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.