A SHARP PAIR OF SCISSORS.
Two men stood upon Cole’s Hill, half sheltering themselves behind the
ragged growth of scrub oaks and poplars sprung from those graves of the
first winter, sown by the survivors to wheat lest the savages should
perceive that half the company were dead. That pathetic crop of grain
had perished on the ground and never been renewed; but Nature, tender
mother, soon replaced it with a robe of her own symbolism, green as her
favorite clothing ever is, and embroidered with the starry flowers of
the succory, blue as heaven.
From the grave of John Carver and Katharine his wife had sprung a
graceful clump of birches, and it was behind these that the two men
finally took up their post of observation. One of them was John Lyford,
a smooth and white faced man, whose semi-clerical garb only accented
his cunning eyes and sensual mouth. A double renegade this, for, flying
to the New World to escape the punishment of his sins in England,
he proffered himself to the Pilgrims as a convert to their creed,
renouncing with oaths and tears his Episcopal ordination, although
assured by those liberal-minded men that such recantation was not
required or desired; then, having joined the Church of the Separation
entirely of his own free will, he turned viperwise upon the hand that
fed him, and began plotting against the peace, nay the very life, of
his generous hosts, and leading away those weak and disaffected souls
to be found in every community.
John Oldhame, his companion, was a very different sort of person. Big,
loud-voiced, and dogmatic, he was the sailor who would see the ship
driven to destruction on the rocks unless he could be captain and give
orders to every one else.
The motives of these two conspirators were as diverse as their
antecedents, although both came out under the auspices of the London
Adventurers, of whom a word must be said. These gentlemen, knowing
a good deal less of New England than we do of the sources of the
Nile, had _adventured_ certain moneys in fitting out the Pilgrims,
and in sustaining them until they should be able to repay the sums
thus advanced “with interest thereto.” When the Mayflower made her
first return, leaving fifty of the Pilgrims in their graves and the
other fifty just struggling back to life and feebly beginning their
plantation and house building, the Adventurers were exceedingly wroth
that she did not come freighted with lumber, furs, and especially
salted fish enough to nearly pay for her voyage. Their bitter
reproaches written to Carver were answered with manly dignity by
Bradford, but a really cordial feeling was never reëstablished, and
when the Pilgrims requested that either Robinson or some other minister
should be sent out to them, the Adventurers imposed Lyford upon them,
some of them giving him secret instructions to act as a spy in their
behalf.
John Oldhame, a man of means and position, came out upon a different
footing, paying his own expenses, and being, as the Pilgrims phrased
it, “on his own particular” instead of “on the general” or joint stock
account. But events soon made it plain that a very good understanding
existed between Oldhame and the Adventurers, and that if he should be
enabled to detect his hosts in defrauding the Adventurers, whose greedy
maws never were fully satisfied, they would transfer their protection
and countenance to him, sustaining him as a rival or even supplanter of
the interests of the men they had undertaken to befriend.
The Pilgrims had the faults of their virtues in very marked degree,
and carried patience, meekness, long-suffering, and credulity to a
point most irritating to their historians and very subversive of their
worldly interests. Doubtless, however, they found their account in the
final reckoning, and one must try to be patient with their goodness.
All which means that if this growing treason in their midst was at all
suspected it was not noticed, and both Oldhame and Lyford were admitted
to the full privileges of townsmen, including a seat at the Council
and full knowledge of the colony’s concerns. Lyford, in virtue of the
ordination, so scornfully abjured by himself, was requested to act as
minister in association with Elder Brewster, although some quiet doubts
still prevented his admission to the position of pastor.
With this necessary explanation of the position of affairs we return to
the hiding-place behind the birches, whence the conspirators watched
a boat manned by four sailors which lay uneasily tossing on the flood
tide, rubbing its nose against the Rock, while, in the offing, a ship
ready for sea lay awaiting it.
“Bradford is certainly going aboard the Charity. They’re waiting for
him, and there he comes down The Street,” growled Oldhame at length.
“Perhaps only to see Winslow off. He, he! the Adventurers will show
Master Envoy Winslow but a sour face when they’ve read our letters,”
sniggered Lyford.
“I wish he might be clapt up in jail for the rest of his life, confound
him!”
“There’s Standish along of Bradford! Think he’s going aboard, too?” And
Lyford’s face showed such craven terror that Oldhame laughed aloud.
“Afraid of Captain Shrimp, as Tom Morton calls him?” demanded he. “I’ve
put a spoke in _his_ wheel, at any rate. You writ down what I advised
about another commander, didn’t you?”
“Ay. To send him over at all odds, and to arrest this fellow for high
treason.”
“Ah! He’s not going aboard after all,” ejaculated Oldhame venomously.
“Feels he must stay ashore and watch you and me and Hicks and
Billington and some of the rest. Set him up for a sneaking, prying
little watch-dog! But let him undertake to order me about as he did
t’other day, and I’ll cram his square teeth down his bull’s throat for
him, damn him!”
“He, he, he! There’s no love lost between you and Captain Standish, is
there, Master Oldhame? There, they’re off,--Winslow and Bradford only;
and Captain Shrimp returns up the hill with the rest. I sore mistrust
me the governor has got scent of those letters, Oldhame.”
“Pho, pho, man! Don’t be so timorous. Pierce won’t give up the letters,
and if he did, Bradford would think twice before opening them. Let him
dare put a finger to one of mine, and I’ll bring the whole house about
his ears! I’d like to catch him at it. I’d--why, I’d give him a taste
of my fists,--one for himself, and one to pass on to his neighbor, and
after that”--
“M-o-o-o!” broke in a voice close behind, and, with a start, the
conspirators faced round to meet “the great red cow,” recently arrived
in the Charity, and, with her, the comely but scoffing face of
Priscilla Alden.
“I cry your pardon, gentlemen, if I have disturbed a secret conclave,
but as my babes have a share of this cow’s milk, I like her not to feed
among the graves. All sorts of unclean creatures lurk here, and I fear
lest the poor beast find contamination.”
“A saucy wench, and one that would well grace the ducking-stool,”
growled Oldhame as Priscilla drove her cow away; while Lyford,
remembering that she had that morning brought his wife a delicate
breakfast, laughed uneasily and made no reply.
The governor’s boat meanwhile, merrily driven by the “white-ash breeze”
of four stalwart oars, had reached the ship’s side, signaling, as she
passed, the colony’s pinnace, which, under easy sail, lay off and on
the anchorage of the Charity.
“Good-morrow, Governor. You are welcome aboard, Master Winslow,” cried
the hearty voice of William Pierce, master of the Charity, and friend
of the Pilgrims, as the passengers came aboard; and then, as if their
errand were one needing no explanation, he led the way at once to his
own cabin, fastened the door, and from a small locker at the foot of
the bed-place took a packet of letters enveloped in oilskin. Laying
these upon the little table and still resting his hand upon them, the
honest mariner looked steadily in the faces of his visitors.
“Master Bradford, you are the governor of this colony and its chief
authority. Do you, in the presence of Master Edward Winslow, your agent
to the home government and one of your principal assistants, demand the
surrender of these letters confided to my care by persons under your
government?”
“I do, Master Pierce,” replied Bradford distinctly, “and I call Edward
Winslow to witness that the responsibility is mine and that of my Board
of Assistants, and that you are guiltless in the matter. Nevertheless,
I will not pretend that Master Oldhame and his party are directly
under my government, since they came to Plymouth on their own account,
and are not ranked as of the general company, but rather on their own
particular.”
“Still they are bound by the laws we all have subscribed to for our
mutual safety and advantage,” suggested Winslow, and would have said
more had not Pierce bluffly interposed,--
“Well, well, all these niceties are out of my line. Some colonists
have confided certain letters to me; the governor of the colony makes
requisition upon me before a competent witness for these letters,
suspecting treason therein; I surrender them to his keeping, and there
ends my responsibility. And now I will go and make sail upon my ship.
Governor, your pinnace shall be summoned whenever you give the signal.”
And Captain Pierce turned toward the companion-way, but presently
returned, a genial smile replacing the slight annoyance darkening his
face, and going to the “ditty bag” suspended near the porthole, he
fumbled for a moment, then threw what he had found upon the table,
adding merrily, “And if you want to make a neat job of it, Bradford,
here’s a sharp little pair of scissors. We sailors hate to see a trick
of work bungled, if it’s nothing better than ferreting out treason.”
And with a smart westerly breeze the Charity set her nose toward
England, and plunged bravely out into the Atlantic. Before she sighted
the scene of the Pilgrim Mothers’ first washing-day, however, she lay
to, while the governor’s pinnace was brought alongside, and he and
Winslow came on deck and stood for a moment hand in hand.
“God be with you, brother,” said Bradford in a voice of restrained
emotion. “Remember that until you return we are as a man half whose
limbs are palsied; nay, Carver in that prophetic moment called you our
brain. Remember it, Winslow.”