THE SWORD OF STANDISH.
The "little bird," probably John Alden, constant companion of Standish,
had sung truly in Priscilla's ear of a second exploring party about to
leave the Mayflower in quest of a favorable site for the town and colony
the Pilgrims had come forth to found.
To this step they were urged not only by their own wishes, but by the
importunities of Captain Jones, who having obeyed his Dutch employers
and brought his passengers to a point well removed from the Virginian or
Manhattan shores whereon they intended to land, was now only desirous to
put them ashore almost anywhere, and make sail for England while the
winter storms held off and his provisions lasted. His own interest,
therefore, made him zealous in the Pilgrims' service, and so heartily
had he offered his men, boats, and provisions for the expedition that
the Pilgrims had made him its leader, some of them still believing in
his honesty and friendliness, and some others feeling that the surest
way to effect their plans was to induce the surly commander to make them
his own. The event proved their shrewdness, for Jones accepted the
appointment with great satisfaction, and told off ten of his best seamen
to add to the four-and-twenty sound men who were nearly all that the
Pilgrims could muster, since, thanks to the secret councils of Rose
Standish and her associates, all sick or weakly candidates were weeded
out from the volunteers, and the Tilley brothers, William Molines,
James Chilton, William White, and several others were kindly bidden to
remain on board and nurse their strength for the next expedition.
About noon the tide serving, the four-and-thirty adventurers, divided
between the ship's long-boat and their own pinnace, took the sea in
teeth of a freezing northeasterly gale, and under low-lying clouds whose
gray bosoms teemed with snow and sleet.
Thomas English, a mariner engaged as master of the shallop, held the
helm, while as many willing hands as could grasp the oars pulled lustily
in the direction of what is now called the Pamet River, a stream
discovered some days previously by a foot expedition under charge of
Standish, and considered as a possible seat for their colony. The
crowded state of the boats and the head wind rendered the sails useless,
and oars proved inefficient to propel so large a boat as the pinnace,
while the sea, rapidly rising with the rising wind, broke so dangerously
over the quarter that English refused to proceed, and it was hastily
resolved to run into what is now called East Harbor, land the
passengers, and allow the long-boat to return to the ship, while the
pinnace lay to until the gale moderated. This was done, but owing to the
shoals, the men were obliged to wade knee-deep to reach land, and the
cold was now so intense that their clothes froze upon them as they
resumed their journey on foot. Well may we believe what William Bradford
later said: "Some of our people who are dead took the original of their
death on that day."
Marching six or seven miles on foot, the party encamped, building a
barricade, or as they called it a "randevous," of pine boughs to protect
them from savage beasts or men, and within it kindling a fire beside
which they sat down to eat such provisions as they had brought, and to
solace themselves with modest draughts of the strong waters they used
but not abused.
The next day the exploration was continued both by sea and land, the
hardy adventurers marching through snow six inches deep, or upon the
loose sands of the beach where the wind flogged them with lashes of icy
spray and stinging shards. In passing through a belt of woods traces of
human presence were to be seen, especially certain young trees bent down
and their tops made fast to the earth. Stepping aside to examine one of
these, William Bradford suddenly found his leg inclosed in a noose,
while the tree, released and springing upward, would have carried him
ignominiously with it had not he seized the trunk of another sapling,
and lustily shouted for help. His comrades came running back, and not
without laughter and some grim pleasantries released him. Stephen
Hopkins alone understood the trap, and cutting from it a piece of smooth
fine cord twisted of wood fibres handed it to Bradford, saying,--
"Here, man, keep it by way of horn-book to teach thee wood-lore in these
salvage countries. It is the moral of what we used to see among the
Bermoothes some ten years gone by. Ay, and the traps too. I've seen many
a wild thing, deer or what not, jerked up by the leg and hanging from a
tree like Absalom, until its master came along to cut its throat and
dress it, as it hung."
"Glad am I that no such master came to release me," said Bradford
laughing ruefully as he rubbed his leg and limped along.
"So thou wert in the Bermudas, Hopkins?" asked Standish who was of the
walking party; "wast buccaneering?"
"Nay, Captain, all men do not follow thy trade," replied Hopkins with
his boisterous laugh. "Mine was quite another office, for I was
lay-reader to Parson Buck, and he was chaplain to Gates who was to be
governor of a Virginia colony an' he could have reached it. But like our
own adventure it miscarried, and we were wrecked on the Bermoothes. We
abode there six months, and the Indians showed us how to trap deer just
as Bradford was trapped but now, ho, ho!"
"Lay-reader wast thou?" asked Standish surveying the burly veteran with
whimsical interest. "Well, now, I'd never take thee for a parson's
lieutenant, Hopkins! I can hardly fancy thee meek and mild with bands
under that unkempt beard, and a gown over thy buff jacket. Wert meek and
mild in those days, Hopkins, and thy tongue, was 't innocent of strange
oaths?"
"A truce to thy jibes, master Captain," retorted Hopkins not half
pleased at receiving the jests he so freely offered. "If thou didst but
know, my voice was more for war than peace, sith it seemed to me then
even as it did before we landed here, that an expedition gone astray is
an expedition ended, and that all compacts cease when their conditions
cannot be fulfilled. We shipped to go to Virginia, and Gates was to be
our governor; well and good, but here we were wrecked on Bermuda, and my
rede was that every man was thus released from his promises and free to
set forth anew for himself."
"So! Yonder threatening on the Mayflower was not thy first experience in
raising sedition and discontent, and trying to turn a God-fearing
community into a nest of pirates!" exclaimed Standish scornfully.
"Well, what came of it in that instance?"
"Why, Gates called a court-martial, tried me for treason by an authority
I denied, and sentenced me to death."
"Ay, and what then?"
"Then Parson Buck who could ill spare me, since I writ half his
discourses, and the admiral who would not see murder done under cloak of
law, they went to Gates and so wrought upon his temper that he set me
free and bade me begone, and I went right merrily."
"Thou mindst me of an officer under me, down there by Utrecht," said
Standish meditatively. "He, too, was for setting up every man for
himself in the plunder of a village we had taken, and I had given orders
about."
"And what became of him?" asked Hopkins, as the captain seemed to have
finished.
"Oh, there was no parson just there to make use of him, and no admiral
to judge about my authority, and he was shot," replied Standish quietly.
Hopkins scowled and laid his hand upon his sword hilt, but Bradford, who
had listened with both interest and amusement to the conversation,
deftly interposed with some question about the route, and Hopkins, who
prided himself upon his wood-lore, took the lead, and conducted the
party by the easiest route to the spot where they would rejoin their
brethren of the boat.
The Pamet River, reached at length, proved unsatisfactory for a
settlement, but at its mouth were found sundry matters of interest,--the
remains of a palisade formed apparently by civilized hands, the ruins of
a log hut, quite different from the wigwams of the savages, and a large
mound which when opened proved full of Indian corn, some shelled, some
on the ear, the yellow kernels variegated with red and blue ones, like
the maize still grown in that vicinity. The snow upon the ground would
have concealed this "barn," as rustic John Rigdale called it, had not
the previous expedition noted and marked it, and the ground was so hard
frozen that it must be hewed with the stout cutlasses and axes of the
Pilgrims, and the clods pried up with levers. Standish drew his sword
with the rest, but after watching for a moment thrust it back into the
sheath, saying to Alden who as usual was close beside him,--
"Nay, I'll none of it! What mine own thews and sinews may compass, I'll
undertake right joyfully, but I'll never ask Gideon to risk his edge or
his backbone in such rude labors as yon. Every man to his trade, and
these are the sappers and miners with whom he has no concern."
"Is Gideon the name of your sword then, Master?" asked Alden half
timidly, for Standish had the habit of command and was impatient of much
questioning.
Alden however was a favorite, and the captain, like a lover, was won by
the admiring glance the young man threw at the sword, as its owner
unsheathed it and laid the blade fondly across his palm.
"Why ay," replied he smiling down at it, "I have christened him so; but
methinks, like other converts, he finds the new name sit uneasily at
times, and would fain hear the old one."
"And what might that be?"
"Ah, that is what no man alive can tell. He who forged it of that rare
metal which now and again falls from the skies, and he who first
wielded and named it, have lain in the dust well nigh a thousand years,
if old tales be true."
"A thousand years! But what is its story,--if you will tell it, Master
Standish?" and the young man's face grew bright with excitement as he
glanced from the soldier's face to the blade glittering across his palm,
and seeming to laugh in the wintry sunshine.
"Well, it was an old armorer in Ghent for whom I had done some service
in protecting his daughter and saving some mails which my men would have
plundered, and the old man was more grateful than need be, and came one
night to my lodgings bringing this sword wrapped in his mantle, to offer
me as a gift, for he said he would not sell it, valuing it above all
price."
"And still you would have him take a price," suggested Alden exultantly,
but Standish answered gently,--
"Nay, John, that is but poor pride that cannot allow another to be its
benefactor. I took the old man's gift and thanked him heartily. Later
on, as chance befell, I did him a good turn in a contract for arms,
while he knew it not. But that is beside the matter, which is the sword.
He told me, that old man did, a story fit to set in the ancient romaunts
of chivalry, how he as a young fellow full of heart and lustihood went
out to fight the Turks or some other heathen of those parts, and was a
prisoner, and a lady loved him and he loved her not, having a sweetheart
waiting for him at home. And she had a noble heart and forgave him his
despite, and set him free at risk of her own life, nor gave him freedom
only, but a purse of gold and this sword, which she averred had been
captured from the Persian people hundreds of years before, and was a
true Damascus blade forged from meteor iron, and of the curious
tempering now forgotten. And she said, moreover, that there was a charm
upon it that made him who carried it invincible and scathless, and she,
poor maid, had robbed her father's house of this great treasure, and
brought it to him who loved another woman better than her, and so with
tears and smiles she gave it over, and he for very ruth gave her a
tender kiss, and thus they parted."
"Nay, I pity her not. She was overbold to offer her love before it had
been asked," said Alden hastily.
"Ah, boy, thou 'rt in all the hardness of thy callow youth, and nought's
more hard. Wait some fifteen years till thou comest to my age, and
thou 'lt pity the poor heathen maid as I do to-day. Well, my armorer
took the sword and played it some forty years or more, and then, too old
to wield arms, he took to dealing in them, but never sold this, for it
had proved all that the lady claimed for it, and had slain his enemies,
and fended his friends, and saved his own head more times than he could
number, and now he gave it to me who had, he said, saved more than his
life."
"And these outlandish signs and marks upon the blade?" asked Alden,
peering down at the sword.
"There, now, thou callest for another tale," replied Standish smiling
good-naturedly. "But as they seem to need us not in disemboweling yon
granary, and here we are guard against surprise from whoever may rightly
own the treasure and come to claim it, I will e'en tell thee the rest.
"Thou knowest Pastor Robinson of Leyden, though thou wast never out of
England thyself?"
"I know his fame as a pious teacher and a learned man, well beloved of
his people."
"Beloved? Ay, none more so," exclaimed Standish heartily. "I ever wished
I might see him in some great peril and prove my love by cutting down a
round dozen of his foes. And learned! Why, man, he disputed with the
most learned among their Dutch scholars openly in the big church, and
left them not a leg to stand on, or a tongue to wag. Why, 't is no more
to him to read Hebrew than for me to spell out my Bible. So then,
knowing his learning and his love of all that is old and curious, I one
day showed him my sword and asked if he could rede me fairly the
mystical texts or whatever they might be upon the blade. But mind thee I
said naught to him of any charm or amulet about it, lest I might wound
his conscience, which is tender as a maid's. Thou shouldst have seen the
dear old man, barnacles on nose, peering and peeping and muttering over
the queer device, all at one as he were a wizard himself and working
some spell. But at the last he heaved a mighty sigh, and gave me back
the sword saying, nay, he could not make out more than that there were
two legends in two different tongues and by different hands, and that
the effigies of the sun and moon and stars pointed, he feared, to
idolatrous emblems, and were not such as a Christian man might safely
deal withal. So I asked him would it be better should I have the Holy
Rood wrought above them as did the Crusaders of old, and beshrew me, but
this device seemed to please him less than the other."
"Nay, our teachers like not the look of the Cross, nor use it as our
fathers used. It savoreth of Popery, they say," interposed Alden
glancing at the captain's face for sure approval, but to his surprise he
saw it overcast and frowning.
"Thou knowest," replied he a little haughtily, "that I am not of the
Separatist Church, nor agree in all its teachings. The Standishes were
ever good Catholics, since they came over from Normandy with William the
Baseborn, and if I hold not to the religion of my fathers I accept no
other, nor can I ever esteem lightly those things my mother venerated."
The younger man, perplexed and mortified, remained silent, but in a
moment Standish smiled and resumed his story.
"So, Pastor Robinson confessed his own want of skill, as so wise a man
need not shame to do, but told me of a certain aged scholar in
Amsterdam, well versed in Eastern lore, and able, if any man alive could
do it, to rede me the riddle aright, and he wrote down his name and
lodging and a line to recommend me to his kindly attention, and so gave
me fair good-night.
"Not long after, my occasions called me to Amsterdam, and be sure I took
the time to find the old ancient scholar, a queer, dried-up graybeard,
with skin like the parchment covers of his folios; but he gave me
courteous welcome, and I laid the sword upon the table under his nose.
Faith, John, I thought that same nose would grow to my blade, for a good
half hour passed away, or ever he stirred or spoke. Then he looked
askance at me and said,--
"'How old art thou in very truth?'"
"I told him some thirty years, and he stared and stared until had he
been a young man and a soldier I had asked him his intent. But as it
was, I did but stare back again, until at the last his parchment cheeks
creased and crackled in what may have been meant for a smile, and he
said,--
"'Thou mightst have been a score of thirties if thou hadst been born
when this blade was forged.'
"'And why?' asked I, wondering if Pastor Robinson could have known the
man was an old wizard.
"'Because there's that on this blade would have kept thee from all harm
if thou hadst made it thine own,' said he, tapping that circle."
And turning the blade, Standish showed upon the reverse from the sun,
moon, and stars, an ornamented medallion close to the hilt, containing
certain cabalistic signs and marks. Below this was an inscription of
several lines in totally different characters.[1]
[1] This sword may still be seen in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth,
Massachusetts.
"And that is a charm to keep a man alive?" asked Alden with bated breath
and eager eyes.
"So that old man said," replied Standish, "but I concern myself little
with such matters, having ever found my own right arm enough to keep my
head, and the grace of God better than any heathen charm."
"And did he read it, and the rest?" pursued Alden.
"Yes, he read it, or at the least he muttered something in some
outlandish gibberish," replied the captain, laughing a little
shamefacedly. "And he told me its meaning, partly in Latin, for we spoke
together in that tongue, but I am such a dullard that I forgot the words
as soon as he spoke them, and so asked him to write them down. Then he
fell a pondering again, and said like the pastor, that the two
inscriptions differed in every way, and he must muse awhile and look in
his books before he could read them fairly, and he asked me to leave
the sword with him. So seeing him so venerable and honorable a man I
consented, although not willingly, and went my way. The next morning I
sought him again not certain but that in the night he and my sword and
the charm had all flown out of window together and gone to join the
Witch of Endor. But no, there he sat, and the sword before him, as if
they never had stirred since I left. And the old man gave me a bit of
parchment covered with crabbed Latin script, and told me I should find
therein the sense of my two inscriptions, though there were words even
he could not decipher. So I put the parchment in my pouch, and reached
my hand to the sword, when he withheld it and said,--
"'This charm avails nothing for thee, my son, because it was not framed
for thee, nor dost thou swear by the powers therein invoked; but I can
frame one that will avail, and will protect thee from any weapon raised
against thee. I have learned somewhat I never knew, in studying thy
sword, and I would fain repay thee in kind.'
"Now lad, as he spoke, a certain terror seized me lest I should be found
dabbling in the black art, and I said, with more than enough vehemence,
that I wanted no charm, nor did I fear mortal weapon or mortal foe, for
in God was my trust, and He was able to hold me scathless, or to take me
when He would. And then, John, a fancy seized me, a foolish fancy of
romance perhaps, but still I mind not thy knowing, so thou 'lt not
babble of it to others. I asked the old man could he put what I had just
said into the same tongue with that heathen charm, and so shape it that
I could have it carved upon my blade above the sun and moon and stars,
which those Persian idolaters worship and had graved there almost as
idols. And he smiled again in that grewsome fashion of his, and said ay
he could do that much, and that as three possessors had already put
invocations to their gods upon the blade it was but fit I should do so
in my turn.
"I liked not the quip, nor the evening of a Christian man's belief to
idolatrous worship, but yet the idea of the Christian charm, if one
might call it so, had taken fast possession of my mind, and I felt as
though it were snatching the good blade from the powers of heathenesse
and giving it to God. So I put what I would say in few words, and the
old man wrought upon it till he had it to his mind, and at the last took
a pencil dipped in some wizard's ink or other and drew these signs upon
the sword as you see them, bidding me take it to an armorer and have
them cut in just as they stood. So I did, choosing, you may be sure, the
armorer who had given me the sword, and showing him, as I have you, that
this is no heathen charm, but the sign of a Christian man's faith."
"And what do they mean, all three of them?" asked Alden reverently. "I
see the figures 1149 graved clearly enough, but what mean the other two
rows?"
"My lad, thou seest wrong. The 1 and 4 and 9 are but symbols of letters
not there set down, and the whole, partly from that same foolish fancy I
told thee of, and partly because the old scholar bade me never tell it
lest some other man should steal his learning, and partly because Gideon
hath kept the first secret so many years that I feel like trusting him
with another, for all these reasons I promised myself and the scholar
and Gideon that I would never tell the thing to mortal man, nor even
the rendering of the other devices; and lest I should be tempted to
forego my word, sith I claim to be no stronger than Samson, or lest some
one should surprise the secret unawares, I cut the piece of parchment in
two pieces, and handed them back to the old scholar, who disguised not
his huge content thereat. So thou seest, John, two of the three
inscriptions I could not unravel to thee if I would, and of the third
thou wilt not ask me, since it is guarded by a promise."
"Surely, Master, it is not I who would ask you to break it," said John
simply. "But the name of Gideon?"
"Didst never read of Gideon in Holy Writ, John? A mighty soldier before
the Lord who hewed down his father's idol-grove and came out from among
his own people and carved his own way in the world. Ever as I read his
story, I mind me of a man I knew in Lancashire who went to the house of
his fathers to claim what was his own, and when he gat it not, he threw
down the idols he had been trained to worship, and shook off the dust of
that idol-grove where Mammon and Rank and the world's opinion were set
up as gods, and went out into the world to hew out his own fortunes by
the might of his own right arm, and his trust in the God of Israel. So
now, John Alden, thou knowest more about my good sword than any man
alive, for I doubt me if the scholar remembereth, and the armorer is
dead. And when we go into battle, if such good luck await us, and thou
hearest me cry, The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon! thou 'lt know my
meaning."