HOW THEY KEPT THE SABBATH
A LITTLE daylight works a mighty change in the look of things. When in
the morning Miles rose at length from the stupor of sleep into which he
had fallen, the sky was clouded filmily to westward, but in the east,
above the pines, hung a yellow sun. The river that curved through the
meadow was half bright with the stroke of the sun, and, where the trees
of the opposite bank grew low, half a lucid green; the strip of sandy
beach shone white, and the coarse herbage of the level space all was
gleaming.
Miles looked forth from the doorway of Chief Canacum's wigwam, and,
sniffing the breeze with the tang of brine in it, decided that, after
all, Manomet might prove a pleasant place in which to spend a day. He
said as much to Dolly, but she held her poppet closer and shook her
head. "There were fleas in that bed," she answered sorrowfully. "Let's
go home now, Miles."
An easy thing to say, but to do it would have puzzled an older head
than Miles's, for not only did leagues of forest stretch between him
and the English settlement, but, even had he known the direct road to
Plymouth, there was no chance to follow it, since, wherever he turned,
the watchful eyes of the savages were upon him.
Now the first novelty had worn off, the warriors limited themselves
to staring at their visitors as they sauntered through the camp, but
the squaws and children still wished to press close, and feel their
clothes and touch their hands. However, no one meant to harm him, Miles
decided, though he only half realized how awe of their white faces
and strange garments and of their great, ugly dog was protecting him
and his sister; and, having once concluded he was to be left unhurt,
he took pleasure in being a centre of interest; it was his first
experience of this sort in all his much-snubbed life.
So, though Dolly would scarce look on the dark people about them, Miles
sought presently to talk to them, just as he tried to talk to the
Indians who came to Plymouth. So well did he impress it upon them that
he wanted his breakfast, that one of the squaws, who had bright eyes,
though her face was very dirty, led the children into her wigwam, where
she brought them food,--roasted crab fish and bread. Miles thanked her
and ate, and bade Trug and Dolly eat too, while the little Indians and
the squaws, squatting in the sand about the wigwam door, watched as if
they had never before seen two hungry children.
Presently, as he wished to divide a morsel with Dolly, Miles drew
out his whittle, whereat the onlookers crowded closer to gaze. Miles
showed them his knife, though he took care not to let it go out of his
hands, and he exhibited the other treasures he carried in his breeches
pockets,--several nails, a button or two, some beads, and an English
farthing piece. Indians always looked for presents, he knew, so, before
he went out of the wigwam, he gave a button to the squaw who had fed
him.
With his Indian followers eying him the more admiringly, he now went
journeying through the warm sand, past the dingy bark houses, to the
farther verge of the camp, where, beyond a lusty patch of rank weeds,
the corn-field of the savages shimmered in the heat. The tillage of
the Indians seemed to him of an untidy sort; they had cleared away the
trees with fire, never troubling to dig up the roots, so blackened
stumps dotted the field, and here and there lay the greater bulk of a
charred and fallen trunk. In between, the green corn straggled up, and
several squaws were tending it with hoes made of great clam-shells.
They cast aside their tools to stare on Miles and Dolly, but Miles
stared in return only a short space; he had seen corn-fields before.
"Only to think, Dolly," he burst out, as he turned his back on the
hoers, "there's no one to bid me weed or fetch water or aught else
that displeases me. After all, 'tis a merry life the Indians lead; I'm
willing to dwell here with them."
"_I_ do not wish to be a dirty Indian," Dolly answered decidedly, but
in a whisper, as if she thought these attentive people must be able to
understand her words. "Do you not think the men from Plymouth will come
to seek us soon and take us home?"
"I do not want them to come," Miles replied calmly. "Maybe they would
hang me for that Ned fought in the duel, and surely they would beat
me for running away. I shall have to stay here always," he added
cheerfully.
At this Dolly's lips quivered, but Miles, intent now on an Indian lad
with a little bow in his hand, who had just come near, gave his sister
no heed. "I'm minded to ask that boy to let me play with his bow," he
spoke out, as they arrived once more within the lee of Chief Canacum's
wigwam. "You sit here, and Trug shall watch you."
A protest or two from Dolly, after the unreasonable fashion of
women-folk, but Miles, leaving her seated on the sand, walked away to
the coppery lad he had singled out. For a time the two boys stared at
each other gravely, then Miles, smiling affably, touched the bow,
saying, "Cossaquot? Nenmia," till presently the other yielded it into
his hands.
Then they strolled away, with several other beady-eyed youngsters, into
the weeds on the outskirts of the camp, where Miles tried his skill
at shooting. Though in England he had often handled a bow, here the
best showing he could make set the little Indians laughing; and when
the owner of the bow, taking it from him, shot an arrow and fetched
down a pine cone from a tree many feet distant, Miles understood their
merriment at his awkwardness.
But then he stepped up to a young sumach, and, pulling out his whittle,
hacked off a small branch in a manner to make his new friends marvel;
so, each party respectful of the other's arts, they were speedily on a
sound enough footing to race away together to the river bank.
On the shore, half in water and half on land, lay three Indian boats,
light, tricky things, all built of birch bark. Miles had never seen
such craft, so he set to examining them, but his new comrades splashed
into the water. On the sunny beach it was hot, but across the stream,
whither they swam, the trees that pressed close to the margin darkened
the shallows with a deep green, so cool and tempting that Miles, dusty
with travel, longed to bathe in it too.
In the end he flung off his clothes, and prepared to join in the
splashing, when his Indian acquaintances paddled shoreward to study
his garments. Miles suffered the youngster who had lent him the bow
to try on his shoes, whereat all grew so clamorous he feared a little
lest his wardrobe disappear among them, for he remembered how Thievish
Harbor took its first name from the pilfering habits of the Indians.
Fortunately Trug, forsaking Dolly, arrived just then, and when he
stretched his great bulk on his master's clothes, none cared to disturb
them.
With his mind set at rest, Miles plunged into the tepid water, where
he frolicked about with his new comrades, who swam like dogs, paw over
paw, and dived in a way that bewildered him. But speedily he was doing
his share in the ducking and splashing and whooping, till, before he
knew it, the afternoon was half spent, and his shoulders smarted with
the burning of the sun.
The little Indians followed him, when he spattered out of the river,
and, with no more than a shaking of their ears, like puppies, were
ready to run about, but Miles, as a penalty of civilization, had to
stay to drag on his clothes. He felt chilly now, he found, and hungry
too, and he guessed he and Trug were best go seek Dolly.
But when he came into the lee of Chief Canacum's wigwam, he saw there
just scuffled, empty sand, so, with a big fright laying hold on him, he
ran out into the straggling street and called his sister's name aloud.
Just then Trug's bark told him all was well, and, hastening after
the dog, he found, in the shade of a distant wigwam, a squaw weaving
a mat of flags, some children sprawling, and Dolly herself, who was
eating raspberries from a birch bark basket. "Why did you run away and
frighten me?" Miles demanded crossly, as he flung himself on the ground
beside her.
"I may go away and make friends as well as thou," Dolly answered
loftily. "But you shall have some of my berries, Miles. They fetched
me them, and I can eat these--" her voice sank--"because they must be
clean. But their other victuals are not, I know. I watched, and the
women do never wash their kettles."
Miles had no such scruples of cleanliness, so when, some two hours
later, he scented the odor of cooking, he rose eagerly and, thinking on
supper, sought Canacum's wigwam. There were four dark boats upon the
white beach now, he saw, so he judged that a fishing party had come in.
When he passed through the low door into the wigwam, he found a fire
alight and a great pot of clay hung on small sticks that were laid
over it. Into the pot the drudging squaws were putting fresh fish, and
acorns, and the meat of squirrels, and kernels of corn, and whatever
else they had of edibles,--"a loathsome mash," Dolly whispered Miles,
but he was so hungry that it did not take away his appetite.
So soon as the broth was done, near half the village squatted round the
pot, the men in an inner circle, while on the outskirts, eager for any
morsel their masters might fling to them, waited the poor squaws. But
Dolly, because she was a little white squaw, was suffered to sit down
with her brother beside the old Chief, who scooped up pieces of the
fish and hot broth in a wooden bowl and gave it to Miles.
Dolly looked askance at the food, but Miles and Trug ate ravenously;
neither his queer table mates nor their queer table manners troubled
the boy, since he himself was licking his fingers and wiping them on
Trug's fur contentedly. "I like to eat with my fingers," he chattered
to his venerable host. "At home they make me to eat tidily with a
napkin, but I like it better thus."
But, even at his hungriest, he could not match the Indians in trencher
work; for, long after Miles had done eating and lain back against Trug,
the savages still champed on, till nothing but scattered bones was left
of the fare. By then the sun was quite down, so the lodge was black,
save for the flashes of the sinking fire. Out-of-doors an owl hooted,
and speedily the Indian guests withdrew to their own lodges, and the
Chief's household went to their common bed. Little comfort did Miles
and his two companions find there, for the singing Indians and the
mosquitoes pestered them as on the preceding night.
"I'll not endure this a third time," Miles fretted, when he awoke in
the chilly morning. "Look you, Dolly, why should I not build us a
little wigwam? I make no doubt they'll suffer us go sleep there by
ourselves."
Full of this new plan, he bustled forth from the wigwam, but outside
the doorway halted in surprise. He could see no river nor more than
the tips of the pines for a thick white fog that drifted through the
village and struck rawly to his very marrow. For a moment he had a
mind to slip back to Dolly in the close wigwam, but, spying his Indian
allies, he kept to his first manly resolve and began chatting to them
of his intentions. Though they could understand nothing of his talk,
they came with him readily, through the clammy fog, out beyond the
camp, where the sand, sloping up to the pine ridge, offered, as Miles
remembered, a good location for a wigwam.
The Indian houses, so far as he could judge, were built by bending over
young saplings and securing both ends in the ground, then covering the
frame with mats or great pieces of bark. Miles decided that poles,
bound together at the top, would serve him as well, so he went to cut
them in a growth of young oaks at some distance from the camp. The
trees, all laden with fog moisture, drenched him as he worked, and the
task took him a long time with his small whittle,--would have taken him
longer, had not the Indian boys helped him to break the poles.
They were all intent on his proceedings, and, when he returned to the
site he had chosen, settled themselves in the sand to watch him, an
action which pleased him little. For, when he stuck his poles into
the sand, at the circumference of a rough circle, and bent them all
together at the top, the ends that were thrust into the sand would fly
up, and 'twas annoying to have other people see his failure. It took
him some minutes to make all secure, and by then he was so breathless
and tired that he was glad to run tell Dolly of his progress, and, at
the same time, rest a bit.
Spite of the fog, he found his sister had come out from the choking
atmosphere of the wigwam. She was sitting a little up the pine ridge,
behind the lodges, on a fallen tree trunk that was all a-drip; the
sand, too, Miles noted, when he lay down at her feet, was damp and
sticky to the touch.
"They have left us alone, haven't they, Dolly?" he said in some
surprise, as he glanced about him and saw no Indians near. "But Trug,
he has not followed; very like they think we'll not run away and leave
him behind." Then he perceived that his sister's arms were empty.
"Where's the old red poppet?" he cried.
"My poppet Priscilla," Dolly replied seriously. "I did put her away
carefully. For 'tis the Sabbath to-day, Miles."
"Is it?" the boy questioned, with some misgivings. "I'd lost count of
the days. Why, I have been cutting poles and begun my wigwam--"
"Then you are a Sabbath-breaker," Dolly said relentlessly. "If you
be so wicked, I doubt if ever God let us go back to Plymouth. And
I've been praying Him earnestly. Miles, have you said your prayers o'
nights?"
"N--no," the boy faltered, "last night I forgot 'em, and night before I
was weary."
"Come, we'll say them now," Dolly announced, and fell on her knees in
the wet sand.
Miles obediently knelt beside her; his father had looked somewhat
askance at this practice, but Miles's mother had first taught the
children to say their evening prayer on their knees, and, for her sake,
the boy held obstinately to that usage.
The thought of her came clearly to him now, and how she had bidden him
be good to Dolly, so, when he had prayed "Our Father," he added an
extemporaneous appeal, that the English folk might soon come in search
of them. "Not for my sake, O Lord," he explained carefully, "but Thou
knowest Dolly is but a wench and were better at Plymouth, perhaps. And,
O Lord, I'd near be willing to go thither myself, if Thou wouldst put
it in their minds not to flog me."
Indeed, as he prayed, his heart grew very tender toward the tiny
settlement; he would have liked well to open his eyes and see the
sandy street of the little village stretching away up the hillside,
the ordered cottages, the grave men about their tasks, even Master
Hopkins--perhaps.
Rather subdued, he set himself by Dolly on the wet log. "Now I'll tell
you somewhat out of the Bible, since there is no one to preach us a
discourse," he said, and set forth to her what he remembered of the
last portion of the Scriptures which Master Hopkins had made him read.
It was all about how Moses let loose the plagues upon the wicked king
of Egypt, flies and boils and frogs,--Miles was not quite sure of the
order of events, but he detailed them with much gusto.
"I do not think there is a great deal of doctrine therein," Dolly
commented, with a mournful shake of the head. "Elder Brewster, he did
not discourse thus; and Mistress Brewster and Priscilla and the boys
will have bread for dinner to-day, and maybe butter, and lobster, and,
if I were home, I should sleep in my own bed with Priscilla, and put
on a clean gown in the morning. I wish I were home now."
Miles squeezed Dolly's fingers, and sat staring away from her into the
fleecy fog that still shivered through the camp. So intent was he on
gulping down his home-sickness that he started in surprise when a hand
was laid on his shoulder, and he looked up into the face of one of
Canacum's warriors.
He was to come to the Chief's wigwam, he interpreted the Indian's
signs, so he rose and, leading Dolly, followed his guide down the sandy
slope. "Maybe 'tis that they have meetings too on the Sabbath," Dolly
whispered him.
Inside the lodge, where a fire smoked, many warriors were gathered,
true enough, but no one preached to them. Instead all puffed at their
pipes and, with long pauses, spoke together, till Miles, sitting with
Dolly by the Chief, grew weary. Understanding nothing of their talk,
he thought on his new wigwam and scarcely heeded them, till a warrior,
whom he had a vague idea he had not seen before about the camp, rose up
and, coming to him, lifted him to his feet.
"What will you do?" Miles cried, with a quick pang of fright as he
found his arm fast in the other's grip. "Are we to go with you?" And
then, with a sudden, overwhelming hope, "To Patuxet?"
"Nauset," grunted the imperturbable Chief.
"They set upon the English there!" gasped Miles. "I will not go, I will
not!"
After that, all passed so quickly he remembered nothing clearly, just
the confusion of bronzed figures in the smoky lodge, the choking odor
of the fire, the sight of Dolly's blanched face, as one of the Indians
drew her back from him. He had a scattered remembrance of crying out
that they should not dare take his sister from him, Captain Standish
would punish them for it; and then of a helpless, childish struggle,
wherein he kicked and struck unavailingly at the savage who held him.
The chill fog stung against his face, as he was dragged forth from
the wigwam. He seemed to come to his senses again, and, ceasing to
struggle, called over his shoulder to Dolly not to be afraid, no one
would dare hurt her. Something pressed feebly against his knees, and he
looked down at Trug, with a broken thong hanging at his neck and his
head bleeding. He caught the old dog by the collar. "Go in unto Dolly,
sirrah," he bade in his sternest voice. "And guard her, guard her!"
He had a last glimpse of his sister, crouching in the door of the
wigwam, with her arms clasped close about the mastiff's neck and her
frightened eyes fixed on him. Then the grasp on his wrist tightened,
and stumblingly he followed along with his new captors, past the
dripping wigwams with their staring people, past his own unfinished
lodge, and into the chill silence of the moist woods.