, led the way to the door of
the cabin. Miles felt queer and empty at the pit of his stomach, and
his fingers trembled as he began unhooking his doublet, but he followed
along bravely. His eyes were still downcast, and, as he stepped, he
counted the planks in the flooring and tried to think of nothing but
their number.

Out in the darkness of the forward deck his father gave him such
punishment as he looked for,--a beating with a rope's end, so hard that
Miles had to set his teeth tight and clench his hands to keep from
crying. Once, in the midst, Goodman Rigdale stayed his arm, and in the
instant's cessation Miles, standing in his shirt-sleeves, felt the wind
from across the harbor strike cold on his hot flesh, that was quivering
with the blows. "That is for that you near destroyed the ship," his
father spoke, gravely and without anger. "Now I must flog you for that
you disobeyed me, and had to do with one of those Billington imps."

The second whipping ended, Miles huddled on his doublet, stiffly and
awkwardly, glad of the darkness that hid his face. Goodman Rigdale was
speaking again: "And ere you lie down to-night, my son, remember to
give thanks unto God that by His mercy He has preserved you from being
cast into His presence with the deaths of all that are within this ship
upon your soul."

Miles did not quite follow the words, but, with a sense that he was
the chiefest of sinners, and with a keen realization that his back and
sides were smarting, he gulped out an unsteady "Yes, sir," and blindly
fled away.

Aft of the foremast, as he stumbled uncertainly, he ran against a
woman, and at once he knew it was his mother. In an unformed way he was
aware that she had been waiting to comfort him, and at each blow had
suffered more than he. Her voice was quavering now, though she tried
hard to keep her everyday tone: "Come, come down to the cabin now.
Father has shot a bird, and I've made a broth to our supper. Come,
deary, it is turning chill here."

Shaking off the hand she laid on his arm, Miles broke away and ran to
the mainmast, where the hatchway yawned. Slipping and swinging on the
steep ladder, he descended headlong; he was not going to his father's
cabin, nor did he know whither he was going, only that he wanted to be
by himself. On the orlop deck he halted an instant before passing down
into the hold; below, there would be many people, while here, for the
moment, he was alone. He stood blinking at the dim lantern that hung by
the ladder, till slowly it grew blurry to his eyes, and, raising his
bent arm, he hid his face.

It seemed only a moment before he heard someone come tramping up from
the hold, and felt a hand on his shoulder. He was turned round; he
had to look up; and he saw, standing over him, Master Hopkins, very
grim and stern, as was his wont. "I am glad to see these tears of
repentance, Miles Rigdale," he spoke severely.

Miles wriggled out of his hold. "I am not repentant," he cried. "I wish
I _had_ blown _you_ up. Now you can go bid my father flog me again."
With that he dodged the hand Hopkins put out to detain him, and,
jumping over some coils of rope, scrambled away out of reach.

Clambering over the chests and kegs that were placed upon the orlop,
he paused only when he reached the next cleared space, by the forward
hatchway that led to the gunroom. There it was all dark, a comfortable,
thick blackness, and, to make it safer and lonelier, he crept under a
table that was stored among other household stuff.

For a moment he sat panting, and listened to the lap, lap of the waves
upon the side of the ship and to his own heavy breathing, but he heard
no sound of any one's pursuing him. Doubtless Master Hopkins had
gone away to tell every one that he was crying and repentant, Miles
tormented himself; no matter, he was never coming out to be jeered at
and preached to; he would stay under the table forever, and he would
not shed another tear to please them.

So he sat, rigid and still, and each moment grew more keenly aware that
he was sore from his beating, that his head ached, and his burnt hand
throbbed, and his heart was big with a great burden of shame. Of a
sudden, in the stillness and dark, he heard a sob. Then he found it was
himself, lying with his head buried in his arms against the crosspiece
that braced the legs of the table, and crying helplessly.

He had lost track of the minutes, but he had lain there a long time,
he knew, for his arms were numb with the pressure of the crosspiece
against them, and his throat ached with much sobbing, when he caught
the sound of a footstep on the planking of the orlop. At the same
moment, light beat against his smarting eyelids, and, opening his eyes,
he raised his head to look.

The edges of the table under which he crouched were silhouetted blackly
against the yellow lantern-glow, which crept midway into his shelter.
Following with his eyes along the light, he could see beyond the table
the joinings of the planks of the floor, a bit of the ladder that led
to the main deck, and by the ladder, in shadow as the lantern was
raised, the lower part of a man's body.

Miles stared breathlessly at the commonplace leather shoes and kersey
breeches,--all the rest the table hid from his view,--while he strove
to hold back a sob that was halfway up his throat. It would out, but he
tried to turn it into a sneeze, which ended in a mournful, indefinable
gurgle.

Instantly the light of the lantern, swinging round, swept almost into
his face, and a deep voice commanded: "Come out hither."

Miles sat up, tense and braced. "Is it you, Captain Standish?" he
asked, in a small voice. Not that, to his knowledge, Miles Standish had
ever hurt any one, but he was a brusque, peremptory man, reputed of a
fiery temper; it was for this, probably, that Master Hopkins had sent
him hither, as one fitted to deal out further punishment to such a
criminal as Miles Rigdale.

"Come out, and you'll speedily find if 'tis I," Standish's voice
rejoined grimly.

Miles rubbed his sleeve across his eyes, the rough frieze hurting them
rarely, then dubiously crept from his shelter. The straight course was
to crawl toward the light, but to go that way would land him squarely
at the Captain's feet,--a last touch of ignominy that he could not
endure. So he scrambled painfully over the crosspieces and round the
table-legs, till he came out upon the open floor the width of the
table-top from the enemy.

"It's naught but you, is it?" the Captain greeted him, and turned the
lantern so the light fell full upon him.

The boy struggled hastily to his feet. "Ay, sir," he nodded, without
speaking or looking up.

The other drew a step nearer. "You're one of the knaves who tried to
blow up the _Mayflower_, are you not?" he questioned sternly. "Did you
steal down here to fire the magazine and finish the work?"

"I--I did not go for to blow up the ship, sir," Miles pleaded, raising
his eyes. With amazed relief, he saw that, for all his gruff tone, the
Captain looked more amused than angry.

Standish must have taken closer note of him, too, for he asked
abruptly: "You're John Rigdale's lad, are you not?"

"I am Miles Rigdale."

The lantern was lowered suddenly. "My namesake, are you? Do you
not think, sirrah, you bear too good a name to drag it into a
powder-burning matter such as this?"

"I do not hold it a good name," Miles burst out. "I would they had
called me plain Jack."

"Wherefore, pray you?"

"Miles is no name at all," the boy hesitated, between shyness and the
desire to vent a long-standing resentment. "It makes me think of the
stone in our village that said: 'Thirteen miles to London.'"

"Tut, tut, lad! Have you no Latin?"

Miles slipped one hand under the edge of the table against which he
leaned, and picked at a splinter he found there, while he stammered:
"N--no, sir. There was no school in our village, and, had there been,
my father could not spare me from the farm. I must help him, for I'm
mighty strong for my years," he added gravely. "And I never want to go
sit in a school, either. I am glad there will be no schools here in
the plantation, not till I'm a man and can do as I will. I hold that
is the best part of all in planting a colony, except the lions and the
savages."

"And what do you think to do with the lions and savages, Miles
Rigdale?"

"Fight 'em, sir."

Captain Standish chuckled softly in his beard. "You'll fight 'em, eh?
'Tis a great pity, in truth, no one has told you what name you bear.
You should know that Miles in the Latin tongue signifies 'a soldier.'"

Miles forgot that his cheeks were tear-stained and his eyes swollen,
and looked up happily into the speaker's face. "I am right glad of
that," he announced. "'Tis a good enough name, after all." He was
sorely tempted to ask the Captain if he had been named that after he
proved himself a soldier in the wars, or if they named him first and he
grew to it afterward, but he concluded that would be over-bold.

Though, after all, he began to doubt if Captain Standish were such
a terrible body. He looked pleasant enough now, as he stood in the
lantern light,--a stocky, square-shouldered man of some six and thirty
years, with yellow-brown hair and beard, and eyes so deep set under his
brows Miles could not tell their color. The linen bands at his neck and
wrists were small and plain, and along the sides of his doublet of dark
maroon kersey the rubbing of armor had worn down the cloth. He was not
so fine a gentleman, doubtless, as young Master Edward Winslow, but he
looked the man of war, through and through, and, moreover, he neither
scolded nor preached at a small sinner; Miles began to be glad in his
heart that he bore the same name as the Captain.

"So, after all, you're content to be named 'Soldier' Rigdale?" Standish
suddenly read the expression of his face.

"'Tis a soldier that I mean to be," Miles confessed. "I like the smell
of powder."

"So it seems," the Captain answered, in the dryest possible tone, and
then, as Miles's cheeks began to burn, went on hastily: "Which was it,
you or the Billington lad, put out the fire? We found the blanket on
the floor of the cabin."

"Mayhap 'twas I. I do not recall it clearly."

The Captain reached out his hand, and, taking Miles by a fold of the
doublet-sleeve, lifted his arm. "No doubt 'twas you," he said; "you've
blistered your hand here."

"I know. It aches," Miles whispered, with a sudden husky dropping of
his voice.

"You'd better go to your mother straightway and ask her to put oil on
it; that will soon draw out the fire."

"I can't," Miles gulped. "I can never go out among the people again.
When they all think I tried to blow them up,--and when every one will
know I have been newly whipped. I shall stay here forever." His voice
died down as he spoke the last: it did not sound manly, but uncommon
silly.

"You'd get mighty hungry if you did," the soldier answered him coolly.
"You're going to your mother now, my man. Run along with you. I've to
go on down into the gunroom, but I'll light you up the ladder."

Miles gave a tremulous gasp of resignation, and scuffed slowly to the
foot of the ladder, where he paused and smeared the back of his hand
across his cheeks; then turned to his companion. "Captain Standish," he
hesitated; then, as it was the only possible way of learning what he
wished to know before he showed himself among the company, he blurted
out desperately, "Will you tell me, is my face clean?"

Captain Standish looked down at him with a funny expression in his
eyes. "I think 'twill serve in a half light, if you slip directly into
your father's cabin."

"Thank you, sir," Miles answered; then added hastily, "You see, there
was something flew into my eye, and one that did not know might
think--I had been crying."




CHAPTER III

THIEVISH HARBOR


ONE sharp December afternoon, a week and a day after the Pilgrim
leaders went forth the third time to seek a place for settlement, Love
Brewster and his little brother Wrestling climbed down to the cabins
beneath the main deck to visit their playmate, Dolly Rigdale. The cubby
where Dolly and Miles and their father and mother had lived during the
two months of the voyage over the sea and the five weeks of exploration
that followed, was a dim box of a place, but the little boys liked to
visit it, not only to talk with Dolly, who was nearer their age than
most of the children in the company, but to see Trug and Solomon.

Trug was the big, grizzled mastiff, who had guarded the house and the
cattle faithfully for so many years that even stern John Rigdale had
not the heart to leave him to strangers; and Solomon, with the wise
eyes of royal yellow, was the fat house-cat, whom Dolly had insisted on
bringing with her to the new home.

"If it had been my pet, 'twould 'a' had to bide in England," Miles had
told himself, in one bitter, jealous moment, of which he was justly
ashamed. For, without question, Goodman Rigdale cared equally for his
two children, only he held Miles, being a stubborn chip of manhood,
needed frequent beatings, such as the Scriptures enjoined on good
fathers to give their sons, whereas Dolly was just a little wench, with
gray eyes like her mother, so she received very gentle whippings and
triumphantly lugged Solomon on shipboard.

The sleek, striped creature lay beside her now, for Dolly, still ailing
with her cough, was resting on the bunk beneath the blankets. Wrestling
Brewster, a big-eyed, silent child, sat by her, and, sorry to tell,
joined forces with the little girl in rumpling poor Solomon's fur. "You
are the best pussy," Dolly purred meantime, and, either because of her
flattery or because the warm blankets were comfortable, the cat made no
movement to leave her.

Ordinarily Miles sniffed at the conversation of eight-year-olds, such
as his sister, but this afternoon he gladly lingered in the cabin, for
the accomplishments of the Brewster lads were amazing enough to lift
them to the rank of companions. Both could jabber Dutch quite as fast
as Miles could speak English, and Love, the talkative one, could tell
wonderful stories of the queer Low Country city of Leyden, where all
his short life had been spent. It was of Leyden he spoke now, sitting
beside Miles on the turned-up mattress, where at night Goodman Rigdale
and his son slept, and Miles, with a question here and there to draw
out what he sought, listened again to the story of the Pilgrims.

Love had good reason to know it well, for his father, Elder Brewster,
had been from the first one of the leaders of the little company. He
had given all his substance to help the cause of that faith which the
bishops of the great Established Church of England held it right to
crush out; he had suffered imprisonment for the sake of that faith;
and finally, that he and his friends might worship God as they thought
best, had gone into exile in Holland.

There for twelve years the Pilgrim church held its own, though its
members, for all their efforts to support themselves in that strange
country, fared hardly and poorly. Good Deacon Fuller, the physician,
had been glad to earn his living as a say or serge maker; Master
William Bradford had been a maker of fustian; and the Elder had
maintained his family and aided his poorer companions by teaching
English to Danish and German gentlemen, and later by printing English
books.

Love told also of Master Carver, the recently elected governor of the
company, who had given his whole fortune to the Pilgrim cause; and
he spoke of gallant Master Edward Winslow, who, travelling in the Low
Countries with his newly married wife, had come to know and to respect
the Pilgrim folk and finally to cast in his lot with theirs. And, best
of all, Love could tell of Captain Standish.

There the boy turned to what Miles had been waiting to hear, and be
sure that now he eagerly drank in each word: how the Captain came of
a great family in Lancashire, where he had a vast estate which his
kinsfolk had taken from him,--so Love had once heard him say to the
Elder; how he had fought bravely against the wicked Spaniards, as far
back as the time of Queen Bess, when Miles Standish was a very young
man indeed; and how, of a sudden, he had come with his young wife and
joined himself to the Pilgrims, why, none could say, for he was "not of
our faith," Love gravely quoted the older people.

That last did not greatly displease Miles, perhaps because his own
father was rather a Puritan than an ardent Separatist, as those were
called who, like the Pilgrims of Leyden, broke off all communion with
the Established Church. Goodman John Rigdale grumbled about the bishops
and the vestments of the clergymen and other matters which Miles
neither heeded nor comprehended, but, for all his grumbling, as often
as the law insisted, he and his household went to church. One of the
first and liveliest recollections of childhood which Miles kept, was of
how the red light from the painted windows that his father hated used
to shift along the dark oak of the old pews.

Lately, though, John Rigdale had spoken out too openly against the
service book, and there had been a citation before the ecclesiastical
court. Miles scarcely understood the matter, but he knew that Dun-face,
the pet heifer, had been sold to pay a fine, and that their landlord,
swearing that he was too good a Church of England man to suffer a
pestilent Separatist hold a farm of him, had refused to renew the
lease, bought long ago by Miles's grandfather, which now ran out.

Then had come Master Stephen Hopkins, the London tanner, whose first
wife had been a distant cousin of John Rigdale's, and he had talked of
the new country over seas, where a man might have land and a farm of
his own for the asking and worship to please his conscience, not the
king's bishops. Master Hopkins had already made up his mind to embark
with the people from Leyden; he had met their agent, Master Cushman,
and he was acquainted with some of the London merchants who had
formed a partnership with the Leyden people, the Londoners to furnish
money to pay the expenses of the long voyage, the Separatists to give
themselves and their families to defend and till the plantation thus
gained.

In the end, Master Hopkins's statements were so weighty that Goodman
Rigdale followed his example. The stout farm horse and the cows and the
pigs were all led away to market, and Dolly cried over each one; and
Goodwife Rigdale, too, wept a little when most of the bits of furniture
were sold. But Miles thought it all very merry and stirring,--the
breaking up of the home he had known, the journey to Southampton, all
amidst new sights and sounds, and the ship, and the long voyage over
the sea, till the _Mayflower_ dropped anchor off Cape Cod.

He was more than a bit weary of the voyage and the ship now, however,
as he sat on the turned-up mattress in his father's stuffy little
cabin. The dead air was cold without being bracing, and Miles broke
short Love's discourse on the journey of the Leyden Pilgrims into
England, by springing up and stamping his chilled feet.

"It _is_ a shrewd cold day," said his companion. "See!" He puffed at
the air, and his breath made a little white cloud. "Maybe we'd best go
up on deck and run."

At that word the two older boys turned to the door, but Wrestling shook
his head and, pressing closer to Dolly, whispered: "Before I go, I want
that you show me the Indian basket."

Miles overheard, and delayed to draw from beneath the bunk the deal box
in which the treasure was kept. Wrestling was so young that he seemed
hardly more than a baby, and as a baby Miles had a kindly, protecting
feeling for him; when he rose with the box he opened it so the little
boy might have the first sight. Within lay a tiny basket all of silk
grass, pictured on which in black and white were birds and flowers of a
curious pattern.

"Did your father truly bring it from the Indians?" Love asked.

"He brought it home to me," Dolly explained proudly. "It was in an
Indian house, and my father found it when he went ashore with Captain
Standish. And so he brought it to me."

Wrestling touched the fragile thing gingerly. "I wish our father fought
the Indians once," he murmured.

"It is better to be an Elder," Love rebuked him sternly; then added,
lest Dolly's feelings be hurt, "though, to be sure, there can be but
one Elder in a company. The rest must be fighting men, must they not,
Miles?"

But Miles gave no heed; for just then the sound of soft footsteps made
him glance to the open door, at which the light drifted in, and there,
standing on the threshold, he saw his mother.

Years afterward, when he looked back, Miles realized Goodwife Rigdale
had been a young woman then, not above thirty, but in those days it
seemed to him she must be old, because she was his mother; he even
wondered that she had not hair streaked with gray, like Mistress
Brewster. Mothers were always old, he generalized rashly, just as they
were always gentle-spoken and full of kindness; only that last judgment
he revoked, after he came aboard the _Mayflower_ and heard Goodwife
Billington, a true London virago, rail at her sons and saw her cuff
them.

But his own mother was not to be belittled by naming her with Ellen
Billington; she was everything that was good and to be loved, even
if she did not wear such a brave gown as Mistress Winslow, nor have
such pink cheeks as Mistress Standish. Miles drew away from the bunk,
against which he had been leaning, to make room for her to sit, though
he did it awkwardly, because Love and Wrestling were looking.

"I'll bide a bit now with my little maid," she said, as she drew the
blankets more closely about Dolly. "You'll want to be running up on
deck now, I can guess, deary, and Love and Wrestling too, if Mistress
Brewster will suffer it."

"Mother, is the shallop in sight?" Miles cried eagerly. For, since the
exploring party sailed forth a week before, there had come so great a
storm that hearts aboard the _Mayflower_ were not a little anxious for
their welfare.

"They've made out a sail to the southward, I heard the talk run. Go you
and learn further, Miles. Your father will be on deck too."

Miles reddened a little; why would she speak as if he were a young boy,
to need his father? "Come, lads," he said, in a very old tone, to hide
his mortification, and led the way from the cabin. As he passed out at
the door, he heard a sorrowful wail from Dolly: "O me! Mammy, can I not
run about with them soon?"

But Miles forgot Dolly's woes and all, when he clambered into the
bracing air of the deck, whither the most of the hale ones of the
company had, like himself, bustled to watch the approaching shallop.
Shreds of dappled cloud half obscured the east, but low in the west the
sun was cold and yellow, and its light flecked the water and made the
sail of the distant craft gleam like gold.

Miles stared till for very dazzle he could see no longer, then turned
his gaze inboard, where it rested on the slender figure of a woman, who
leaned against the mainmast. When the light got out of his eyes, he
perceived it was Mistress Rose Standish, who, while he was still gazing
on her, came to the bulwark beside him, but, without seeming to see
him, stood looking toward the shallop.

Once and again Miles glanced up at her, thinking how bonny she was
with the flush on her cheeks and her brown hair straying from beneath
her hood across her forehead; and then he grew suddenly hot, for she
chanced to look down, and their eyes met. He drew away bashfully and
stared again at the shallop; the sun had now dropped lower, so the
waves around it were sombre, but within the boat sparkled a gleam of
light on metal armor. Miles almost thought to be able to distinguish
the forms of the men, and presently their faces. "Yon is the Captain,"
he broke out, half aloud.

"Do you see him, too?" Mistress Standish spoke, as if he had addressed
her.

"That's he, by the mast, with the steel corselet."

She looked down again, and the boy noted her eyes were moist, though
she smiled as she said: "You seem to know the Captain very well, sir."

"I'd know him anywhere," Miles answered earnestly. "You understand, he
was right kind to me."

Then he broke off speech, for the shallop was now fairly alongside,
and the men in her were calling to those on shipboard greetings and
questions and answers. Mistress Standish moved quickly toward the
gangway, and Miles saw her meet the Captain, when he clambered up the
ladder.

Next after him came Master William Bradford, and suddenly it struck
with a shock on Miles's remembrance that Mistress Bradford was dead,
drowned alongside the _Mayflower_ on the very day after the shallop
sailed, and her body carried away among the waves. Master Bradford,
for all the weariness in his movements, looked cheerful and hopeful as
he gained the deck, and his eyes went glancing over the women gathered
there with such a certainty of meeting one that, child though he was,
Miles realized something of the pity of it.

But after Elder Brewster had led Master Bradford away, the horror and
the pity slipped quickly from Miles. Drawing over closer to the gangway
ladder, he stood watching the rest of the shallop's company scramble
to the deck, and, listening to every scrap of speech, was soon eager
as any of the other boys in questioning the sailors and Hopkins's man,
Dotey.

The minutes ran on till dim twilight had darkened upon the water, when
at last, bursting with news, Miles clambered down again to Goodwife
Rigdale in the cabin. "They've found a place for us to settle, mother,"
he announced, barely within the door.

Goodwife Rigdale hushed him with a finger on her lips; Dolly was
asleep, so he must speak softly.

Miles curled himself up on the floor at his mother's feet, with his
elbow on her knee, and whispered: "'Tis at a place called Thievish
Harbor--"

"Nay, that's an ill name," commented the Goodwife.

"'Tis because a savage stole a harpoon from a ship's boat that once put
in there to truck, so says Robert Coppin, the pilot. It lies across a
great bay here, and there are fair green islands and many brooks and
cleared land and tall trees. We are going thither, all of us, mother.
The ship is to sail so soon as the wind favors. And if they like of it
on further look, we'll go ashore and stay. I want to go ashore again,"
he ended wistfully; "the week's out that father said I must stay on
the ship. Won't you beg him take me ashore first thing when we come
thither, mother?"

The flickering light that reached them from the lantern hung outside
the cabin door was blotted out then, as Goodman Rigdale himself came
in. Miles dared ask no favors of him directly, however, but, scrambling
to his feet, stood silent and unobtrusive, though he listened eagerly
to all his father had to say of Thievish Harbor, which he called
Plymouth. "So it is named on the maps that were drawn by Captain
Smith," he said, to which Goodwife Rigdale answered quickly: "I am glad
for the name. Do you not have in mind, John, how kindly the people
at our English Plymouth dealt by us when we had to put in at their
harbor?"

But this new Plymouth in America bore little resemblance to Plymouth
in Devonshire, as Miles found, to his surprise, when he had his first
sight of the place where the company was to settle. It was on the
afternoon of the day succeeding the return of the shallop that, the
wind at last favoring, the _Mayflower_ steered her course for the bay
of Plymouth. The sunshine was strong and clear, and the air mild, so
Goodwife Rigdale suffered Dolly come up on deck, where, well wrapped in
a cloak, she stood between her mother and Miles.

Others in plenty, all the passengers who could walk about, were
watching for a glimpse of the new home, but Miles, in his eagerness,
scarcely heeded his companions. He strained his eyes to see the
headlands, brave with evergreen, loom higher and higher, and ran to
question his friend, Giles Hopkins, who had been talking with the
sailors, as to what they were. Giles explained that the one on the left
was not the mainland, but a well-wooded point, and on the right yonder
the farther of the two islands, with the trees, was where the exploring
party had spent their Sabbath.

By the time Miles returned to his mother with the news, they were
running in between the point and the islands, and presently, well
within the harbor, they dropped anchor in a safe mooring ground. All
about them were headlands and islands; far to the right, across the
bay, rose a great hill; and just over opposite where the ship lay a
broad space of open land, with high hills behind, could be made out.

"Yonder's where we'll settle," Miles assured his mother.

"I see no houses," protested Dolly. "I thought there would be cottages,
maybe. Must we lie in the woods, mammy?"

"Nonsense! We'll build houses," scoffed Miles; he would have blushed
to own that, half unconsciously, he, too, had cherished the fancy of
seeing on the New England shore straggling streets and tiny cottages,
as in old Plymouth.

"You'll build houses, Miles?" teased his sister.

"Father and I and all the men," the boy bragged. "Build them of great
logs. Then in the spring will come a ship with horses and cows and
sheep, and we'll have farms, just as we had at home."

"With a hedge round the dooryard?" Dolly questioned.

"Yes, and meadow-land and ploughed fields. We'll have all in order when
the frost leaves the ground," Miles answered confidently.

Then he looked up at his mother, and was astonished to see that for
once her eyes were not on her children, but on the empty shore over
opposite. Her face was wistful, and it came on Miles that perhaps she
was not as interested in the farm concerns as he, who was a man, so he
said quickly: "And you can have a garden here, mother, full of rosemary
and daffadowndillies, just as at home. Maybe you'll not have to labor
so hard here," he added more vaguely, not quite understanding her
silence.

She smiled a little then. "That's a good lad, Miles," she said, putting
her arm about his shoulders; then she bade him go to his mates if he
would, and she led Dolly back to the cabin.

Miles stood alone, gazing at the home-shore and wondering where his
father's farm would lie. Still thinking on it, he was turning toward
the hatchway, when he almost ran into Goodman Rigdale. "O father,"
Miles broke out before he thought, "may I not go with you when we begin
our farm? I'll conduct me well and be obedient."

He stopped, surprised at his own forwardness, and he was more surprised
when his father, looking down at him gravely, said without chiding:
"Our farm? Ay, Miles, so soon as there is work to do on shore you shall
come with me and bear a hand."




CHAPTER IV

HEWERS OF WOOD AND DRAWERS OF WATER


"TO-MORROW I am going ashore." Thus Miles Rigdale proclaimed, from his
perch on the bunk in his father's cabin, to all who might choose to
hear.

"'Tis the forty and third time you've said that in the last sennight,"
Ned Lister answered dryly. He was lounging in the cabin door,
shirt-sleeved and shivering, while Goodwife Rigdale repaired his
doublet; Mistress Hopkins, to whom the task ordinarily fell, lay ill,
and her stepdaughter, Constance, was so busied that, to relieve her,
Alice Rigdale had taken the young man and his mending off her hands.

"Why do you not put on your cloak, if you be cold, Ned Lister?" Dolly
spoke up.

"Because 'tis too much labor to fetch it, Puss," Ned answered, whereat
Miles laughed, and the Goodwife's brows puckered; another might have
said it was because the sewing gave her trouble, but Miles, who felt
uncomfortably that his mother disapproved of Ned as a scatter-brained,
reckless fellow, guessed that she had not liked that last speech.

He was sure of his guess when she hastened to change the subject: "Does
it still rain upon deck, Edward?"

"Rain and naught else; the third day of it now, yet by the look it
might pour on for a week."

"And my daddy's yonder in the wet on shore," murmured Dolly, pressing
close against her mother's knee, and the Goodwife sewed more slowly,
with her eyes downcast.

But Miles burst into lamentation: "I think they might 'a' taken me
ashore. Since we came into Plymouth Harbor they've explored and
explored, and never suffered me to come, but they took Giles Hopkins
with them. And now the randevous is built on shore, and some of the men
are staying there, it has rained and rained so I cannot go to them. But
I'm going to-morrow, the very next time the shallop sails."

"To be sure you shall," Lister answered, as he scrambled into his
mended doublet. "I'll take you along with me."

Then he swaggered away jauntily, as if he had promised ample service
in return for his mending, and Goodwife Rigdale, with a bit of a sigh,
said softly to Miles: "'Tis well meant of Edward Lister to see you safe
ashore, but when you are there, remember, you are to stay with your
father, not go roving with him."

Miles's satisfaction at Ned's offer was a bit tempered by her words,
but he lost the remembrance of them next morning, when he saw the
sun was rising clear and the shallop would go shoreward. At once he
clattered down to the cabin to get his cap and mittens, and Trug,
who must go with him; then ran up on deck again, where, in the chill
sunlight, the men were laboring briskly to load the shallop. Miles
watched them while they put in the felling-axes and handsaws and
hammers, all the tools that were to build the new town of Plymouth,
and the biscuit and salt beef and pease that were to form the workers'
rations.

About the time the labor was ended, Ned sauntered up to the gangway,
and, seeing Miles, very speedily helped him clamber down the ladder,
and made Trug leap after him. Master Isaac Allerton, who was settled
comfortably in the stern, grumbled at burdening the shallop with
children and curs, so Miles put his arms about Trug, and, cuddling down
in the bottom of the boat, made himself as still and small as possible
lest, after all, the company, thinking better of it, bid him scramble
up the gangway ladder again.

But the time for that was past, for the shallop, with her sail hanging
sluggish, had crept surely out from the lee of the _Mayflower_, and
now, catching the light breeze, actually stood in to the shore. Miles
forgot the discomfort of his seat among the tools while he gazed
toward the approaching coast line, where was to be his home. Behind him
the sun was up, and the hills that rose away inland from the harbor
were bright in the cold, yellow radiance, and the water and the sky
that spread about him were both very blue. He glanced back over his
shoulder at the dreary old _Mayflower_, and was surprised to find that,
as the sun struck athwart her patched sails, even she was beautiful.

Then the movement of those about him, and the sound of waves crunching
on the shingle, made him look forward again. Under the shelter of a
high bluff, where a great boulder ran out into the water, he saw those
standing who had kept the randevous, and the randevous itself, a rude
hut of boughs. In his eagerness Miles jumped up, and Trug, springing up
too, began to bark, but no one took note or scolded, for the men were
busied in running the shallop in alongside the rock, and some, leaping
over the gunwale, were already splashing through the shallow water to
the beach.

Ned and Giles Hopkins made the shore thus, so Miles must do the like,
and came to land all drenched and dripping. But it was land,--good,
stable, brown earth, not the hateful, rolling ship,--he had beneath his
feet, and, in the delight of the long unused sensation, he forgot he
was wet and chilled, forgot his father awaited him, and there was work
to do. He knew only that far and near the shore stretched widely, where
a boy could run, so, for choice, he set his face to the bluff that
towered above the landing.

Up and up, through the keen, dry bushes, that whipped his hands and
face so he laughed in the mere delight of struggling with them, he
fought his way till he came breathless to the bare summit. All about
him dazzled the blue of the harbor and of the unclouded sky, and
yonder on his right, through its fringe of bushes, shone the blue of
what seemed a cove. Down the hill rushed Miles, with Trug leaping and
barking at his heels, and paused only on the shore of a great brook,
that, flowing out between steep bluffs, widened into the sea.

Another was before him there, his distant kinsman, Giles Hopkins,
who, for all he was a sober lad of sixteen, was a good comrade to the
younger boy. He now bade Miles come upstream to the spring the men had
found on their last exploration, and Miles very readily followed him
through the scrubby undergrowth, where the cove narrowed on the left
hand, and on the right a high bluff kept pace with the boys. "It's on
that bluff they mean to set the houses," Giles explained, over his
shoulder.

"Then we'll have this big stream in our dooryards," cried Miles. "Won't
that be brave? I shall build me a raft, and sail to those wooded hills
on the other side whenever I choose. Though, maybe, Indians dwell
there," he added, with a dubious glance at Giles; he did not wish
to seem afraid, but, though he intended to be a soldier, he did not
purpose to fight without a musket and a long sword, and he wondered how
much farther from the shore his leader would venture.

But speedily his wonder had an end, for, breaking through a thicket of
leafless alders, Giles halted at a little cavity within the sand of the
riverbank, where the spring of sweet water bubbled up. Down lay Miles
on the turf, and, using his hand for a cup, swallowed his first draught
of New England water. "'Tis better than the brackish stuff we have on
shipboard," he said, as he wiped his wet hands on his wet doublet.

"The savages must have known the spot," answered the experienced Giles.
"We found this path worn down hither from the bluff, and see, here is a
line of stepping-stones across the brook."

Miles glanced about him, half nervously, lest along the path or across
the stones he see one of their former savage passengers approaching. He
was at heart relieved when, as Giles led the way up the bluff, he heard
in the distance the sound of an axe crashing on a tree trunk. Giles did
not turn toward the sound, however, but went plodding on uphill, for
above the bluff a second summit reared itself steeply. Miles panted in
his trail, endlessly upward, it seemed, till at last he stood exhausted
on a lofty hilltop, whence, far as the sea spread out before him, he
beheld the wooded uplands roll away to westward.

Giles was explaining wisely what a proper place this hill was for a
fort, and how Captain Standish had advised the company mount upon
it guns, which should command to southward the spring, and toward
the harbor the landing place and the houses, which were to be built
along the river bluff, when Master Hopkins and John Rigdale, tramping
thither, ended their sons' holiday.

"Is this the way you would work, Miles?" Goodman Rigdale asked sternly,
and, fearing lest the next word sentence him to return at once to the
_Mayflower_, Miles ran eagerly about the task they set him.

All day he tugged chips and branches for the fire at the randevous, but
it was work on land, in the free air, where a boy could shout as much
as he wished, so he never realized he was weary till night came. He had
to pack off to the ship with the other boys and near half the men, but
he had no chance to grumble at this, as did some of his mates, for,
once aboard the shallop, he leaned against Ned Lister and fell half
asleep. Only when the shallop scraped the ship's side did he awake to
stagger up the gangway ladder and stumble away to tell Dolly and his
mother of the wonders he had seen ashore.

Next day, being Sunday, no work was done, and the next day, being
Christmas, Miles, who remembered what a time of merrymaking that was at
home, thought he must idle again. But here on Christmas, from sunrise
to sunset, it was all stern work. "We stain this virgin soil with no
Popish holydays," Master Hopkins said grimly, and, though the rest did
not exult in words, they labored with double fervor to show they did no
honor to the day.

Miles had his part to do on shore that Christmas and in the days that
followed, though it was a different part from that he had hoped to
have. When he talked to his mother and Dolly of building cottages,
he had fancied that perhaps he would be allowed to sit high up on a
ridgepole and drive nails. He knew he would enjoy doing that, but in
practice he was set less pleasant tasks: he ran errands, not only for
his father, but for every man who chose to send him; he fetched water
up the steep bluff from the spring to the workers; and he carried
firewood from where the choppers labored upon the bluff to where the
first house was building.

On occasion he even tended the fire and saw that the porridge did not
burn, and more than once was sent to carry a portion of the food to
the men who, unable to rise and get their rations, lay ill in the
half-built log cabins. The numbers of these sick ever multiplied, for
the close quarters and bad food aboard the _Mayflower_ had caused a
fever to break out among her passengers, and the exposure to which the
men and boys often recklessly subjected themselves increased the roll
of the ailing, and, at last, of the dying.

Miles was sorry, of course, for the men and women who sickened and
died, but it was a sorrow that did not go deep enough to prevent his
enjoying the open-air life, and the moments of play that he snatched
from his work. For death had not come near any that he loved; Dolly and
Jack Cooke had been ill, but they were getting better, and none of his
other near acquaintances had been touched. To be sure, he himself went
sneezing with a great cold, but it meant nothing, any more than did his
father's cough; he did not worry for it the half as much as he fretted
at the dull routine labors to which he was set.

One day in January he had a hand in more exciting work, for Ned Lister
and Giles Hopkins, who were going to cut swamp grass for thatch,
invited him to come with them, and Ned even let him carry his sharp
sickle. Ned himself turned all his effort to bearing a fowling piece,
with the use of which, after the grass was cut, he had been bribed
to the afternoon's labor, for he was afflicted with a hard cough that
racked him most piteously when he was set to any work but hunting.

So soon as they reached the piece of marshy ground in the deep hollow
behind the first range of hills, where grew the grass they sought, one
of those coughing fits laid hold on Ned. He really wasn't fit to work,
he said, but, when Miles volunteered to do the task for him, he found
energy to direct the boy's clumsy attempts with the sickle.

Two bundles of grass the workers were expected to bring home, and Giles
cut his, slowly and soberly, while Ned dallied with Miles, till he saw
his companion had nearly gathered his share. Then Lister snatched the
sickle from Miles, and, finishing the work in a surprisingly short time
for a sick man, caught up his piece with the exclamation, "_Now_ we'll
go fowling."

Leaving the sickles and the bundles of grass where they lay, the three
picked a path round the verge of the marsh and climbed westward over
the hills. Last of all Miles trotted along bravely, very proud that he
was one of the company, and full of interest at passing so far inland.
But on the top of the second long hill, Giles suddenly cried out: "Look
yonder. Is not that smoke?"

Against the dull sky to the west Miles saw a little fine curl of gray,
and the question was on his tongue's end, when Ned Lister anticipated
it: "No, it can be none of our people so far from the shore. Savages,
maybe. Say we go down and see."

Shouldering his fowling piece, he set out jauntily, and the two boys
came stoutly after. They scrambled down a rough hillslope and through
another level piece, all open and stubbly, westward still, where the
smoke rose. "This land has been cleared; 'tis true Indian ground here,"
Ned spoke suddenly, and halted.

Miles stopped short five paces behind his comrades. He looked to the
hills ahead, where the bare branches of oak trees stood out clearly
against the afternoon sky. It was a lowering sky, and night was coming.
He glanced behind him, and saw only the barren wall of hills, no sign
of the harbor or of the _Mayflower_. Ned and Giles were looking at each
other with a something so dubious in their faces that Miles felt a
griping sensation in his throat. He wondered if he could find his way
back as he had come, and, doubting it, drew close to Ned, who had the
fowling piece.

Ned was fiddling with the lock of the piece and he spoke rather
sheepishly: "I'm not afraid. But I'm not going to run into Heaven knows
what with two younkers like you on my shoulders."

"Say we march home, then?" Giles suggested, and straightway, facing
round, they retraced their steps pretty smartly.

Miles was still in the rear, and, as he went, he studied the long legs
of his companions and thought how much more swiftly they could run for
it, if anything came up behind them. Thinking so, he forgot to look to
his feet, and, as they descended a gully, fell headlong with a great
clattering of stones. "Wait for me!" he cried, in a sharp, high voice
that did not sound natural.

Ned glanced back, with his face tenser than its wont. "Here, take the
fowling piece, Giles," he said curtly; then, returning to Miles, he
lifted him to his feet, and, keeping one hand beneath his arm, helped
him to hurry along.

Thus they scurried down the hillside to the swamp, and, catching up
their sickles and the thatch, pressed on toward the settlement. Not
till they were panting up the landward side of the great hill and
caught the faint sound of hammers in the street of the half-built town,
did Ned suffer the speed to slacken. "You'll make a gallant soldier one
day, Miley," he said then, and began laughing. "Though I take it no one
of us was afraid; eh, boys?"

They all agreed they were not in the least frightened, and some such
version Ned must have reported to Captain Standish, when he told how
they had seen Indian fires. For next day Miles found himself quite a
hero in the sight of the other lads, because he had gone far into the
woods and walked boldly right into an encampment of the savages. But
Goodman Rigdale chided his son sternly for such a harebrained prank,
and after that made the boy stay within his sight while he was on shore.

Miles did not greatly mind, for his father and Francis Cooke, the
father of his playmate Jack, were now engaged in a delightful work in
which he liked to help. Lately the whole company of the _Mayflower_
had been divided into nineteen families, and these two men, who had
been placed in one household, were building together a cottage, high up
on the hillside. His father's house, Miles insisted upon calling it,
though Goodman Rigdale was at pains to explain to him that the cottage
belonged not to any one man, but to the whole company; the Pilgrims at
Plymouth and the merchants at London, who had advanced the money for
the voyage, were to hold everything in common till seven years were up
and then divide all equally, and till then no man could call a house
his own.

Still, Miles knew that by and by his mother and Dolly and Jack Cooke
would come ashore, as other families were coming, and they would live
together in that house, so it seemed the same as if it belonged to his
father. He looked forward to the time when they would all be under one
roof, and he would be suffered to sleep ashore, for, though his father
passed his nights at the Common House, there was no room for Miles,
who at twilight had to journey off to the ship. But that arrangement
drew speedily to an end, for the walls of the house, built of squared
logs, soon rose to a good height; the chimney of sticks and clay was
finished; and at last it was but a question of thatching the roof.

Of a dull afternoon in mid-January Goodman Rigdale set out to cut swamp
grass for the thatch, and took with him Miles, who had not been so far
afield since his exploit with Ned Lister. They went steadily up the
slope on the shoulder of the great hill, and there Miles, who had run a
little ahead with Trug, paused to look back proudly at the stanch, new
cottage below. "Those are brave big logs in our house, are they not,
sir?" he broke out. "'Twill last us a many years."

"That, or whatever house shall fall to us at the division, will last
you all your lifetime," Goodman Rigdale answered shortly. "And you will
lease it of no man. You'll hold a house and a farm of your own here one
day, Miles."

They tramped on a time in silence, and Miles was making himself sport
by crushing in the scum of ice on the pools along their path, when his
father spoke suddenly: "You're in a fair way to lead an easier life
than your father or your grandfather before you, Miles. And if you be
the happier, you should be so much the better man."

"Ay, sir," Miles answered vaguely, and tipped back his head to watch a
great bird that went flapping across the sky; he wished his father had
brought along a fowling piece.

When they came to the swamp, Goodman Rigdale cut down the grass
swiftly, and Miles bundled it, though he found it hard to keep pace
with his father. Goodman Rigdale, being in haste, must at the last do
the work himself, and, while he bundled the grass, Miles, remembering
the stolen pleasures of his last thatching trip, picked up the sickle
and tried a slash or two on his own account. He managed to cut his
hand, and, though he scarcely felt the pain, because the hand was cold,
he stared in some fright when he saw the blood come streaking out.

Goodman Rigdale gave him a rag to tie up the hurt hand, and also gave
him some good advice on the need of care with edged tools, which Miles
did not think quite called for just then. He tried, however, not to
show any sign of pain, because that always displeased his father; and,
as he thought he had borne himself quite bravely, he was much hurt,
when Goodman Rigdale, on coming down into the settlement, said: "Get
you to the shallop now, Miles, and bide on board the _Mayflower_ till
I send for you. You'll be of no service with your hand cut. Mayhap
you'll be better off with your mother, too. After all, you are but a
young lad."

"As you bid, sir," Miles said, respectfully, but very stiffly, and
walked away down the path to the landing.

Once he stopped to kick a stone out of his way, and once, before he
rounded the base of the bluff, something made him face about and look
back to the Common House. His father was standing by the door, watching
him, and Miles, feeling much rebuked, walked on rapidly. But the image
of his father remained in his mind very clear.




CHAPTER V

NEWS FROM THE SHORE


BECAUSE Miles's hand was hurt, Goodwife Rigdale made much of him, till
he fairly resented it, for he had grown into the age where he was
sheepish and awkward under open petting. He soon slipped away from his
mother and the sympathetic Dolly, and went to spend his time with Jack
Cooke, who, during the day, while his father worked on shore, was glad
of company. The boys had now almost room enough on shipboard to play
satisfactorily, for many of the passengers had gone ashore; but it must
be quiet playing, for, of those who still remained in their cabins not
a few were ill.

Goodwife Rigdale was busied to and fro in caring for the sick ones,
and, at her bidding, Miles ran many an errand, to fetch water from the
casks on deck or heat a pot of broth in the ship's galley. But their
joint labor soon ended, for, a few days after the boy's return to the
ship, came a message from Goodman Rigdale: he was just touched with the
fever, he said, though nothing serious, but a many lay sick ashore,
and the Goodwife could aid them as well as himself; Mistress Brewster,
who, with her family, had gone to the settlement, had offered to
shelter her, and he prayed her come.

Next morning Goodwife Rigdale bundled her cloak about her, and set
out in the shallop. Miles, standing by the bulwark, watched her go,
but only for a time; it had snowed the night before, so the railings
were white and smooth to the touch, and he found it of more absorbing
interest to poke off strips of the frozen snow, and send them splashing
into the cold-looking water beneath the ship's side. By the time he
looked again to the shallop, it was so near shore he could no longer
make out his mother's figure, and his feet were chilled too, so he went
back to Dolly in the cabin.

At first he found it manly and grown up to be left in charge, for so
he esteemed his position. The cut in his hand was healing well, and
he felt he would have been working ashore, if it were not that some
one must mind his father's quarters on shipboard and care for Dolly
and Solomon. He ordered his sister about in a paternal manner; he
rebuked her severely if she so much as showed her small, snub nose on
the frosty deck without wrapping herself up well; and he even insisted
on her going to bed punctually at sundown, while he, in the glory of
manhood, waited in the great cabin to hear what news those who came
from the shore would bring.

But Dolly took her turn when it came to their daily meals, for she had
certain deft, housewifely ways, which Miles could not hope to imitate,
and he was ashamed even of trying to better himself, after he heard the
little woman speak like her mother of "men and boys that set a body's
kitchen in a mash." Miles might tug out the pot of broth,--'twas all he
was fit for; Goodwife Dolly would herself do the stirring and tasting;
and though, among so many cooks, the broth sometimes burned, yet they
always contrived to eat it.

The four of them--Miles, Dolly, Jack, and Solomon--ate their food
together in the Rigdales' cabin: most times it was only broth, or
perhaps salted meat and biscuit, which Goodwife Rigdale, before she
went away, had laid out for them; but once Goodman Cooke brought them
from the shore a large piece of a cold roast goose. There was but one
drumstick, and each felt he should have it,--Jack because he had been
ill, and Dolly because she was a girl, and Miles because he was the
eldest. Solomon said nothing, but he purred his loudest and rubbed his
head against Dolly's knee. They ended by eating the drumstick together,
each a bite, turn and turn about, and what they could not get from the
bone was left to Solomon, who dragged his ration beneath the bunk,
and, with eyes big and fiery, growled at them.

The children remembered that supper, not only because of the cold
goose, but because it was the last they ate together, for next morning
Goodman Cooke took Jack to the shore. Miles watched his friend's small
preparations enviously, and Dolly, who had come also to stand in the
doorway of the Cookes' cabin, voiced a sorrowful wish: "I think I'd
best go too, and see father and mother."

"They've no place to put you, lass," Goodman Cooke explained. "So soon
as there is place, they'll send for you both, be sure. For Doctor
Fuller says your father grows heartier, Miles," he went on; "you've no
need to worry yourself."

"Indeed, I have not worried," Miles answered, in some surprise.

After Jack went, life on shipboard was not so pleasant. Dolly began
to fret for her mother and scoff at Miles's authority; Miles grew
cross; and the broth burned oftener than ever, and finally, giving out
altogether, left them with nothing to eat but dry biscuit. With this
woful tale of starvation, Dolly betook herself at last to Constance
Hopkins in the great cabin, and Miles, glad that some one should make
known their unhappy state, yet ashamed to do so himself, lagged on
behind.

Constance Hopkins was Giles's sister, a slip of a lass, not three
years older than Miles, but to him she seemed quite grown up. Certainly
she bore the responsibilities of age in those days, for not only must
she nurse her stepmother, Mistress Elizabeth Hopkins, who lay helpless
in her cabin, but she must care for the baby, Oceanus, born on the
voyage across the sea, and the little half-sister, Damaris, a baby
also, not two years old. Yet somehow motherly little Constance found
time to comfort Dolly, and cook a bit of meat for hungry Miles, and
assure them both that their father and mother surely would come soon to
look to them.

Dolly hugged the "big girl," but Miles could scarcely do that, and he
knew no civil speech to tell his gratitude, so he was glad when, his
eyes falling on Damaris, he thought to pick her up. "I'll mind her for
you a bit, Constance," he offered.

Damaris was pleased with Miles's tousled hair and sturdy arms, that
held her more firmly than her half-sister could; and Miles, never
guessing what a source of misfortune her liking would prove to him
hereafter, was much elated at his success with her. He tugged baby
out on deck to show her the gulls looking for food in the water, and
the bright crusted snow that sparkled in the sunshine on the wooded
point. Damaris gurgled appreciatively and pulled Miles's hair; then,
when he carried her back into the cabin, slept like a kitten, whereat
Constance was so relieved and pleased that Miles gladly cared for the
baby, his baby, the next day, and the next.

[Illustration: "Dolly plaited a fold of her apron between her fingers."]

But the third day, a Friday, a pelting fine rain set in that made an
airing on the deck out of the question, not for the baby alone, but
for a well-grown boy and girl. Miles and Dolly went up to spend the
afternoon in the great cabin, because in their own quarters there was
no one to talk to, and, moreover, it was cold. In the main cabin they
would find some one to keep them company, and they could, at least,
warm their hands at the little fire burning in a tubful of sand, which
Constance often used in heating food for Mistress Hopkins.

But this afternoon the fire was out and Constance busied with her
mother, so the two children, disappointed, sat down together on a
rude bench, at the angle in the stern where two rows of little cabins
joined. "I wish I were with my mother," sniffed Dolly; and "'Twill do
you no good to cry," Miles checked her sternly.

"I was not crying, Miles Rigdale," the damsel answered hotly.

It was on Miles's lips to reply, when close at hand a voice spoke his
name, "Miles Rigdale!"

Readily enough he jumped up and went to the half-opened door of the
adjoining cabin. It was Captain Standish's cabin, he remembered now,
and, as he halted in the doorway, he perceived Mistress Rose
Standish lying in the bunk. A little of the afternoon light sifted
in through the tiny port-hole, and by it he noted how her hair fell
loosely about her face, unlike the way she wore it when on deck;
but her cheeks were rosy as ever, and her voice quite steady as she
spoke: "It's you, the lad my husband told me of? I thought I heard
one call you by name. Will you not do somewhat for me, Miles? Fetch
me my jug here full of water again. Goodwife Tinker was to look to
me to-day; I felt very well this morning. But she's ill now herself,
and when I tried to rise,--" she laughed, with a nervous catch in her
laughter,--"why, then things went whisking round me very strangely. But
you look as you still could stand stoutly, sir."

"I'll fetch you the water, and gladly, mistress," Miles answered, so
eagerly that he stammered. He stepped into the cabin to take the jug
from where it rested on a chest beneath the port-hole, and Dolly,
following shyly after, hesitated on the threshold.

"Is this little maid your sister?" Mistress Standish roused up to ask.
"Won't you come in and bear me company, sweetheart, while Miles fetches
the water?"

Dolly plaited a fold of her apron between her fingers and nodded dumbly.

"That's well," said Mistress Standish. "Sit you down here on the chest
by me. And I've some raisins of the sun you shall have if you'll stay."

"Dolly must not eat your raisins if you be sick." Miles formulated the
relentless principle which had been enforced as regards himself when
Dolly lay ill. "And I'll fetch the water speedily." He stood a moment
on the threshold, balancing the jug in one hand. "Mistress Standish,"
he blurted out, with sudden resolution, "would you not rather have beer
than water?"

"Than the water from the ship's casks, yes," she answered; "but 'twill
relish well enough, Miles. At even, when Captain Standish comes, mayhap
he'll get me a draught of beer."

"I'll get it for you now," Miles said cheerily, and walked away, with
his head up and the jug swinging.

Outside the door of the great cabin the chilly rain, that stung
finely on his cheeks, pricked him alive to realization of what he had
undertaken. Since Christmas, when the supply of the Pilgrim emigrants
had given out, beer could be obtained on board the _Mayflower_ only
from the ship's stores, through the courtesy of Master Jones, the
captain; and he was a terrible person. Most times he ranged about the
high quarter-deck, where only the chiefs of the Pilgrims dared go;
once Francis Billington, to show his daring, had clambered thither,
and Master Jones, without parley, had bidden his quartermaster, "Kick
that young imp down into Limbo, where he belongs." From that experience
Francis had been black and blue, and subdued in manner for a week.

So it was no wonder now that, for long minutes, Miles stood shivering
in the rain at the foot of the companion ladder, while he tried to
summon courage to venture up. He might never have arrived at such
hardihood, had not Jones himself, strolling forth upon the quarter-deck
to study the weather, observed him, and presently bellowed lustily:
"What beest thou staring up hither for, hey?"

"I--I want to come up, if it like you, sir," Miles piped quaveringly.

"Then come up. Beelzebub fetch thee! What's hindering thee?"

Miles could have answered truly that it was a loud-voiced,
broad-shouldered man, with a bushy gray beard, whose name was Jones,
that hindered him; but he thought best, even on so poor an invitation,
to scramble in silence up the steep ladder to the quarter-deck. The
wind there was high, so he gripped the bulwark to keep erect.

"Well, now thou art up, what is it thou wouldst have?" roared Jones.

"Beer, sir. For Captain Standish's wife. She is ill."

Master Jones hesitated a little minute, then caught Miles by the
collar of his doublet, and only let go when he landed him within
the roundhouse. Miles said nothing to this, but his heart thumped
alarmingly at finding himself thus tumbled headlong into the very lair
of the Master. Yet the roundhouse proved a harmless place, with its
shipshape bunks and table and stools; and one of the mates, who lay
upon a bunk, rose up at Jones's bidding, to do nothing more formidable
than fill Miles's jug from a keg that stood in one corner.

"Now see to it thou dost not filch the beer by the way," grumbled
Master Jones. "I be ready to give to your Captain's wife, but not to
fill the stomach of every knavish lad on shipboard; dost thou hear?"

"I wouldn't take the beer that was meant for Mistress Standish," Miles
said indignantly.

"Nay, but boys be a slippery race," growled the Master. "The saints be
blest I never had none!"

Miles privately was glad of that, for he could not help thinking how
unhappy a boy would be, with such an alarming father as Master Jones.
Very prudently, he did not say so, but, seizing his jug, backed out of
the roundhouse, almost too hastily to say "Thank you."

He had come back to a good conceit of himself, however, by the time he
had manoeuvred safely down the ticklish ladder, and he walked in on
Mistress Standish and Dolly quite proudly. Mistress Standish thanked
him mightily, enough to make Miles redden and shuffle his foot on the
floor. "But I liked to do it for you," he muttered.

After that he was persuaded to sit down on the chest beside Dolly, and
tell Mistress Standish all about how they were building houses on the
shore, and how he had gone to the Indian fields, and what a wonderful
dog Trug was. Dolly chimed in there to tell what a rare pussy Solomon
was, and how he would leap over your hands. Then Mistress Standish, who
lay listening, and seemed to like their talk, though she said little,
bade Miles bring her a box from a shelf against the wall, and in it,
sure enough, were a few big raisins and a small handful of currants.

The sight was too much for Miles's scruples, and when she urged the
children eat of them, he yielded, weakly as eager little Dolly. "We'll
take two raisins each," he said, with an effort at firmness, "and three
currants." Then, with a sigh, he shut the box up tight, and ate his own
share very slowly.

Dolly finished more speedily, and straightway Mistress Standish urged
her sing to them. "Dolly told me while you were gone that she is wont
to sing to mother," she explained to Miles. "Now I want her to sing to
me. You shall have more raisins if you will, Dolly, in spite of Brother
Miles."

Dolly was bashful, and, for all it was now murky twilight, so faces
were not plain to see, insisted on sitting on the other side of Miles,
where she could hide behind him. Then, at last, she sang. "Though it is
a worldly song," she protested.

"No matter. I am what your people call a worldly woman," Mistress
Standish answered.

So Dolly cuddled up to Miles and sang:--

    "Skip and trip it,
     Hey non nonny!
     For the lark is in the clover,
     And the fields are green and bonny,
     And a dappled sky shows over.
     Sing hey nonny nonny!
     'Tis blithe world and gay,
     When spring comes bonny
     And the winter packs away."

There Dolly broke off, short and sudden, and Miles, looking to the
dusky doorway, saw a man's sturdy figure blocking it.

"'Tis you come back, Miles?" Mistress Standish spoke quickly. "Come you
in and sit down. Your namesake and his sister have been caring for me
bravely--"

"I'm sorry," came the Captain's voice out of the dark. "That is-- You
must be wearied now, sweetheart. Come, Miles, my soldier, I want to
speak with you."

Miles wondered why, as he stepped out from the cabin, the Captain
troubled to put one arm about his shoulders; he was pleased at the
caress, yet awkward in receiving it. "I want you to go in here," said
Captain Standish, leading him to the cabin that the Brewsters had
occupied. "Constance Hopkins is waiting within to tell you somewhat.
And you must remember, Miles, that you are to bear you like a man."

Miles wrested round suddenly and faced the Captain. There was a little
dim lantern light in this part of the great cabin, not enough for him
to read the other's face, but he could guess and feel what was coming.
"Has anything gone wrong with my mother? Tell me; tell me, quick!" he
cried.

"Not your mother, Miles. Your father."




CHAPTER VI

THE GOING LANDWARD


GOODMAN RIGDALE had died that day at noon; he had seemed sure of
recovery, but there came a sudden change, and, with the ebbing of the
tide, his life went out. So much they made Miles understand, gently as
they could. Dolly cried with choked sobbings, and Constance Hopkins,
who had come out and taken the little girl in her arms, cried too. But
Miles, who sat apart from the others, astride one of the benches, did
not cry,--just scowled before him in stupid fashion, and half snarled,
"Don't touch me," at Goodwife Tinker and the other women who had
hastened up to sympathize.

He was aware of the people about him and the lantern light; that was
all. Something inside him seemed benumbed, and he did not care to
talk, or cry, or do aught but sit still. He listened to Dolly; she was
wailing now, "I want my mother. Oh, take me to my mother!" He wished
she would hush; it worried him.

Then he heard some one else speak: "Look you, Captain; Will Trevor and
I are fresh enough to do 't, and there's the small boat belongs to the
shallop. And Rigdale's goodwife will be wanting her bairns to-night. If
you give the word, Will and I, we'll row them ashore."

Miles looked up and saw Ned Lister, his cap on straight and his face
earnest, speaking with the Captain. He rose, and, a little unsteadily,
pushed the women aside, so he could clutch Ned's arm. "I want to go
ashore," he whispered chokedly. "Take me now."

"You shall go," said Captain Standish. "I'll bid them make ready the
boat."

"You and the little wench get on your cloaks briskly," Ned admonished,
as he turned to follow the Captain. "We'll be ready ere you be."

Constance came down with the two children to the cabin beneath the main
deck. It seemed darker and colder than ever before, and Dolly's cloak
strings were tied in a hard knot, and Miles could not find his mittens.
At the very last, as, in stupid fashion, he searched for them a third
time in a bag that held some odds and ends of his mother's, he heard
Dolly cry, "Oh, Solomon, poor Solomon! Don't leave him behind, Miles. I
know they'll not tend him. And daddy was fond of him."

The cat was dozing among the blankets, but when Miles, slow and
uncomprehending, tried to seize him, he took fright and ran beneath the
bunk.

"We've the boat ready. Quickly, Miles!" called Ned Lister in the
passageway.

Miles saw Solomon's eyes shining yellow in the dark beneath the bunk,
and, making a grab, he clutched the cat. The creature spit and clawed,
but Miles, with his hands bleeding, still clung to him, and, headlong,
thrust him into the bag that had held their biscuit. One white paw came
struggling out, but the boy shoved it in roughly, and drew the strings
tight.

"Wait, wait! Your cloak, Miles." Constance detained him, and fastened
his cloak about his neck. Miles suffered her, like a very little boy,
and then, slinging Solomon's bag over one shoulder, he followed Dolly
up on deck.

The rain, pelting on his cheeks and forehead, half blinded him, and
the faces of the men, seen fitfully beneath the flaring light of the
lantern at the gangway, looked strange to him. Their voices had no
meaning, and they must repeat the question when one asked: "What have
you there, Miles? Give me the bag; I'll hand it you."

Miles shook his head and pressed the bag tighter beneath his arm; he
could feel the cat's soft body writhing and struggling within. They
brought him over to the gangway ladder, and, holding by one hand, he
scrambled down it. How black the line of bulwarks looked against the
lantern light, as the ship heaved upward! There he half slipped, when
he felt some one catch him round the body, and he was dropped down on
the stern seat of the little boat. Dolly pressed close to him, and,
putting his arm round her, he held tight to her and to Solomon. They
had turned the lantern now so the light flashed into the boat, and he
realized it was Lister who sat upon the forward thwart, and the other
man, who was standing up to push them off from the ship's side, was the
sailor, Will Trevor.

At last they were clear, out on the wide, rough water, and, with a
motion of spitting on his hands, Trevor dropped into his seat and
gripped his oar. As the boat swung round, Miles had sight of the
black bulk of the _Mayflower_, with a lantern gleaming on her high
quarter-deck and another just receding from her gangway. Then, as the
boat headed for the shore, he could see the ship only by turning his
head, and that was too great an effort to make.

The thole-pins creaked, and the water slapped against the prow. The
waves were running high, and, as the little boat leaped them, she
seemed to throb through her frame. The oars and the sea that wrestled
together made the only sound, for the rain that dropped steadily was a
quiet rain, and the men who rowed for the most part kept silent. Once,
to be sure, Trevor growled: "How're we heading, Ned?"

Miles noted dully how Lister rested on his oar and turned his face
landward. "I can just make out a light," he answered. "Pest on this
rain! More to larboard we must run."

For another space they tugged at the oars in silence, while Miles
stared unheedingly into the dark, till suddenly Trevor called, "Hey,
lad, what's wrong wi' thy bag?"

Solomon's struggles had loosed the fastenings, Miles found; he thrust
the animal back and tied the strings again, slowly and stiffly, for his
hands were cold and sore too, where they had been scratched.

"What sort o' luggage be ye travelling with?" Trevor asked, between
strokes, in a tone that was so amused that Miles felt an angry shock:
what right had the sailor to find any merriment in life, while Dolly
was sobbing so? Next moment the anger passed, and instead, Miles
wondered that Dolly should cry, for it was not true, whatever they had
said; his father would surely come forth from the Common House to meet
them, and he would look just as Miles had seen him on that last day.

Yonder beneath the black bluff shone a light. Miles could see it now,
and he stared unthinkingly, till it grew larger and brighter, and then
a sudden jar almost threw him from his seat. "I'll hold her steady,"
spoke Trevor. "Do thou get out the younkers, Ned."

"Come, come, Miley, are you asleep?" said Lister. Miles saw him
kneeling on the rock close beside him, holding the boat's gunwale with
one hand, and with the other outstretched. "Give me the bag. Now then,
steady. Ah! You did yourself hurt?"

Miles picked himself up from the rock where he had fallen; his knees
were aching, and he suddenly felt he should like to cry. "Yes, I hurt
me," he said dazedly. "Give me Solomon."

He made his way, groping through the dark, to the path beneath the
bluff that led up to the settlement. The ground had thawed, so broad
puddles had formed; he must have splashed into one, for, as he stepped,
his shoes squeaked with water. Ned Lister strode up alongside him, with
Dolly gathered in his arms. "You come with me up to the Elder's house,
Miley," he said breathlessly, for Ned was wiry, rather than robust, and
Dolly was a heavy little maid.

All the way up the hill Miles had a sickening sense of awaking to
something full of dread. The ground and the sky and the dimly seen
houses were now all real; he felt the rain and the cold and the weight
of the bag on his arm, and he began to realize that what had happened
also was no dream.

"Oh!" he cried, with a sudden hard gasp, and, dropping the bag, broke
into a run. He stumbled and slipped, but pantingly he held on till he
reached the Brewsters' cottage. From one of the tiny windows a light
shone forth, but it blinded without aiding him. He fumbled a moment at
the heavy door, then, grasping the rude latch at last, thrust it open
with his shoulder, and plunged headlong into the common room.

On the hearth, opposite the door, a fire blazed, and on the table
flickered a candle. Spite of the dazzle of sudden light, Miles made out
a woman, just turning from the fire, and, knowing her for the Elder's
wife, ran to her. "Where's my mother, my mother?" he cried.

"Hush, hush, Miles! You must quiet yourself ere you see her," Mistress
Brewster urged, never so gently.

But there came from an adjoining room his mother's voice: "Miles, I am
here. Come to me."

The narrow chamber was dark, but, seated in the far corner, he could
distinguish a woman's bowed figure, and, stumbling heavily across the
floor, he flung himself on his knees beside her. "Mother! Oh, mother!"
he choked, and, burying his face in her lap, burst out crying.




CHAPTER VII

THE MAN OF THE FAMILY


AT first Miles found a jarring unfitness in everyday life. Only eight
and forty hours before, they had buried his father on the bluff
overlooking the harbor; they had read no prayers over the dead, as the
ministers did in England, and, lest the savages should spy and note how
few the colonists were becoming, they had levelled the grave, like the
many round about it. A raw wind had blown from off the sea, so Goodwife
Rigdale shivered as she stood by the grave, and Miles's hands were
senseless with the cold.

Now it was over, and Goodman Rigdale dead and buried, but life went on,
just as usual. Goodwife Rigdale helped Mistress Brewster prepare food,
and ate of it herself; and Love and Wrestling, sorry though they had
been for their playmates' sorrow, frolicked gayly with Solomon, whom
Ned Lister had brought to the cottage, bag and all. By the second day,
though her eyes were still heavy with crying, and her mouth tremulous,
Dolly plucked up spirit to join the boys. Even earlier, Miles had
begun to fetch wood and water for Mistress Brewster, lay the fire, and
help where he could; if only everything had stopped for a time, till he
could realize what had happened and master himself, he felt he could
bear it; but the petty acts of living would go on.

In such a mood of wretchedness he trudged forth on the third morning,
up the path beyond the spring, to fetch sticks from the edge of the
wood where the trees had been felled. He gathered the fagots, and was
trying to tie them strongly, as his father tied the swamp grass that
last day they worked together, when he saw Francis Billington, also in
search of wood, drawing near.

"Why, Miles!" the newcomer greeted him, in some surprise, for in these
days Miles avoided his old comrades. But now there was no avoiding till
the wood was tied up, so Francis came to him and, a bit awed, tried
clumsily to be sympathetic. "I'll help you tie that wood, Miles."

"I c'n do 't alone."

"Look you, my daddy's going fowling to-day. Mayhap he'll take us."

"I don't want to go," snapped Miles, with a sick sort of anger that
other boys still could talk of their fathers.

"You might at least be civil to a body," Francis said rather huffily.
"What need to carry such a face for it, Miles? You were mortal afeard
of your father while he lived. And now he can never flog you no more."

Without warning, other than a small catching of the breath, Miles
sprang to his feet and struck the speaker in the face. Francis,
thoroughly surprised, hit back, and, clenching, they pitched over among
the crackling sticks. Miles fell uppermost, and, hardly realizing how
or why, he was pommelling Francis lustily, when a mighty hand heaved
him up by the scruff of the neck. "You must not strike a man when he is
already worsted," spoke the voice of long-legged John Alden.

Miles stood biting his lips that twitched. "'A' shall not say--" he
began, and there his voice broke. "Oh, I wish he could flog me again!"

Alden stared a moment, then, with sudden understanding, swung round
upon the whimpering Francis and rated him mightily, while Miles, glad
not to be noticed, caught up his bundle of wood and stumbled away
toward the settlement.

Yet this was the last outward showing of the boy's grief. Little by
little, as the busy days came, he found himself fitting into his new
life, and at length even taking a certain zest in it. For he was now
man of the family, and the cares he felt called on to shoulder did not
a little to distract him from any sorry broodings. He must work with
his full strength, wherever they sent him and whoever bade him; he
must keep flibbertigibbet Dolly out of mischief; above all, he must
run after his mother, as she went about to nurse the many sick of the
settlement, and see to it that she did not catch cold or come to any
harm.

The greatest and most important labor, however, he did in the earlier
days of his loss, when he went to fetch his father's goods from the
_Mayflower_. Others might have said the work was done by Ned Lister,
for Master Hopkins, who had promised Goodman Rigdale to look to his
family, so far as he was able, sent him about this task; but Miles, who
was sure he was the leader and Ned only the assistant, felt the whole
expedition a tribute to his own new-come manliness.

They went out in the shallop to the _Mayflower_ on a morning so bright
and open that it scarcely recalled to Miles his coming from the ship.
Once aboard, to be sure, the half-homesick pang laid hold on him, when
he scrambled down to the little cabin that had sheltered him so long;
but there was so much to do he soon cast it off. The bedding must be
tied up securely, and the pots and platters loaded into the biggest
kettle; and Ned, who had a coughing fit and said he didn't feel very
well, let Miles do it all. He recovered, however, in time to help drag
the stuff to the deck, and to get up from the orlop a small chest
of Goodman Rigdale's; and he was also selfish enough to take charge
himself of the loud, manly labor of transferring the goods to the
shallop.

Somewhat disappointed, Miles clambered down again to the cabin to fetch
the box with Dolly's Indian basket, and, when he came back, the shallop
was so near ready to push off that he had only time to drop into the
bow beside Lister. Glancing round the great sail toward the stern,
where such other passengers as were going from the ship were placed, he
caught sight of Captain Standish, who sat stiffly, with one arm about
the muffled figure of a woman. "Yon is Mistress Standish, is it not?"
Miles questioned Lister, very softly.

His companion nodded. "Set to come ashore, poor lass!" he answered,
in the same low tone. "'Tis the last trip she'll ever make in the
shallop." This Ned spoke sympathetically; then had no further leisure
to talk for settling himself comfortably with his back against Goodman
Rigdale's bedding.

Miles moved a little to give Ned room, but, without heeding him,
continued to gaze at Captain Standish and Mistress Rose. He could not
see her face for the hood about her head and the cloak drawn up above
her chin, but he marked the listless droop of her whole body; and he
noted, too, how the Captain sat with his eyes looking straight out and
his mouth hard. Miles wondered if what Lister said of Mistress Standish
were true, and, what with wondering and watching, was taken by surprise
and nearly overset when the shallop bumped up to the landing place.

For a moment he lingered by the boat, feigning to busy himself with
unlading the kettle, while he watched Mistress Standish. The Captain
and Alden, who was waiting at the landing, helped her from the boat,
and half carried her away between them up the hill. The Captain's face
was still so grave and stern, that Miles was a trifle frightened, and
very sorry; he wished he were a man like John Alden, so he could have
spoken to the Captain and helped Mistress Standish.

Then he had to think of other matters, for Ned, with an access of
energy, was tumbling the goods ashore, and they must together drag
them up to the Elder's house. Just at present that was home to Miles,
because his mother and Dolly lived there, and he sometimes ate with
them, though, as an additional mark of manhood,--so he esteemed it,--he
spent his nights at the Common House.

It really came about because his friends could not shelter him.
Goodwife Rigdale and Dolly had the last spare bed at the Elder's house;
the cottage higher up the hill, on which Goodman Rigdale had labored,
and where Goodman Cooke and Jack had now one bunk, was filled with men
whose houses were building; while Master Hopkins, however well he might
mean by his friend's son, had not a roof to cover his own family. So
Miles slept with Giles Hopkins at the Common House, where at night the
beds were placed so thick one need not step on the floor in passing
from the fire to his sleeping place.

On Sunday all was changed, however, for then the Common House became a
meeting-house. They tucked the beds up in corners, and swept the floor,
as Miles knew to his cost, for on this, his second Saturday on the
mainland, they pressed him into the service. Twice on the Sabbath the
Elder taught his little company, and prayed with them there,--a sorry
little company indeed, of whom fair half lay sick within the cheerless
cabins, or dead beneath the level ground of the harbor bluff.

The thought of his own dead father made Miles listen attentively
that day; and, when he walked staidly up to the Elder's house before
twilight, he took Dolly apart into his mother's cold little chamber,
where he read to her from Goodman Rigdale's black-letter Bible. He
was a painful reader, but he felt it was the fit thing for him to do
in filling his father's place, so, with the great book on his knees,
he sat on the floor, beneath the little window that let in the light
sparsely through its oiled paper, and Dolly sat by him, with her
head on his shoulder. He was much elated at finding her so quiet and
attentive, but, when he paused to recover breath at the end of a very
tough sentence about the Perizzites, he perceived the little girl was
fast asleep.

Miles did not wake her; just sat with the Bible in his lap and his
stiffening arm round his sister till, when it had grown darker, his
mother came to seek them. He had nothing to say to his mother that
night, but afterward it was something to remember keenly, though with
an under-pang of sorrow, how he had sat close by her in the dark and
had felt her hand rest on his head.

Next day was dreary with rain and sleet, and a dull twilight that,
closing in early, drove Miles into the house, where he played at
Even-and-Odd with the little Brewsters and Dolly, very quietly,
because the Elder was writing at the table. Elder Brewster was always
kindly-spoken, but the fact that he knew such a deal about the next
world, and what would befall you if you were not good, put Miles in
great awe of him.

When he went forth at length, Miles, feeling more like himself, raised
his voice, and even let the trenchers clatter while he and Dolly laid
the table. But he had no desire to be noisy, when, late in the evening,
the Elder returned from the house where the sick lay. A word or two
passed between the older folk that sent Miles with a whispered question
to his mother, who told him simply that Mistress Rose Standish had died
that evening.

Dolly cried, because she was a foolish girl, but it did not stir Miles
so deeply. Indeed, he did not come to feel a hearty grief till next
morning, when, as he climbed the hill to Elder Brewster's cottage, he
saw Captain Standish, grim and set-faced, trudging up to the woods
through the sleet and rain. The weather was too bitter for work, and
the axe which the Captain carried was, Miles guessed, a mere pretext.
All through the day it made him shiver to think of the solitary man,
lingering in the cold among the pines; he wondered if even to himself
the Captain would make pretense of working, or if he would sit idle
among the wet logs.

But forty-eight hours later the Captain was going and coming and
working among the rest, just as before, though maybe a bit more silent.
For the hale ones who could labor were few; the work must be done;
and, where so many were falling, there was small space to grieve for a
single life.

Miles had even grown somewhat blunted to the sight of the sorry little
companies that twice and even thrice a week trudged with the body of a
friend or kinsman to the bluff above the harbor. His own life went on
methodically; he worked, and even played with Jack Cooke and Trug, and
some days, when he was allowed to go fowling with Ned Lister and Giles
Hopkins, fairly enjoyed himself.

But Ned began presently to have coughing fits even when he was
bidden to go hunting, though Miles, who had grown distrustful of his
convenient illness, urged him to "have done with fooling and come
along." One morning in February, when Lister, instead of going about
his work, was wasting his time thus with Miles and Jack and Giles by
the fire in Goodman Cooke's cottage, came another to urge him, no less
a one than Master Hopkins. Miles remembered a long time the terrible
rating he gave Ned for his laziness and trickery, and he wondered that
the young man sat with his head leaning on his fist, and flung back but
a single protest: "I can judge better than you, sir, whether I be ill
or not. 'Tis my head that's aching, not yours."

To which Master Hopkins retorted grimly that, if there were a whipping
post in the colony, something besides Ned's head would ache.

Then, for that there was no help for it, Lister took his fowling piece
and slouched away from the fire. "I'm going, since you drive me," he
said sulkily, "but these youngsters need not follow at my heels. 'Twill
be all I can do to fetch myself home again, let alone three brats."

Much disappointed, Miles spent the day in the less joyous labor of
fetching and carrying on the great hill, where they were putting the
last touches to the platform on which the guns were to be mounted.
He came to be interested, none the less, when Goodman Cooke told him
how, in a few days, they would drag the guns up the hill and put them
in place. That would be a brave thing to see, Miles thought, for the
sailors from the _Mayflower_ were to come ashore and help, and the
street from the hill to the landing place would be noisy and busy. Not
so busy, though, as the crew of the _Mayflower_ would have made it a
month before, for the sickness now had settled on the ship, where it
was raging unchecked.

At dusk, as Miles came down from the hill, he chanced on Master
Hopkins, still grumbling at Lister, who bade him go see if that
malingerer were loitering anywhere in the settlement. It seemed a
spying errand, but, not thinking of disobedience, Miles started down
the street. Nearest the shore stood the Common House, the house for
the sick, and the storehouse, all three of which, to make the search
complete, he visited.

In the big main room of the sick-house lay the men who were ill, and,
as Miles stepped in, on tiptoe because of his heavy shoes, the first
thing he saw beneath the candlelight was Ned Lister's black head, half
hidden under the coverlets of one of the bunks. Miles stole up to him.
"Why, Ned, ha' you cheated the Doctor himself?" he whispered cheerfully.

Lister raised his head and looked at him, with his eyes very bright.
"I'm cheating you all; yes," he said, with a laugh. "Go tell Hopkins be
more cautious next time how he wastes so good a property as a serving
man. A pity! If I die he'll be out my passage-money. Well, I always
owed him a grudge for bringing me to this forsaken country, and I'll
even scores now."

The thought seemed to please Ned mightily, for he laughed, till Doctor
Fuller, stepping from the inner room, sharply bade him hush. "Get you
to Master Hopkins and tell him the man is ill," he ordered Miles; and,
as he let the boy out at the door, added, for his ear alone, "very ill."

Somehow Ned's overthrow frightened Miles more than any other illness.
Lister had always seemed so tough and wiry that his succumbing at last
set the boy to asking himself, in some fright, if he, too, might not
fall ill. A soreness in his throat or an ache in his head made him
nervous. He questioned Jack minutely as to how he felt before he was
taken sick, and then he began at once to feel as Jack had felt. He
started to tell his mother and get her to comfort him, but then he was
ashamed; she was busy and anxious all the time for the people she was
called on to nurse, and he was a great, strong boy, who, of course,
would not be sick.

But one day his head ached in good earnest--no imagination; and next
morning the ache was worse, so he was too stupid even to go out.
Wrestling Brewster was ailing too, so Dolly and Love stayed by his bed
to amuse him, and Miles was left quite alone. All day he sat toasting
himself by the fire, till he was too warm and was sure his head ached
because of the heat, so out he went, and tramped up and down the street
till his teeth chattered with cold. He wanted no supper, but he went
back to the house to bid his mother good night and get to bed early.

"Mother came home very weary and has lain down within," Dolly said,
so he went into the bedroom. A cold light streamed in at the little
window, but the corners of the low room were dark and the pallet was in
shadow. His mother was stretched upon it, with the cloak that had been
his father's wrapped round her, but at his step she raised her head.
"It's you, my lad?" she asked, and reached out her hand.

"I came in to give you good night, mother," he said, in his manliest
tone, because it made him proud to think he was hiding his illness from
her. "I'll mess at the Common House to-night."

She put up her hand, and, drawing his head down to her, kissed him. Her
cheek felt hot as it pressed against his, and even in the dim light he
noted that her face was flushed, but his head ached so lamentably that
he made nothing of it. "Why, deary, you're not ill?" he heard her say.

"Indeed, no, mother. No more ill than you," he answered bravely, and,
bidding her good night, went softly out of the room.

The west was all a chill yellow, and a northerly breeze was astir that
set Miles shivering long before he reached the Common House. There
a fire was alight that looked comforting, and, going up to it, he
snuggled down in a corner of the hearth. At the table of boards laid
on trestles some of the men were eating their supper, but Miles was
sick at the mere thought of food. He sat staring and staring into the
heart of the flames, where he could see the outlines of the farmhouse
at home, and then he saw nothing, but he faintly heard steps upon the
floor, and somebody caught him up.

"What are you falling on the fire in that fashion for, eh?" one
asked, and the man who held him--he had a vague notion it was
Alden--questioned, "What's wrong, lad?"

"Oh--h!" wailed Miles, "I think I'm dying."




CHAPTER VIII

IN THE TIME OF THE SICKNESS


TO be sure, Miles did not die, but for some days he lay in the
sick-house, too ill to give much heed to what went on about him, or
take thought for anything save his own misery. From a mass of hazy
recollections one or two moments of that time afterward came back
clearly.

One such memory was of a dim morning within the cheerless room, when,
through the familiar patter, patter of rain on the oiled paper at the
windows, he heard a latch creak somewhere and men tread cautiously.
Turning weakly on his pillow, Miles looked to the door that led to
the inner room, where the sick women lay, and he saw Goodman Cooke
and Edward Dotey come forth, stepping carefully, and carrying on a
stretcher between them something that was muffled up and motionless. He
turned his face again to the wall, and neither thought nor reasoned of
what it meant,--just listened to the lulling patter of the rain.

The other time of which he kept remembrance was a crisp night, when the
whiff of wind that blew in at the outer door, as it was opened, smelt
fresh and good, and Cooke, who came to tend the fire, piled the logs
high. Dozing and waking, Miles watched through half-closed eyelids the
crowded pallets about him, and the shadows that flickered up and down
the rough walls. He must have slept a moment, but he roused up suddenly
to see in the waning firelight Elder Brewster, who bent over him with
a cup of drink. Leaning against the arm that supported him, Miles
swallowed the draught obediently, and then the Elder, with more care
than he usually had time to bestow on a single patient, laid him down
and drew the coverings round him. "Poor little lad!" Miles heard him
say, under his breath. "God comfort you!"

Miles wondered a little, but, too stupid greatly to heed what was said,
soon dropped to sleep once more.

The crisis of his sickness must have passed on that night, for a day
or two later he felt enough like himself to swallow with some relish a
dish of broth. Ned Lister, packed out from the sick-house while still
convalescent, to make room for others, fetched him the broth, and
helped him eat, with a choking great spoon that made the process slow.
Miles wondered whether Ned had grown thin or his clothes had grown
baggy; perhaps 'twas a little of both.

Then, on the idle wonderment, followed more serious thought, and,
speaking slowly and weakly, he asked, as Lister settled him in his
pallet again: "Tell me, Ned, why has not my mother been here to nurse
me, as she did you and the others?"

"Haven't you been well enough looked to, Miley?" questioned Ned,
bending down to tie his shoestrings.

"'Tis just the men have cared for me."

"Well, you're a man yourself, and want only men to look to you, eh?"

"No, I'm not a man," said Miles, the ready tears of sickness welling
into his eyes, "and I want my mother."

"I heard she had a touch of the fever herself," answered Ned, still
busy with his shoes. "We're all helpless with it, Miles. There's only
seven of us now that can crawl about to do aught. And the Captain and
the Elder are working each like three. By the Lord, those be two good
fellows!" This earnestly, for Ned; and then, gathering up his bowl and
spoon, he walked away to minister to the next sick man.

Every one ill, and the care of the whole colony on the shoulders of
seven men, some half sick themselves! Miles realized vaguely that he
ought to be patient and not fret at anything, but still the next two
days of his slow convalescence were long and hard to bear.

He was glad enough, one dim morning that seemed like all the others,
when the Elder came into the sick-room with Dolly at his side. "The
little wench begged to come to you, Miles," he said, as he seated her
on the edge of the boy's pallet. "But she is to talk only few words,
and softly, because there are others lying here very ill."

So soon as he had turned and left the children to themselves, Dolly
bent and dabbed a kiss upon her brother's chin. "Though you make me
shy, near as if you were a stranger, Miles," she explained, in a
subdued whisper, "you are grown so peaked, and your eyes are so very
round."

Miles smiled weakly, but happily, it was so good to see the face of one
of his own people. "I'm glad you came, Dolly," he said, drawing her
hand tremulously into his. "Mother will soon come too, will she not?
Why did she not come with you?"

A choke made Dolly's whisper broken: "She--could not."

"Is she ill?"

Dolly nodded, with a piteous face.

Miles's thin fingers gripped her hand fast. "Dolly, she isn't--dead?"
His voice rose high and frightened.

"Oh, you mustn't, Miles," Dolly gasped. "And I can't tell you. They
said I must not speak of her to you. Oh, Miles, Miles, she has been
dead these four days!"

They carried Dolly away, the mischief done, and Miles, hiding his
head beneath the bedclothes, cried so long as strength was in him.
Then he lay watching the red and orange streaks that flashed before
his tight-closed eyes, and, thinking how stuffy it was beneath the
coverlets, wondered if perhaps he would not smother. He hoped he would,
so he had a first sensation of fretful disappointment, when some one
uncovered his head; and then, as he caught the clearer air on his face
and looked up at Captain Standish, felt vaguely comforted.

"Drink you this, lad," spoke the Captain, gruffly, yet, Miles realized,
with vast pity in his tone. "Then sleep."

"I'll--try," swallowed Miles.

"That's well. Bear it soldierly, as we all must."

"Like a soldier," Miles repeated over and over to himself, and,
shutting his lips, pressed his head into the bolster, till, worn-out,
he slept.

When he awoke, the realization of his loss returned, keen almost as
ever; but he was a healthy lad, so inevitably strength came back to
him, and with it, little by little, as he mastered it in silence, his
grief abated. Those about him were kind, too, and did what they could
to comfort him. Captain Standish himself cared for him; Ned Lister and
Giles visited him often; and once they even let poor, guilty Dolly
come to see him. She fetched in her arms fat Solomon, who yowled so
piteously that, just inside the door, Doctor Fuller, who was up and
able to tend his sick again, made her put him down, whereupon the cat
fled home, fast as four legs could bear him.

"'Twas such a pity when I fetched him so far to see you," Dolly
lamented to Miles, as she exhibited the scratches on her hands, "but he
will go home safe to Mistress Brewster's house. He likes it there, and
so do I. I am going to live there always with Love and Wrestling and
Priscilla Mullins. She made me a poppet of a piece of scarlet cloth,
and I called it after her. I shall bring it to show you next time,
though you'll laugh at it, because you are a boy. Indeed, I do like it
at Mistress Brewster's. If only mammy and daddy were there too!" she
added, in a lower tone.

Elder Brewster himself had, at the very first, paused by Miles's bed,
and spoken gravely to him of how his mother was now in a more blessed
place, and he must try always to be a good boy, so some day he might
join her. Though he listened dutifully, Miles did not care for the
Elder's admonitions as much as he cared for Mistress Brewster's words.
Newly risen from her sick-bed, she came to him, and, sitting by his
pallet, whispered him of his mother, and how, before she died, she had
left her love for him, and bidden him always be a good lad and a good
brother to the little wench. "Though my lad will be that without my
bidding," Alice Rigdale had added. "He has always been a good little
son to me."

Miles listened, with his face held stolid; it was only when Mistress
Brewster bent and kissed him, like his mother, that he blinked fast and
turned away his head.

Day by day he grew stronger, till he sat up in bed, and then, by slow
stages, was suffered to put on his clothes and walk staggeringly across
the room. The next advance was his going out into the air, which would
doubtless have been longer deferred if any one had had time to give
close heed to the sick boy. But Doctor Fuller was busied elsewhere, and
the Elder was looking to others of the sick folk, so, one morning when
Lister had helped Miles into his clothes, the boy took matters into his
own hands by slipping out at the door.

It was a rare, mild March day, with a tender wind of the spring that
came from the western woods. The earth was soft beneath the foot; the
few bushes that clambered up the bluff across the way were bursting
with brown buds; and the blue harbor dazzled under the vivid sunlight.
Leaning against the doorpost, Miles joyfully drank in the freshness
of the morning, though his eyes grew wistful as he looked again to the
bluff yonder where were the levelled graves.

[Illustration: "'Do you like to do it, Captain Standish?'"]

Presently he summoned up his strength, and, stepping cautiously off the
doorstone, picked his way round to the east side of the house, where
the sun was warmest. Here the ground was trodden and bare, save for the
chips scattered about the logs, of which there was a great heap stacked
against the house-wall. At the other side of the pile, a tub of water
rested on a great block, and, most marvellous of all, over the tub,
busily washing a mass of bed-linen, bent Captain Standish.

Miles caught his breath in a gasp of surprise that made the Captain
look up. "So you're well recovered, Miles?" he asked cheerily.

The boy nodded, and set himself down on the woodpile.

"Cast on my doublet, there beside you, if you will be sitting here,"
said Standish, and, shaking the water off his hands, came and wrapped
the garment about Miles.

Snuggling down against the sunny logs, Miles gravely watched the
Captain. He washed the clothes deliberately, with a good deal of
sober splashing and a lavish use of soap; and then he wrung them so
vigorously that the muscles of his bared arms stood out. So earnest and
busy did he seem about the undignified task that, before he thought,
Miles blurted out: "Do you like to do it, Captain Standish?"

"Not in the least," the Captain answered cheerfully, as he twisted a
sheet so hard that a jet of water spurted over the front of his shirt,
"not in the least, Miles. But there's no one else to do it, and it must
needs be done."

Miles pondered a moment. "I take it, that's how it is with living;
somebody has to," he said at length.

"And somebody is right glad to," Captain Standish answered, with a
quick glance at Miles. "You must get well and run about and do a man's
share of the work that's before us, and you'll soon be rid of any heavy
thoughts."

Miles sat still in the sunlight, and, reflecting vaguely, called to
mind that, if his father and mother both were dead, Mistress Rose
Standish, who was all the Captain had, likewise rested yonder on the
bluff. Out of the fullness of knowledge the Captain was trying once
more to teach him how to bear all bravely, he guessed, so he began
stoutly: "Yes, I'm going to be a man, sir. Because now I'll have to
take care of Trug and Dolly and Solomon."

Captain Standish smiled a little, as he gathered the wet clothes into
his arms. "You're a true man already, Miles," he said. "At least,
you're a man in the way you group your women-folk with your cattle."

After the Captain had gone behind the house to hang out his wash, Miles
rested a time very thoughtful. The sunlight was warm and pleasant, and
southward across the harbor the great bluff was dense with evergreen. A
brave world, and he was going to do a brave part in it, as his mother
had looked for him to do.

A step upon the chips made him rouse up just as Master Hopkins came
leisurely round the woodpile. His face was pale, for he, too, had been
touched with the sickness, and his manner was kinder than Miles had
ever known in him. "So you're hale again, Miles Rigdale? Do you think
you could make shift to walk up the hill to my house?"

"Yes, sir," Miles replied promptly. The house that Master Hopkins
was building when Miles fell sick stood just across the street from
the Elder's, and the boy had made up his mind to drag himself to the
latter's cottage that day. It made his heart quicken to think of seeing
again the rooms where his mother had lived that last month, and of
talking with Dolly and Mistress Brewster. He hoped, too, that if he got
up to the house they would keep him there to supper, perhaps all night.
So he answered Master Hopkins's question confidently and happily:
"Yes, sir. I can surely walk that far up the hill."

"That's well," said Master Hopkins; "you shall eat dinner with us this
noontime."

"Thank you, sir," Miles answered, not overjoyed, but civilly.

"I'll take you to the house with me when I go back thither," the other
pursued. "You understand, you are to dwell with me hereafter."

When Captain Standish returned from his drying ground, Stephen Hopkins
had gone on down to the landing, and against the logs huddled a
piteous-faced small boy, who at sight of him cried: "Captain Standish,
Master Hopkins says I must live with him."

"Do you not wish to?" asked Standish, nonchalantly, and, tipping the
water out of his tub, set himself down on the block where it had rested.

"I'd rather go anywhere else in Plymouth, unless 'twas to Goodwife
Billington. Must I go to him, Captain Standish?" Forgetting his usual
respectful demeanor, Miles rose, and, stumbling the few steps to the
Captain, leaned against his knee. "I thought--maybe I should go with
Dolly to Mistress Brewster," he said in a low voice.

Standish suddenly put one arm about him. "A pity it couldn't be so,
Miles! But the Elder's house is full, and at Master Hopkins's there's
half a bed; you can sleep with Giles. In any case, Master Hopkins was
your father's kinsman."

"I could go to Goodman Cooke," pleaded Miles. "Or--or--I wish I could
live with you."

Standish laughed outright, though when he spoke his voice was gentle:
"I would take you, laddie, and be glad to, if things were--as I thought
they would be. Rose had a liking for you." He stopped short, and Miles,
looking up in some awe, noted that his eyes were fixed on the blue
harbor, yet he seemed to see nothing of it. When he spoke again, his
tone was quick and altered: "But as things have fallen out, John Alden
and I are sleeping in an unfinished cabin and eating where we can find
a bite. And a little young fellow like you would be better off in a
household where there are women than with two clumsy men. So they have
arranged it all for your best good."

Miles nodded, not trusting his voice to speak. He was thinking of what
the Captain had said about being a man and things that had to be done,
and he meant to make a good showing before him. "I like Giles," he
began slowly, "and I like Constance, and Ned Lister will be there too;
I'll try to like Master Hopkins--if he'll let me bring Trug."

So he had put on quite a brave face by the time Master Hopkins came
to fetch him to his new home. To him it was all so much a matter of
course that he offered no explanations or commonplace cheering words to
Miles; just bade him come, and soberly led the way up the hill. Miles,
with his feet like lead and his brave resolution flagging, loitered
half-heartedly behind him, till Master Hopkins turned. "You're not yet
as strong as you thought, Miles Rigdale?" he said gravely, but kindly
enough, and, lifting the boy in his arms, carried him up the hill.

Miles rested passive, one arm thrown perfunctorily about Master
Hopkins's neck, and wished he were anywhere else.




CHAPTER IX

MASTER HOPKINS'S GUEST


    "'In Wakefield there lives a jolly pinder,
     In Wakefield all on a green,
     In Wakefield all on a green,--'

THERE, there, Damaris! Hushaby, hushaby! Go to sleep, like a good lass."

Damaris gurgled at Miles with a provokingly wide-awake crow. "I never
saw such a bad baby," sighed the little boy. "Do go to sleep, honey.

    "'In Wakefield there lives a jolly pinder,--'"

"Oh, Miles," laughed Constance Hopkins, who, standing at the rude
table, was scouring the biggest kettle, "you have sung that half a
score of times. Is there no other song you know?"

"It is no time for the child to sleep now," interrupted Mistress
Hopkins. "I'll wrap her up, and, since 'tis so mild a morning, you may
take her forth into the air."

"O dear!" thought Miles, "I'm a man, not a nurse." He never considered
that it was any kindness on his new guardians' part when, instead of
putting him to heavy outdoor tasks, they set him to minding the baby
and helping about the house. "Like a girl," Miles told himself, with
an indignant sniff. It was not two weeks since he left the sick-house,
and his legs were still a little uncertain, but he was sure he was fit
to work again, or, at any rate, fit to run away and play with the other
boys.

But he took the baby now and walked forth meekly, because he lived
in some dread of Mistress Elizabeth Hopkins. She was a thin-lipped,
energetic young woman, who mended Miles's clothes scrupulously, and,
with equal conscientiousness, boxed his ears whenever he tracked dirt
on her clean floors. Her sharp tongue, though, he feared more than
her hands, for Mistress Hopkins scolded at everything and everybody;
indeed, the only members of the household whom her words never troubled
were Oceanus, who was so young he just blinked his eyes when she
talked, and Master Hopkins, on whom people's fretting had as much
effect as it would have had upon the great rock at the landing place.

After all, Miles was rather glad to get out into the air, away from
the living room, where Mistress Hopkins was already chiding Constance.
The morning was fair and warm, with no wind stirring, and the harbor
sparkled invitingly, so, shouldering the unwelcome Damaris, he started
happily to the shore.

But his contentment speedily had an end, for, not halfway to the
landing, he was overtaken by Francis Billington, Jack Cooke, and Joe
Rogers, who at once addressed him in disrespectful wise. "Ho, Miles,
that's brave work, tending a baby," jeered Francis.

"You meddle with your own matters," Miles replied sulkily.

"Come with us, Miles," Jack put in pacifically. "We're going along
shore to the first brook--"

"We do not want a baby with us," Joe interrupted.

"_You_ might stay with me, Jack," Miles pleaded, as the others turned
away.

Jack, a freckled little fellow with merry eyes, dug the heel of his
shoe into the dirt. "The other lads will be having sport," he said
half-heartedly.

"Then go with them," cried Miles. "Only you were very fain to play with
me on shipboard."

Even this last thrust failed; Jack ran after the others down the hill,
and Miles, feeling cross and ill-treated, was left to himself.

'Twould look too much as if he were following his ungracious friends if
he went on to the landing, so he turned back to Elder Brewster's house.
There Priscilla Mullins, a girl orphaned by the winter's sickness, who,
because she was eighteen, was classed by Miles as a woman, was sweeping
the doorstone with a broom of birch twigs. She paused in the labor
teasingly to throw him a kiss, and tell him his busy sister and the
lads were cooking by the brookside.

Sure enough, in the level space between the base of the bluff on which
the cottage stood and the cove, Miles found Dolly, and Dolly's poppet
Priscilla, and Love, and Wrestling, and Solomon, and Trug, who was not
admitted to Mistress Hopkins's house because his great paws dirtied her
floor,--all busied in making delectable pies of mud.

But when Miles joined them, Love withdrew from the mud-pie game, and
wished to play at holding a council, such as his father and all the men
were holding that morning in the Common House to regulate the military
affairs of the colony. Dolly insisted that she should be allowed to
come to the council too, for all Love urged that women never were
invited thither, and the argument was growing bitter, when an unwonted
tumult in the village street drew Miles's attention. A confused sort
of calling and shrill shouting it seemed, that made his heart quicken
between curiosity and alarm; so, snatching up Damaris, he scaled the
bluff, while the rest of the children scrambled close behind him.

On the doorstone Mistress Brewster and Priscilla were gazing in silent
wonder toward the street, and, looking thither too, Miles saw a man
stalk past to the landing, very deliberately, as if he knew the place
and held he had the right to come there. It was no one of the settlers,
though, but a great, half-naked fellow with a coppery face--an Indian.

Dolly and Wrestling clutched Mistress Brewster's skirts, the little
boy fairly crying, and Miles himself, it must be owned, held Damaris
fast and drew a step nearer the doorstone. But next moment he noted the
Indian carried for weapons only a bow and two arrows, with which he
could not kill all the settlement, and, moreover, at his heels tagged
venturously Giles Hopkins and several of the other boys, and even
Goodwife Billington, very clamorous, and the Governor's serving maid.

So Miles, not to be outdone by a petticoat, swaggered into the roadway
and joined himself to the little group of curious folk, who, always
ready to flee if he should turn on them, followed close at the savage's
heels, down the steep hill, past Peter Browne's cottage, even to the
door of the Common House.

The noise in the street had already disturbed the men at their
conference, and they came flocking forth at the door, the Governor, the
Elder, and the Captain, with a score of other stout fighters crowding
behind them. But the Indian, never a whit abashed, strode boldly up
to them, would even have pressed into the house, had not their ranks
barred his passage. Nothing chilled, he halted, and, stretching forth
his hands, spoke in a guttural tone: "Welcome."

"Do Indians talk English?" Miles whispered to Giles, who stood beside
him. "Hush, hush, Damaris! The black man won't hurt you."

But Damaris, quite unconvinced, clutched Miles tightly round the neck
and went on crying lustily, till at last Goodwife Billington seized him
by the collar. "Thou good-for-naught lad!" she scolded. "Wilt thou kill
the poor babe? Take her back to the house, thou runagate! Ay, ay, let
her scream herself ill, so thou mayest gape and gaze. I would I had the
up-bringing of thee!"

Some people besides himself liked to gape and gaze, Miles thought,
but, without reply, he gathered the wailing Damaris into his arms and
trudged slowly up the hill. There, by the Governor's house, it chanced
he met with Francis and Jack and Joe, who, scenting something unusual
in the village, had hastened back through the fields. "What is it has
happened, Miles?" cried Joe.

Miles, glancing over his shoulder, saw with unkind satisfaction that
the men had taken the savage into the Common House, out of sight.
"'Twas naught," he said airily. "Just a great Indian came into town."

"Did you see him?" urged Francis. "Tell us about it."

"Humph! You've no wish to talk to me when I'm tending a baby," sniffed
Miles, and trudged on to Master Hopkins's house, so elate at his
triumph that he forgot to be angry with Damaris for dragging him away
from the sport.

At the noon meal, indeed, he heard all and more than he could have
learned, had he lingered about the door of the Common House, for Ned
Lister was bubbling over with talk of the Indian. As Master Hopkins had
stayed at the Common House and Dotey had none of his fellow-servant's
faculty for gathering news, he proved the only tale-monger of the
household; so the whole family harked to him respectfully, and even
Mistress Hopkins forgot her usual sarcasms on his galloping tongue.

"This is not a savage from these parts," Ned explained; "he comes from
the eastward, from Monhegan, whither the ships out of England go to
fish. He has been on shipboard there and so has got a smattering of
the English tongue. One Captain Dermer brought him to Cape Cod, and he
has been in these parts now some eight months. And he told us a deal
of the nations hereabout. This open place where we have settled is
called Patuxet. It was a village of the savages once, but three or four
years back came a great plague, and all the people died, so now we are
undisputed masters of the soil. Next unto us dwell the Massasoits, a
tribe of some sixty fighting men; and to the southeast, those savages
whom our men gave a brush to on their explorations in December, are the
Nausets, near a hundred strong."

Ned paused to secure himself another slice of cold mallard; then
started on a new train: "You should 'a' seen the Indian fellow eat. He
asked for beer, but we gave him strong water, and biscuit and butter
and cheese and pudding, and a piece of mallard thereto, and he liked
all very well, and ate right heartily."

"He is not the only idler who looks for a full meal," said Mistress
Hopkins scathingly. "Where have they put the vile creature now?"

"Vile creature, mistress?" Ned repeated. "Sure, he says that in his own
country he is a great lord of land, a Sagamore--"

"I would he were back in his own country," Mistress Hopkins answered
sharply. "The murderous wretch! I shall not draw a breath in peace till
he be hence. Here, Ned, 'tis little enough work you'll do if you go
forth, do you stay this afternoon in the house to protect us."

There was an instant of disappointed silence on Lister's part, then,
"'Tis you she means, Ned Dotey," he cried, and, without staying to take
his cap, bolted out at the door.

Nor was this the only desertion which Mistress Hopkins suffered; for,
at their first opportunity, Dotey and Giles also slipped away, and
Miles stayed behind only because he was so little that the mistress
shook him when he attempted to follow. But speedily he had a bright
thought, and asked Mistress Hopkins if perhaps, since she was afraid of
the Indian, she would not like him to fetch Trug to the house to guard
them.

Thus Miles was allowed, at last, to bring his dog home, and so grateful
was he, that he remained patiently tending Damaris all the long
afternoon. He found a certain enjoyment in his position, however; he
was sole man in the cottage, and he wondered, should other Indians
follow this first one, if Mistress Hopkins wouldn't let him take one of
the muskets and fight for her. When it came dark at last, he knowingly
inspected the fastenings of the door, and told Constance not to be
afraid; he and Trug could defend them.

Poor Constance needed more comfort than that, for she was in a sorry
fright. Her hands shook as she laid the table, and, when a step sounded
crisply in the dooryard, she gave a nervous cry and dropped the pile of
trenchers. It was only Ned Lister, however, who stamped in, bareheaded
and whistling cheerfully.

"You have come back, then, since 'tis suppertime?" Mistress Hopkins
greeted him sarcastically.

"Nay, I'm not hungry," Ned answered, as he sauntered over to the fire
where Miles sat with Damaris, "'tis that the master sent me ahead to
bid you make ready the guest chamber and the bed of state. Our Indian
lord there, the Sagamore Samoset, is to lodge here to-night."

For a moment Mistress Hopkins looked at the speaker in dumb amazement.
"If Master Hopkins does not punish you roundly for such a lie, Edward
Lister," she said at last, deliberately, "it will not be for want of my
urging him."

"It's the truth, though," Ned answered indifferently.

"O me!" Constance cried, with a sudden nervous wail, "I know we'll all
be slain ere daybreak. O dear!" She turned to run into the bedroom,
when Lister caught her by the arm. "Don't cry, Constance," he urged;
"there's no need to fear. Captain Standish and some of the others are
coming hither to spend the night and keep watch. You'll be safe enough."

But the girl, breaking from him, vanished into the chamber, whither
Mistress Hopkins, snatching up Damaris, followed her; so, for some
moments, Miles was free to ask questions and Ned to answer, as it liked
them best. But, so soon as Master Hopkins's deliberate step sounded
on the doorstone, Mistress Hopkins came forth and, as he entered
the living room, confronted him: "Is that savage to be lodged here
to-night, Stephen? Among us, where my children are?"

"He must go somewhere, Elizabeth," the master of the house replied
unruffled. "He is set to stay among us for the night, and the tide is
out so we may not convey him on shipboard. We can lodge him in the
little closet next our chamber."

"He shall not come into the house!" said Mistress Hopkins, with her
thin lips set.

"Edward Lister, do you spread out the bed within the closet," Master
Hopkins went on unheedingly.

With a wink at Miles, Ned crossed the room in unusual haste, and Miles,
taking a candle, followed after into the closet, a tiny room with one
black window, where stood an old chest and a hogshead and a rolled-up
mattress, which Ned began leisurely to spread out. "What think you,
Miles?" he whispered, as the boy closed the door behind him. "It's good
there is one person in the house whom the dame cannot rattle off as she
list, eh?"

Miles nodded vaguely, his attention all fixed on the least details of
the commonplace room which now had a fearful interest from the guest
it was to shelter. The thought of the savage stranger filled the place
with such awesome fancies that he could not help going out from it
very hastily ahead of Lister, who grumbled a little that Miles was so
speedy to be off with the candle.

Once in the bright living room, however, he became very brave indeed,
and wondered to Giles Hopkins when the Sagamore Samoset would come.
His mood grew the bolder when the elder lad showed him a dirk knife he
had placed under his doublet. "For there's no being sure with these
treacherous savages," Giles said seriously.

But when the Sagamore came at last, the boys found that the Hopkins
household would be well guarded, for with him were not only Master
Hopkins and Dotey, but big John Alden and Captain Standish. The very
sight of the latter reassured Miles, so down he sat on the floor by the
hearth, with his arm round Trug, who, as soon as he spied the Indian,
bristled the hair on his back and uttered a throaty growl.

Mistress Hopkins and Constance and the two babies kept within the south
chamber; but the men by themselves were enough to fill the living room.
There were but two stools, besides the form on the hearth and a chest
against the wall, so long-legged Giles must curl himself up on the
floor by Miles, while Ned Lister set himself upon the table. They bade
the Indian be seated on the form by the fire, right over against Miles,
who, be sure, stared at him with eyes wide open.

The Sagamore Samoset, he saw, was a tall, straight man, of complexion
like an English gypsy, smooth-faced, with coarse black hair that fell
to his shoulders behind, but was cut before. Since his coming into
the settlement, his English hosts had put upon him a horseman's coat,
which he wore with much pride and dignity; indeed, all his gestures and
carriage were not only decent, but of a certain stateliness. "Why, he
is somewhat like other men," Miles whispered softly to Giles, but Trug
grumbled in his throat.

Only one candle was burning in the room, but the firelight cast a
flickering brightness on the faces of the men. Captain Standish and
Lister and the Indian had lighted pipes of tobacco, and the air was so
heavy with the smell of the smoke that Miles half drowsed, but through
his drooping eyelids he watched his English comrades, and watched the
Indian. Captain Standish was sitting adventurously right on the form
beside the Sagamore, and now and again they spoke together. Miles noted
that in the Indian's speech came strange words, which the Captain
seemed to try to understand, and once or twice the Captain even sought
to make use of them himself.

Miles wondered at this, and then his only wonderment was as to whether
he had been asleep. The logs on the hearth had broken into red embers;
the men had risen up; and, rubbing the heaviness from his eyes, Miles
saw Master Hopkins and the Captain usher their Indian guest into the
little closet room.

Straightway a certain tension in the company seemed to slacken; Giles
rose stiffly from the floor, and Trug put down his head upon his
paws, though he still kept one bright, half-opened eye fixed on the
door through which the Indian had gone. With a great creaking of the
trestles, Ned Lister dismounted from the table. "If he come to kill
us," he said in a low tone to Alden, "do you run in and call me so I
can have a share in the scuffle." Then, stretching himself mightily, he
disappeared into the north bedroom, where the serving men and the boys
of the household slept.

"Since you have two others to keep watch with you, Master Hopkins,"
spoke the Captain, as he took down his hat from the wall, "I'll go walk
a turn about the hill. I'll be back ere the half-hour is up."

He had put his hand to the latch, when Miles, on the impulse, sprang to
his feet and ran to him. "May I come too, sir?" he whispered.

"You, Miles? Why, you were better in bed. Nay, come if you like."

Out of doors the air was crispy and silent, and pleasant smelling
after the smoky atmosphere of the crowded room. Overhead the stars
were dense and bright, but below, the lonely little settlement lay in
darkness, with never a spark of a candle showing. "How late is it,
Captain Standish?" Miles asked, in a hushed voice.

"I should say it was near on to midnight," the other replied, stepping
along so briskly that Miles's breath for talking was lost in the effort
to keep pace with him.

Up and up they toiled; past Goodman Billington's cottage; past the
black cabin where Alden and the Captain lived; and then by the
well-trodden path up the sheer hillside, till the planking of the broad
platform sounded hollow beneath their feet, and they stood among the
guns. The spark in the Captain's pipe gleamed red in the darkness, but
Miles could not see the Captain's features; he perceived only that he
turned his face from quarter to quarter, and remained longest gazing
into the black west, where the ridge of hills ran jagged against the
starry sky.

He watched the Captain's movements, but he did not venture to speak
till Standish himself broke out: "Well, there'll come no bands to
frighten us this night, I take it. We can march home, Miles. We've a
fair starlight to make the march under," he added, and, as they stepped
from the platform to the yielding turf, lingered an instant to gaze
skyward.

"Which is it that is the North Star, sir?" Miles hesitated.

"Why, that one yonder, lad. You know it well."

"I knew 'twas the North Star in England. I knew not if 'twere the same
here. It is such a long ways from home."

"It's the same sky, Miles, and the same Heaven, I take it, that we had
over us in England."

Miles threw back his head and once more stared up into the sky, that
was so vast it made him shrink and feel smaller even than before.
He sighed a little, he scarcely knew why, and put his hand on the
Captain's sleeve. Standish took Miles's hand in his, and so kept hold
on him as they came down from the hill, and in that pressure was
something so comforting that Miles was sorry when they reached the door
of Master Hopkins's house.

Within was heavy air, and a dull fire, and sleepy faces; Giles had gone
to lie down on his bed, and it did not need the Captain's bidding to
send Miles blinking after. Once, in the darkness, he was wakened by
hearing Lister protest inarticulately that he would rather have his
throat cut in his sleep ten times over than rise and watch; and once
Miles guessed hazily that some one was shaking him, and he tried to say
he was getting up, and in the midst dropped back on his pillow.

At the last the dazzle of warm sunlight on his face, and the rattle,
rattle of trenchers, brought him staggering and blinking to his feet.
Oh, yes, he remembered; the Sagamore Samoset had been there last night;
but he was not afraid of him, especially since 'twas daylight; indeed,
he wanted to see him again, so out he rushed into the living room.

"Well, sleepyhead!" Constance laughed at him, and Mistress Hopkins
was beginning to scold him because he had not awakened, for all her
efforts, till mid-morning, when Ned Lister sauntered in. "His Lordship
the Indian is safe departed, Constance," he said consolingly, as
he made a slow business of getting an axe from the chimney corner.
"They gave him a knife and a bracelet and a ring, and he is gone away
content."

"A good riddance, too!" snapped Mistress Hopkins. "And now do you,
Edward Lister, fetch two buckets of water and wash out the place where
the creature lodged. To bring such heathen under a Christian roof! I
hope I never set eyes on another of the coppery wretches again."

Ned shrugged his shoulders and said nothing till his mistress was quite
done; then he added meekly: "I misremembered; he said he was coming
back again in a night or two, and next time he is going to bring with
him a goodly number from the tribe of the Massasoits."




CHAPTER X

THE LORDS OF THE SOIL


SAMOSET proved as good as his word. The very next morning, for all it
was Sunday, back he came, and with him five other tall Indians, who
were even more wonderful fellows than he, for they were clad in skins
of deer or of wildcat, and had dressed their hair with feathers, and
painted their faces in black streaks. To divert their English hosts,
they sang and danced, which Master Hopkins called a violation of the
sanctity of the day, but Miles privately thought most edifying.

He was even better pleased when that night, at the departure of his
comrades, Samoset was ill or feigned to be, so, spite of Mistress
Hopkins, he must be sheltered in her husband's house. Thus for three
days Miles dwelt under the same roof with a live Indian, and ate at
the same board, till he came to have not the least tremor at sight of
a copper-colored face. Indeed, he neglected every task he was set, to
dog the Indian guest about the street and make shy efforts at talk with
him, and he was heartily grieved when at last, on Wednesday, Samoset
went away into the forest.

"No doubt he'll come again, the mistress always makes him so welcome,"
Ned Lister consoled Miles, "and each time he goes, for his further
encouragement, they give him a present. This morning they gave him
a hat and shoes and stockings, and a shirt and a loin cloth. I take
it, 'tis because I am what Master Hopkins calls a son of Belial that
it makes me to laugh, when I think of Sagamore Samoset in an English
headpiece with a flapping brim."

"I'm mighty sorry he went," sighed Miles, uncomforted. "I was learning
the Indian words, so I could talk to him presently, like Captain
Standish. 'Cossaquot,' that means _bow_; and 'et chossucke' is _a
knife_; and 'petuckquanocke' is _bread_; and--"

Ned yawned suggestively, and fell to work again. He and Miles that
afternoon were busied in the spaded garden patch at the north end of
the dooryard, where they were pressing the seeds into the soft earth.
The sun was hot, and, as Miles worked, he smeared his warm face with
his fingers, till Ned assured him he was all streaked brown, like an
Indian.

But though it was hot and dirty labor, it was far manlier than to be
ever dandling a baby; so Miles toiled on earnestly, spite of Ned's
indolent example, and did not pause even to stretch his cramped legs
or straighten his aching back till mid-afternoon. Then he started up
at a noise of people hurrying through the street, the sound of a quick
footstep, the rattle of the house-door.

"'Tis Master Hopkins has taken his musket and gone forth," spoke Ned,
who was lounging farther down the garden. "Somewhat's afoot." Away he
went to look into the matter, and Miles ran stiffly after.

Out in the street the men and boys, and even one or two girls, were
hastening toward the bluff above the spring. As they went, a confused
talking spread among them, from which Miles learned that yonder, on the
great wooded hill across the brook, Indians had been seen,--Indians who
brandished their bows and whetted their arrows in defiance. Captain
Standish and Master Hopkins and two men from the _Mayflower_ had gone
down to cross the brook and parley with them. Look, yonder they went
now!

From where the company had halted, high up beyond Goodman Cooke's
cottage, Miles could see the bright river and the hill opposite, thick
with unleaved woods. Up its base wound slowly the little band of
Englishmen, now half-screened, now wholly visible; but Miles looked
from them, higher up the slope, where the bare branches were agitated,
as if something moved among them. "'Tis the savages!" said one; but,
strain his eyes as he would, Miles saw through the bushes only the
sad-colored English doublets.

Yet, with an anxiety he scarcely comprehended, the men lingered on the
bluff, watching and discussing in grave tones, till the Captain and
his followers came toilsomely up the path from the spring. They had
seen naught; the savages had not suffered them draw nigh them, Captain
Standish explained, so briefly that he seemed curt, while his puckered
brows still were bent on the slope whence the Indians had sent their
defiance.

Slowly the little group of curious and troubled people scattered, some
of the weightier ones to speak with the Governor and the Captain,
others to simpler tasks. Miles went back to his garden, but the
sunlight had now left that corner of the yard. The great hill, where
stood the guns, looked black against the sky, and there seemed in all
out-of-doors a menace that made him glad at dusk to get within the
house. Throughout supper the men kept from speaking of the savages with
an elaborateness that made their silence the more suspicious, and the
unspoken anxiety wrought on Miles till at bedtime he smuggled Trug into
the chamber and made the dog lie near him.

Next morning, in the clear sunlight, Miles's courage revived mightily,
but his elders still looked sober. None the less, whether Indians
threatened or no, the work of the colony must be done: all the morning
men and boys trudged about their tasks, though none went far afield;
and after the noon meal the men gathered once more at the Common House,
to consider the public business which the first coming of Samoset had
broken off.

Oceanus was ailing that afternoon and needed his mother, so Miles
had to mind Damaris for a dreary hour. As he sat with her upon the
doorstone, he spied a noiseless little group of some five Indians
passing down the street, and, alert at once, he begged leave to run see
what might happen; but Mistress Hopkins, all a-tremble herself, forbade
him venture out while those bloodthirsty wretches were abroad, and even
made him come in and shut the door fast.

But speedily there sounded a rattling knock to which the mistress
must open, and in came the men of the household, so hurriedly that
straightway the living room was in confusion. For the great Sagamore
Massasoit, with his brother Quadequina and sixty warriors, was at hand,
just across the brook. One of the Indians, Squanto, who could speak
English, had gone back to bid him enter the settlement, and the men of
the colony must get under arms to receive him; perhaps even to defend
themselves, Master Hopkins let a word fall.

There followed a great throwing-on of buff-jackets and buckling of
sword-belts, while Giles, newly appointed drummer to the colony,
rattled over the pots and kettles in a meaningless search for his
drumsticks, which some one had surely moved from the place where he
left them. Oceanus wailed, Damaris, indignant at being neglected,
screamed aloud, Trug barked, and Mistress Hopkins scolded, but somehow,
in the midst of the hurly-burly, the three men equipped themselves and
tramped away; and right at their heels went Giles, with the drumsticks
which Constance had found.

But the door closed behind them and shut Miles, a soldier in name only,
in with the women and children for another tedious hour. Damaris found
little rest in his arms those minutes, while he ran from the western
window, whence he could see a bit of the street and the path to the
spring, to the eastern window, whence, far down the street, he beheld
the men gathered in martial line, all in armor, which glimmered bravely
in the afternoon sun.

He was still gazing down the street when Constance, who had ventured
to the other window, called to him in a terrified voice: "Miles! Oh,
Miles! Come hither. 'Tis Indians indeed. Hundreds of them!"

With no wish to see further, the girl drew away from the western
window, and Miles thrust eagerly into her place. Yes, there were
Indians indeed, swarms of them, it seemed at first sight, so he
flinched back a little from the casement. For they were filing past
the house, and that brought them so near that Miles could see even
the grotesque figures in which their faces were painted. But soon he
perceived English musketeers marshalling them, and he saw, too, that
the savages were unarmed. Their mission must be peaceful, he judged;
so, eager and unafraid, he stared at them, and was sorry when the last
one disappeared down the street.

Just then, as he turned from the window, sounded the tap, tap of a
drum. "It is the Governor and the rest of the men with drum and trumpet
marching up the street," spoke Constance from the eastern casement.
"They have led the savages into the unfinished cottage by the Common
House, and now they are going in to them."

Miles, at her side, squirmed with impatience. "There's Jack yonder
beneath the cottage window," he exclaimed, "and Francis and Joe. And
there's such a deal to see. And I'm sure they are all good, harmless
Indians." He gave a glance toward the bedroom, where he could hear
Mistress Hopkins lulling Oceanus, then whispered Constance: "Won't you
mind Damaris? I'll tell you all about it when I come back."

"I see not why you wish to go forth at such a time, but I'll do 't
for you. Run quick, ere stepmother stop you," answered kind-hearted
Constance; and away sped Miles.

Still, he was too late to share in the main excitement, for when he
came into the yard of the unfinished house, he found the door fast shut
and all the great folk, white or copper-colored, gone within. Only two
musketeers remained outside to keep watch, and Edward Dotey, who was
one of them, proved so unsympathetic as to cuff Francis Billington when
he tried to get a peep in at the window. Much discouraged, for where
saucy Francis failed to go there was no hope for the others, the small
boys of the colony gathered in a patient little group in the dooryard
to talk of these great happenings.

"Master Winslow has gone out amongst the Indians," said Jack, "and
they're holding him as hostage for their old King. 'Twas right valiant
of him--"

"Pooh! The Captain would 'a' gone just as quick," Miles retorted
jealously. "There's naught to be afraid of, anyway. I would I were
Giles Hopkins, and stood there in the house with the savages."

"My father is in there too," spoke little Love Brewster, who had
attached himself to Miles, "but he is so good I do not think even an
Indian would hurt him. But there were very many of them, and if my
mother had come close to see, I am sure she would have been afraid.
Perhaps I were best go home and tell her there's no need to fear. You
come with me, pray you, Miles."

Young Rigdale had no wish to take his eyes from the door of the house,
but plainly the little boy was fearful enough to want his company up
the street, so he went with him, and at the Elder's cottage stayed a
moment to reassure the women grandly.

Dolly had no interest in Indians, since she found in the case of
Samoset that they did not carry about with them a store of pretty
baskets, such as the one her father had brought her; but Priscilla
Mullins was eager to know everything, and questioned Miles and listened
to him most flatteringly, till he offered: "If you wish to go forth and
view the Indians, Priscilla, I'll go and take care of you."

Whereat young Mistress Mullins laughed, and, slipping her hand under
his chin, kissed him for his courtesy, "like a baby."

Red and indignant, Miles flung out of the house; then forgot the
insult, as he saw Giles, with a platter in his hand, hurrying up the
street from Governor Carver's cottage. "What are you doing there?" he
called, running to intercept the elder lad.

"Fresh meat," panted Giles. "The Governor wished it for the King. I
had this bit of a goose from Mistress Carver, and now I've remembered a
mallard I saw stepmother set to boil."

It took him very few minutes to hurry into his father's house, and out
again with a second larger platter balanced in one hand, but, short as
the space was, Miles had laid a plan. Stepping up to Giles, he took
from him Mistress Carver's dish of meat. "Let me aid you," he proffered
innocently.

"So that's what you're scheming," laughed Giles; but he let Miles,
under that pretext, come at his side down the street, past the little
group of envious boys, up the doorstone of the unfinished cottage, and
so into the very council chamber.

The room was close and hazy with smoke from the pipes of tobacco that
the King and the chief of the English puffed at, but, spite of the
dimness, Miles speedily made out the shapes of the Indians. Black,
red, yellow, and white, their faces were partly or wholly smeared with
paint, and, through the wavering smoke-wreaths, their look was so grim
that for an instant he hesitated on the threshold.

But Giles went on, so he followed, across the room, between what
seemed endless rows of Indians in hairy skins who stood or squatted
on the floor, up to the table, where sat a tall, stalwart savage.
Imitating Giles, Miles set down his dish of meat before him, and, with
an agitated bow, drew back to the wall, where he wedged himself in
between Lister and young Hopkins. "That's the King, yonder at table,"
the latter whispered him softly.

He did not look at all as Miles thought a king should look, that savage
at the table. He wore a scant covering of skins,--a dress like that of
his followers, save that the King had also about his neck a great chain
of white bone beads. His face was painted a dark red; and face and head
alike were oiled so he looked greasy; he fed untidily with his fingers,
and sometimes, when he would give a morsel to one of his followers,
rent the meat with his hands.

But, for all he seemed so busy with feeding, his quick eyes were
darting about the smoky room,--now resting on the Governor, who
sat at table near him; now on the English musketeers who lined the
walls,--and, to Miles's thinking, the King looked on them timorously;
now on his own followers, who crowded silently about him. One of the
Indians, squatting on the floor, held in his hands the English trumpet,
on which he tried to blow, and, for a moment, the King paused to hark
with a child's wonder to his efforts, then once more began tearing
Mistress Hopkins's mallard.

When nothing but bones was left of the bird, Giles slipped the platters
from the table, and now the serious work of the conference seemed to
begin. Up from the floor behind the table, where they had sat, rose
two savages, who should interpret between Massasoit and the Governor;
the one was a stranger, probably that Squanto whom Master Hopkins had
mentioned; the other, Miles's old acquaintance, Samoset. A transformed
Samoset, however, with an English felt hat low on his brows and an
English shirt worn over his meagre native garments after the manner of
a carter's frock. Ned Lister, standing rigid and soldierly against the
wall, took Miles a sudden dig in the ribs, and winked at him with a
"Didn't I tell you as much" expression.

Miles, on his good behavior, neither looked at him nor smiled, but
fixed his gaze on the men about the table. The sun had now shifted down
the sky, so a great bar of light thrust in at the western window. The
yellow brightness flecked across Elder Brewster's grizzled head, made
Governor Carver's stiff ruff even more dazzlingly white, and gleamed
back again from Captain Standish's steel corselet. It rested, too, on
the papers which Master William Bradford had laid on the table before
him, but Master Bradford's grave face, as he bent forward to write what
the Governor bade, was in shadow. The features of Massasoit, too, were
dark to see, but here and there, as the sunlight, bursting through
the smoke, wavered across the room, the painted face or coppery bare
shoulders of one of his followers stood out.

The two interpreters jerked out the gutturals of their outlandish
tongue, to which the King grunted assent, or now and again the Governor
spoke a measured word. But outside the window a bird was singing in a
high, purling strain; and Miles wondered if it were a fat, red-breasted
bird, and thought more on its song and on the motes that swam in the
sunlight, than on what the Governor was saying.

After all, he was glad when the conference broke up. He was tired of
standing stiffly, and the air of the room was heavy; and the Indians,
when they neither ate nor played with trumpets, but just sat stolid,
were a bit stupid. He scuffed softly but impatiently at the rear of the
train, as the company filed forth; the Governor and the King, side by
side, went first, and then, all in some semblance of order, the Indian
warriors and the English leaders and soldiery.

Outside, a guard of honor formed about the Governor and his guest, and
gave them fitting escort to the brook; but Miles remained behind and
roused the envy of his mates, with an account of what he had seen,
till, in fickle fashion, they forsook him at the coming of a second
guest, Quadequina, the brother of Massasoit, who, in his turn, would
have a taste of English hospitality. He could not, however, compare
in dignity and importance with Massasoit; he was just a tall, comely
young savage, who liked English biscuit and strong waters, but liked
the English muskets so little that his hosts good-naturedly laid
them aside. Massasoit was not cowardly like that, Miles assured his
comrades; Massasoit was every inch a king, and it was a mighty honor to
have been in the same room with him.

Quadequina had been but a short time gone, and the long shadows were
filling the river valley with a grayness, when back across the brook,
quite unruffled by his long detention, came Master Edward Winslow. His
fellow-colonists might be glad to see him, and he to return unscathed
to them, but he carried it laughingly. He was all sound, save that he
was uncommon hungry,--Miles, following admiringly, caught a scrap of
his speech to Captain Standish,--the Indians had tried to buy the armor
off his back and the sword from his side, and he knew not but he might
have sold them for a mess of pottage, only he saw no such savory viand
among the savages, nor anything, indeed, but groundnuts.

Now that Master Winslow was returned, the colonists released the
Indians whom they had held as hostages for him, and sent them away.
Save only Samoset and Squanto, no Indians were suffered to remain in
the settlement, but the rumor went that King Massasoit and all his
people had encamped for the night on the wooded hill across the brook,
so a strict watch was set.

"Do you think there will be fighting yet?" Miles questioned Giles, as
they walked home to supper. "Quadequina was afeard of our muskets. I
take it, we could beat those Indians."

"To be sure, there'll be no fighting," answered Giles, as he tucked his
drum under one arm in a professional way. "We've struck a truce with
the savages."

Later, at supper, Miles heard it all explained. This was a dolorous
meal, for the meat had been devoured by his Majesty, Massasoit, and
Mistress Hopkins was ill-tempered and rated Miles for running away that
afternoon, and, to add to her discomfort, Samoset came blandly to sup
with his old entertainers. "This has been an ill day such as I wish
never to see the like of again," fretted the poor woman.

"It is a happy day for our colony," said Master Hopkins gravely. "Do
you not realize, Elizabeth, that we have this afternoon made a peace
with our heathen neighbors that, by the will of Heaven, shall prove
lasting? King Massasoit has covenanted that none of his people shall do
us harm as we go abroad; and, if he be attacked, we shall aid in his
defense, or if other tribe of savages assail us, he shall do us the
like service. Yea, the hand of Providence has been with us this day.
Yesternight it was all menace; but to-night we can hope for peace."

Miles, in his place at table, looked at Samoset, very solemn in his
funny shirt and hat, and, blinking sleepily at the candle, took little
concern for the earnestness of Master Hopkins's words. He scarcely
realized that this was almost the second founding day of New Plymouth;
but he did know that he had stood within arm's reach of King Massasoit,
an exploit of which no other boy in the colony could boast; and, when
he went to bed, he dreamed all night of red and blue and green Indians.




CHAPTER XI

WHEN THE GOOD SHIP SAILED


EVEN Mistress Hopkins must at last somewhat overcome her fear of the
savages, else her life would have been miserable beyond endurance. For
Massasoit having plainly made the treaty in good faith, his people
were ready at all times to visit their English allies and eat of their
food. Coppery faces grew so common a sight in the single street of
New Plymouth that each boy in the colony had his own little tale of a
friendly Indian encounter, and Miles Rigdale was no longer alone in his
experiences.

Still further to rob Miles of his prestige among his fellows, his own
particular Indian, the Sagamore Samoset, with his hat and his shirt,
which he used in wet weather to remove carefully, lest they be damaged,
took himself off to his own land to the eastward; and Miles found no
one to fill his place.

To be sure, Plymouth had now a resident pensioner in the Indian
Squanto, but he lived with Master Bradford, and so was accessible to
other boys as well as to Miles. "I see not why he is let dwell among
us," the latter said jealously, in the early days of Squanto's stay.

"Because, if he were any but a heathen, one might say this land
where we have planted belongs to him," Master Hopkins made a brief
explanation, which to Miles was no explanation at all.

But later, of a morning when Master Hopkins's force of laborers was
busied in building a fence round the garden patch, Giles, who had
listened to the talk of his elders, took the trouble to set forth
the substance of it to Miles. "You'll understand, this Squanto
truly belongs at Plymouth. Back in the time when an Indian village,
Patuxet, stood where we have settled, he dwelt here. But there came an
Englishman named Hunt--"

"Who was rather more of a knave than even a trader should be,"
parenthesized Ned Lister, who, seated comfortably on the ground near
by, was hammering the palings together.

"He was a scoundrel," said Giles, warmly. "He toled Squanto and
nineteen others from Patuxet, and some from among the Nausets, on board
his ship, pretending he would truck with them; and then he hoisted sail
and steered away for Spain, where he sold them all for twenty pound
apiece. But somehow this fellow Squanto made shift to reach England,
where a good merchant of London cared for him. 'Twas there he came by
the knowledge of our tongue that he has. And at last they sent him
back hither to his own country; but meantime the plague had been among
them at Patuxet, and all were dead."

"The Lord removed the heathen to make way for a better growth," said
Dotey, who had just come thither with an armful of fresh palings.

"Truly?" muttered Ned Lister. "Then I'm thinking the Lord in His wisdom
laid His hand pretty heavily on the poor silly savages just for our
profit."

There was little enough love already between Lister and Dotey, so Giles
headed off a possibly bitter argument by continuing hastily: "So, as my
father says, Squanto is, in a way, the owner of the land here, and as
such has a right to shelter and food amongst us."

Miles listened to this story with a grave, stolid face, such as the
others kept, and made no word of comment. But afterward he thought much
of what had been told him, and wondered if Squanto had had a wife and
copper-colored babies, and had come home to find them dead. He felt
sorry for the poor, lone Indian, and watched him with new sympathy;
but to all appearances Squanto was more occupied in consuming English
biscuit and butter than in grieving for his lost friends.

Whether or no he had a claim upon the English, the Indian speedily
showed himself able to repay them for any kindness. He told the men
how they must wait yet some days before they planted their corn, and
how there would then be plenty of fish in the river, which they must
set with the seed; and much more that was useful. But nothing of the
Indian's arts impressed Miles so much as his prowess in eel-catching,
for he would go often into the forest and return, after a few hours,
with fat, sweet eels, as many as he could lift in one hand.

Of an afternoon in April, nearly a fortnight after the coming of
Massasoit, Ned Lister and Giles Hopkins went to the southward with
Squanto on such a fishing trip, and, as Miles was very eager to share
in it, they let him come too. Their course took them over steep, wooded
hills, where always they had blue water close on the left hand, and,
looking back over their shoulders, could see the bay of Plymouth, with
its flanking headlands. A tender leafage was upon the trees, and in the
southern hollows, where the birds sang, the air was warm; but on each
hilltop a chillier blast stung in the faces of the fishermen and urged
them to trudge more briskly.

At length they came to a gully, where two hills curved into each other,
and descended it, half running, to the bank of a small river that
flowed seaward through a level reach. Here was where the eels dwelt,
Squanto gave his companions to understand; and then, without spear
or any implement, he waded gently into the quiet water. The three
English-born, from the bank, watched him intently, yet they scarcely
realized how he did it, when he suddenly made a swift dart forward, and
rose with a long, slimy thing writhing in his hands.

"Do you just tread 'em out with your feet, Squanto?" Ned queried after
a time, as, keeping pace with the savage, they trailed along the bank.

When the Indian gave an "Um" that implied assent, Ned presently
suggested: "Say we venture it, lads. It has a simple seeming. Tell us,
Squanto, can a white man take eels that way?"

"White man try," advised Squanto, stolidly. He had caught enough for a
mess, so he probably thought that the splashings of the English fellows
would do no harm now.

Ned and Giles, stripping off shoes and stockings, waded in; and Miles,
not to be outdone, followed after. The water felt stingingly cold
against his bare legs, and set his teeth chattering so he could not
talk. The very ooze of the river bed was clammy; and then he suddenly
found his tongue and gave a frightened scream, as his toes touched
something that rolled beneath them.

"Did you take one, Miles?" cried Giles Hopkins, splashing to the spot.

"I d-d-don't know," chattered Miles, from the shore where he had sought
refuge.

Giles spattered to and fro a moment. "'Twas naught but an old branch,"
he announced contemptuously.

"It was an eel," retorted Miles, "but, to be sure, he will not stand
there the day long till you choose to come seek him."

With that he forced himself to put his purpling feet into the water
again, but, spite of this brave showing, Ned and Giles would chaff him
on his flight, and even Squanto looked amused at the conduct of the
youngest of his allies.

Yet, for all they were so ready to laugh at him, Miles noted his
English comrades did not take a single eel, and that gave him a kind of
comfort. But even then there was little pleasure in wading through the
icy water, in the expectation of stepping on a soft, squirming thing;
so he was not sorry when Ned gave the order to take up the homeward
march.

The east wind, that had turned chillier as sunset drew on, smote
bleakly on the hilltops, and in the hollows, where the shadows were
creeping through the undergrowth, the warmth had died out of the air.
The gathering darkness pressed ever closer upon the fishermen; the sea
on their right turned gray and dim; the blue faded from the sky, and
the green of the distant headlands of the bay changed to black. Just
off the beach point they could dimly make out a dark bulk, where a
single speck of light showed--the old ship _Mayflower_.

"They say she'll be hoisting sail for home soon," Giles spoke, as they
trudged through the twilight, with a surety that his comrades knew to
what he referred.

"So soon as the wind swings round into the west," answered Ned. "Then
she'll up sail, and it's 'Eastward, ho!'"

Then presently, in the dusk, Ned began whistling a sorry little tune,
unlike those he was wont to sing, very slow and monotonous, with a
sudden rising to a high note and as sudden a sinking again, like the
sharp indrawing of breath in a sob. "What song is that, Ned?" Miles
asked, because he would rather hear Lister talk than whistle that
pitiable strain.

"'Tis the Hanging-tune, Miley; the one to which they set the last
confessions of men who are condemned to die." He fell to whistling once
more and half humming the words:--

    "'Fortune, my foe,
      Why dost thou frown on me?'"

and Miles harked to the tune till it went crying itself through his
head.

Next morning it still came back to him keenly,--the walk in the
twilight, the look of the distant ship, the woful minor of the
Hanging-tune. For the wind was hauling round to westward, and of a
sudden Indians and gardening and house-building ceased to be matters
that men talked of in the street; instead they spoke of the going of
the ship that had borne them from England.

Already she had stayed longer on their shores than any had expected,
because of the sickness that had been among her crew. But now, on shore
and on ship, the sickness was stayed; just half the settlers lay buried
on the bluff, and the crew of the _Mayflower_ mustered in diminished
numbers, yet enough survived and in recovered health to work the ship
back to England. With the first favoring wind she would set forth upon
her voyage; and with that bit of sure information went another, that
Master Jones had offered to take home in her any one of the settlers
who might wish to go.

"Right generous of him, is't not?" Ned Lister spoke bitterly to Miles.
"Who does he think is going with him? The Elder and the Governor
and Master Bradford, all the chiefs, if they showed their faces in
England, they'd be clapped up in prison. And the lesser men, or even
our great Master Hopkins here, they've ventured all their substance in
this plantation. If they go back, they must starve or beg in London
streets, and 'tis as easy and pleasant to starve here. There's none in
the settlement I know of has the wish to go home, save myself, and I
cannot go, because I've sold my time to Hopkins, the more fool I!"

"Why did you ever come hither, if you hate it so?" Miles questioned.

"Because a penny fell wrong side up," Ned answered. "I woke up in
London one fine morning, with no shirt to my back and but one penny
in my pocket. 'It's either 'list for the wars, or get me into a new
country and start afresh,' I said, so I tossed up the penny,--heads
Bohemia, tails America. It fell tails; so I sold Stephen Hopkins my
three years' time in return for my passage over. And a precious fool
I was! Faith, I'd liefer dig ditches in England than play even at
governor here. And so soon as my time's out!"

Miles listened soberly, but with no sympathy; he did not understand why
a tall, grown fellow like Ned should think on home with such longing.
He did not care himself; he had come to New Plymouth to live, and he
looked forward to the departure of the _Mayflower_ as a novel happening
in the round of everyday occurrences.

Yet when it befell, it seemed quite a matter-of-fact event. A clear
breezy morning it was, and, as the household sat at their early
breakfast, Francis Cooke came leisurely to tell Master Hopkins that
the wind was setting steady from the west, and Master Jones had rowed
ashore to bid his former passengers good-by; so soon as the tide was
at flood, the ship would put forth.

There was wood and water to fetch as every day; and Miles did the tasks
hastily. As he came down the path by Cooke's house, he could feel
the wind stirring his hair, and yonder in the harbor the waves were
ruffling, and the dim old sails of the _Mayflower_, unfurled, bellied
in the gusts.

When he had set the dripping bucket within the living room, he ran
down toward the bluff, to see what more was to see, but, finding his
playmates lingering by the door of the Common House, he joined them.
Within the house, they told him, Master Jones was drinking a friendly
draught with the colonists, and taking his leave. Presently, indeed,
the Master, a low, broad-shouldered figure, in his wide breeches and
loose jacket, came forth, attended by most of the men of the colony,
and rolled off to the landing place.

Some of the boys straggled respectfully behind their elders, but Miles
raced with those who ran to be first at the landing. There, alongside
the rock, rode the ship's longboat, and Will Trevor and several of
the lesser men stood talking with the sailors who sat in her. The
youngsters, too, would gladly have borne a part, but the Master, coming
right on their heels across the sand, broke up the little group; he was
speaking boisterously with the Governor, so his loud voice could be
heard even above the confusion of the embarkation.

Indeed, it was all so noisy and hurried that nothing of those last
moments remained clear in Miles's mind; he remembered only that
men spoke of letters and packets, and the Master wished them many
a "God be wi' you," and there was a bustling to and fro and a deal
of hand-shaking. Then the Master, sitting in the stern seat, was
cursing at his sailors; the width of blue water between the longboat
and the landing rock was increasing; and for a moment Miles watched
mechanically the sway and swing of the seamen's bodies, as, bending to
their oars, they rowed the boat away.

When at length he turned slowly about, he was aware that, halfway
up the rugged slope of the bluff, a little group of women, all that
survived in the colony, were standing, and the children with them. He
scrambled up to be with Dolly, why, he could not say, only somehow he
wanted to be sure she was safe and near him then; and he noted Mistress
Carver, who sat upon a stone with her hands clasped tensely in her lap,
and Priscilla Mullins, whose hair blew unheeded about her face, while
she gazed out to sea.

He almost stumbled over Wrestling Brewster and the little Samson boy,
who had sat down on the turf and unconcernedly were playing with some
bright pebbles; but he did not pause to speak to Wrestling, just
clambered a few feet higher up the bluff, where Dolly, holding to
Mistress Brewster's gown, stood with her wistful face turned seaward.
"Look you closely, Dolly," he greeted her. "See, they're hoisting sail
on board the _Mayflower_."

Dolly, pressing up to him, whispered for her only reply: "Do you mind,
Miles, how we came in on the ship, and mammy and daddy with us? I wish
we'd all stayed in England."

"Now hush, Dolly," Miles admonished in a gruff tone, and scowled
vexedly as the little sister, hiding her face against his doublet,
began to cry. Then, half pitying, he bent to speak to her, when a
sudden gasp, as if the women about him all drew in their breath, made
him look to the harbor. There he saw the _Mayflower_, with the western
wind swelling her dingy sails, had heaved up anchor, and was heading
out upon the ocean.

The sun was bright and made the dirty sails gleam like silver; the
water was blue, and the wind was brisk; and the ship stood seaward
swiftly, very swiftly. Miles thought on how she had set forth from
Southampton; and he knew that on board men would be clattering across
her deck, and hauling at ropes, and the Master would be bellowing
orders.

But on shore a great silence had fallen. The most careless of the
men had no word to say, while of the graver sort some had bowed their
heads, and some, coming higher up the bluff, had drawn close to their
wives and children. For a moment there was no sound save the lap of
waves about the great gray landing rock, and the swish of shingle as
the swell receded; then suddenly one of the women--it was Mistress
White, six weeks a widow, who stood with her baby in her arms and her
other little child holding to her skirts--burst out sobbing.

Miles gazed about him in wonder. Why, men never cried; Captain
Standish's face now was hard as a stone; and he himself had not the
least inclination to shed a tear. But among the women round him was a
stifled weeping, so anguishing for being half suppressed, that some
pity mingled with his contempt, and, with a feeling that he was ashamed
to listen, he slipped away from the bluff. He thought he were best run
up on the great hill to watch the _Mayflower_ depart; and he found that
his friend Jack and several other boys had had the same thought.

All together they raced up the street to see who should gain the
hilltop first, and by the time they came thither, with laughing and
struggling, had clean forgot their elders, who, from the bluff below,
watched the receding ship through a dazzle of tears. From the top of
the hill the lads could see the white sail of the _Mayflower_ in the
offing, out beyond Sagaquab, speeding ever farther into the horizon;
but Miles never saw it vanish, for Francis Billington had discovered a
nest of snakes at the other side of the hill; so, in the midst of their
watching, the boys must run thither and look upon the wriggling little
creatures, then scrupulously stone them all to death.

When Miles clambered again to the hilltop, there was never a distant
glimmer of a sail upon the sea; but he could not think of the ship's
departure sadly, with the day so fair and his time at his disposal. He
felt hungry, though, so he ran down to the house a moment to eat his
dinner; and, for all it was long past the noon hour, he found no dinner
ready.

Ned was out by the woodpile, nailing together a hand-barrow, with
a sudden fierce spurt of energy, but he was in a sulky temper; and
within the house Constance went about with her eyes red. She gave
Miles a piece of bread in his hand, and bade him run away and eat it;
stepmother had shut herself in her chamber, and father was with her,
trying to comfort her. "I see not why you all make such a to-do because
the old ship has sailed," Miles spoke, with his mouth full.

"Because we're left alone. Because no ship will come ere the autumn.
Maybe it will never come," Constance burst out, with sudden
passionateness. "And we are here, and home is there, and the ship has
gone. You'd understand, if you were older."

No, Miles did not understand yet. What with the excitement and the
change, in spite of the sad bearing of those about him, the meaning
of it all did not come home to him till next morning. He had risen
early with the others and run forth to fetch wood for the morning
fire. The sun was just reddening the horizon line, but the rest of the
world looked faint and gray. A white mist, rolling off the fields, was
shrinking away inland from the sea whence it had come. But out to sea
he could distinguish clearly the dusky beach point, and the islands
and-- There he rubbed his eyes. No, it was no trick of the mist. There
was the old anchoring ground, but it was empty; the clumsy, old, dark
hulk was gone.

Miles walked on to the woodpile, trying hard to whistle, but the only
strain that came was a sorry snatch in a minor key,--the Hanging-tune.
The chill of the dawning struck into his bones. Once more he looked to
the anchoring ground that was vacant; then he sat down suddenly among
the damp logs. He did not cry,--he was too big and old for that,--but
he leaned his folded arms against a log, and hid his face between them.




CHAPTER XII

THE SOWING OF THE FIELDS


"TO be sure, though, I was not weeping," Miles declared to Constance,
who came out from the house to see why he tarried so long at the
woodpile, "for I never even thought on going back to England."

He little guessed that, at one time, the leaders of the colony had
spoken seriously of returning Dolly and himself to the home-country.
But Master Hopkins had urged that, in such case, the children might be
drawn back into the faith of the Church of England, from which their
father had sought to snatch them; and Elder Brewster had added that it
was a weary journey for such little folk, and no prospect at the end
save of hard fare among grudging kindred.

John Rigdale left no near relatives; and his distant cousins, to whom
the children would have to go, were poor tenant-farmers, just as he
had been, who would find it burdensome to feed two more mouths. For
Miles and Dolly, not only would childhood prove hard and laborious,
but there would be nothing better to look forward to; as the boy grew
to manhood, he could hope only to toil for daily hire on some farmer's
land. "Unless he fling away his soul's welfare by going as a mercenary
in some iniquitous foreign war," said Master Isaac Allerton; whereat
Captain Standish smiled a little behind his beard, but made no answer.

But here in New Plymouth, though Miles would have plenty of work to
do, he would have, as his inheritance from his father, a claim to a
share of land and of whatever cattle or other property the settlers
should hereafter hold in common. By the time he was a man, there would
be enough for him to have a small farm of his own, where he could live
in more comfort than he would have known in England; and, till he was
grown, Master Hopkins was willing to feed and shelter him, in return
for what labor he could do.

As for Dolly, her case was simple enough, for if Miles stayed, she
stayed; and Mistress Brewster was quite determined that the little girl
should stay in no house but hers. So the _Mayflower_ sailed away, and
Miles Rigdale, with his little household, remained behind; and he never
dreamed that people had thought of continuing the colony without his
aid.

The boy had some cause to rate his services highly, for, in the
weakened condition of the settlement, every atom of strength had to
be used, and tasks were set for him as seriously as for burly Edward
Dotey. The full working-force of New Plymouth mustered but twenty-two
men,--counting in the venerable Elder, the Governor, and the Doctor,
who all labored with their hands as readily as the rest,--and nine
boys--some half-grown fellows, like Giles and Bart Allerton, who, at a
pinch, could bear a musket and do almost a man's work, and some small
rascals, like Miles himself, who, with the best intentions, did not
always, for lack of strength or of wisdom, accompl

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/44165