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.