MORTON OF MERRY MOUNT.
“Well, Master Trumpeter, and what do you make of yon craft? Are the Don Spaniards coming to invade New Plymouth, or has the king sent to impress you as major-domo of the royal hand?”
“Good-morrow, Captain Standish. The governor lent me his perspective glass, and sent me up on the hill to spy out who was coming.”
“And that’s all right, Bart. No need to make excuse for doing the governor’s bidding, my lad.”
“I was thinking, Captain, you found it strange to see me on the Fort without notice to you”—
“And so came up to call you to account? No, my boy, I know who’s to be trusted and who not, else had I served in vain through those long years in the Low Countries. Had it been Gyles Hopkins now, or Jack Billington— But there, what make you of the craft?”
“I think, sir, ’tis Master Maverick’s boat from Noddle’s Island, and there are four men in her whose faces I cannot yet make out.”
“A friendly visit, belike. Stay you here, Bart, until you can determine the craft, and then carry the news to the governor. I am going down to the Rock on mine own occasions.”
Bowling merrily along before an easterly breeze, the ketch soon rounded Beach Point, and dropped heranchor opposite the village, but in midstream, and so soon as the sails were snugged, and all made ready for some possible change of weather, the four visitors stepped into a skiff and were sculled ashore by a tall, fine-looking young fellow, whose bronzed face and lithe figure were well set off by the buckskin hunting-shirt and red cap worn with a jaunty air not inharmonious with the young man’s roving black eyes and flashing smile.
“Master Maverick and his son, Master Blackstone from Shawmut, and Master Bursley and Master Jeffries from Wessagussett,” reported Bart Allerton, hat in hand, at the governor’s door, and Bradford, laying down his book, replied with a grave smile,—
“I will go to meet them.”
Half an hour later the three elder visitors with the governor, the captain, Allerton, Doctor Fuller, and one or two more, were closeted in the new room recently added to the governor’s house, and used by him as a council chamber and court room.
Moses Maverick, the handsome young boatman, had meanwhile somewhat pointedly sought out Bart Allerton, and almost invited himself to accompany him home.
“Go you into the front room and entertain him, Remember,” directed the young step-mother with a mischievous smile. “I am too busy with little Isaac to leave him just now.”
And Maverick received the apologies of his hostess with an air so strangely contented that Remember paused half way in making them, and faltered and blushed and laughed, very much as a modest but open-eyed girl would do to-day.
“I told you last Lady Day that I should soon be here again, Remember,” murmured the youth rather irrelevantly.
“I know naught of Lady Days,” retorted the Pilgrim maid with an effort at a saucy little laugh.
“’Tis because your father is a Separatist, but we Mavericks are sound Churchmen,” replied the lover. “Some day, mayhap, you’ll be better advised.”
Let us discreetly leave them to themselves, and seek the council chamber where Blackstone is saying,—
“Yes, Governor Bradford, we have come to you for that aid and support against the common foe which all Christians have a right to demand of each other, no matter how the forms of their Christianity may disagree.”
“The plea is one never disallowed by the men of Plymouth,” returned Bradford in his sonorous voice. “But what would you have us to do?”
“Why, to capture this Morton by force of arms, since words have no effect, and ship him back to England, where they say there is a warrant out against him for murder of some man in the west country with whom he had business concerns.”
“That were a high-handed proceeding, specially sith his settlement is not within the domain of Plymouth,” suggested the Elder cautiously.
“True,” broke in Bursley impetuously. “But as Master Blackstone has told you, Morton sells pieces and ammunition and rum to the savages without let or stint, and they, having naught else to do, practice at a mark all day long, and soon will prove better shots than any white man. Then, when some new Wituwamat or Pecksuot shall arise to stir them to revolt, where shall we be? You had not won so easy a triumph there where I live, Captain Standish, had your foes been armed with snaphances.”
“Not so easy, perhaps, but to my mind more honorable,” replied Standish coldly. “Howbeit, I do not approve of arming the Indians.”
“Of course, Governor,” resumed Blackstone, who had been the principal speaker, “the peril is not great for you who can count a hundred fighting men with Captain Standish to lead them; but none other of the settlements is of any force, although friend Maverick here has fortified his island, and may depend upon a dozen men or so of his household, and the Hilton brothers at Piscataqua and Cocheco are stout and well-armed fellows, and my neighbor Thomas Walford at Mishawum[2]has a palisado round his house, and his blacksmith’s sledge with some other weapons inside. Then at Naumkeag[3]are Roger Conant, Peter Palfrey, and the rest, with your old friend Lyford as their parson, and Conant is a fighting man as well as a godly one. But I, as all men know, am a man of peace as befits a parson; and there is David Thompson’s young widow and child abiding on the island bearing his name, with only a couple of men-servants to defend them. If all of us drew together in one hold we should not count half the force of Plymouth, but we do not wish so to abandon our plantations.”
“Have you labored with Thomas Morton, showing him the wrong he does?” asked Elder Brewster coldly, and eying the Churchman with strong disfavor, for Blackstone, with questionable taste, had chosen to wear upon this expedition the long coat and shovel hat carefully brought by him from England as the uniform of his profession. Dressed in these canonicals, with the incongruous addition of “Geneva bands,” Blackstone regularly read the Church of England service on Sundaysat his house upon the Common, sometimes alone, and sometimes to a congregation composed of the Walfords from Charlestown, the Mavericks from Noddle’s Island or East Boston, the settlers from Chelsea, and perhaps in fine weather the Grays from Hull, and some of the folk from Old Spain in Weymouth. For all these were adherents to the Church of England after a fashion, although by no means ardent religionists of any sort; and as such, held in considerable esteem the eccentric parson living in the solitude he loved among his apple-trees, and beside his clear spring, now merged in the Frog Pond of our Common. A lukewarm Churchman, he was friendly enough to the Separatists, and now replied to Brewster with a smile,—
“I have labored so vainly, Elder, that I fear even your authority would be of no avail. I opine that our friend Standish here is the only man whose eloquence Thomas Morton will heed in the smallest degree.”
“And the chief men of all the settlements are agreed in making this request of Plymouth?” asked the governor.
“Not only the chief, but every man among them,” answered Maverick. “And what is more to the purpose, each one of the settlements will bear its share in whatsoever charges the arrest and transportation may involve.”
“That is well, but should be set down in writing with signatures and witnesses,” suggested Allerton, to whom Maverick haughtily replied,—
“Oh, never fear, Master Allerton. The most of us are honest men and not traders.”
“No offense, Master Maverick, no offense; but it is well that all things should be done decently and inorder,” returned the assistant smoothly, and the council soon after broke up with the understanding that Bradford, as the only recognized authority in New England, should write Morton a formal protest in the name of all the English settlers, reminding him that King James of happy memory had, as one of his latest acts, issued a royal proclamation forbidding the sale of fire-arms or spirits to the savages, and calling upon him as an English subject to obey this edict.
If this protest proved of none effect, the Governor of Plymouth pledged himself to suppress the rebel and his mischief with the high hand.
[2]Charlestown.
[3]Salem.
STANDISH AT MERRY MOUNT.
Some two weeks had passed by since the visit of the committee of safety to Plymouth; long enough for Bradford, ever moderate, ever considerate, to write a letter of kindly expostulation to Morton, and to receive an insolent and defiant reply; and now in a pleasant June afternoon the Plymouth boat, commanded by Standish, and manned by eight picked followers, drew into Weymouth fore-river, where upon the water-course now known as Phillips Creek, Weston and his men, some six or seven years before, had founded their unlucky settlement.
The fate of this settlement we have seen, and also learned that the houses protected by Standish’s warning to the savages had since become the dwelling-place of some of the followers of Ferdinando Gorges, that showy personage who, coming to the New World with the romantic idea of proclaiming himself its governor, found it so savage and forbidding of aspect that, after a few months spent mostly as a guest of Plymouth, he quietly returned to England, civilization, and a sovereignty on paper. The houses repaired or built by him still remained, however, and among the Gorges men who continued to live in them were the Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Bursley who accompanied Blackstone and Maverick to Plymouth.
A little below Phillips Creek, the Monatoquit River empties into the bay, and across the river lies a fair height, now included in the town of Quincy, but then known as Passonagessit, whence one might then, and still may, look east and north upon the lovely archipelago of Boston Harbor, or westward to the blue hills of Milton. On its eastern face this height of Passonagessit sloped gently to the sea, with good harborage for boats at its foot, promising facilities for fishing and for traffic with the northern Indians.
Upon this headland in the early summer of 1625 a wild and motley crowd of adventurers pitched their tents, and soon replaced the canvas with comfortable log-houses and a stockaded inclosure. The leader of this company was one Captain Wollaston, perhaps the same adventurer whom Captain John Smith of Pocahontas memory encountered, some fifteen years before, on the high seas, acting as lieutenant to one Captain Barry, an English pirate. With Wollaston were three or four partners, and a great crew of bound servants, men who had either pledged their own time, or been delivered into temporary slavery as punishment by English magistrates, and the purpose of the leaders was to found a settlement like that of Plymouth. The place was named Mount Wollaston by the white men, while the Indians continued to call it Passonagessit, just as they still speak of Weymouth as Wessagusset. One New England winter, however, cooled the courage of Captain Wollaston, as it had that of Robert Gorges, and in the spring of 1626 he took about half his bound men to Virginia, where he sold their services to the tobacco planters at such a profit, that he wrote back to Mr. Rasdall, his second in command, to bring down anothergang as soon as possible, and to leave Mount Wollaston in charge of Lieutenant Fitcher, until he himself should return thither.
Rasdall obeyed, and in making his parting charges to Fitcher remarked,—
“All should go well, so that you keep Thomas Morton in check. Give him his head and he will run away with you and Wollaston.”
Fitcher assented with a rueful countenance, for he knew himself to be but a timid rider, and the Morton a most unruly steed, and the event proved his fears well grounded, for Rasdall had not reached Virginia before Morton in the lieutenant’s temporary absence called the eight remaining servants together, produced some bottles of rum, a net of lemons, and a bucket of sugar, to which he bade his guests heartily welcome, greeting each man jovially by name, and telling them that the time had come to throw off their chains, to assert their rights, and to reap for themselves the benefit of their hard work. He assured them that he, although a gentleman, a learned lawyer, and a man of means, felt himself no whit above them, and asked nothing better than to live with them in liberty, fraternity, and equality, finally proposing that they should seize upon “the plant” of Mount Wollaston, turn Lieutenant Fitcher out of doors, and establish a commonwealth of their own. No sooner said than done! The men whom Morton addressed were, in fact, the dregs of the company left behind by Wollaston as not worth trading off. Perhaps he never intended to come back to claim them; perhaps if indeed he had been a pirate he took Morton’s action as nothing more than a reasonable proceeding; at any rate this disappearance of Captain Wollastonand Lieutenant Rasdall was final, and except that the neighborhood of Passonagessit is still called Wollaston Heights, the very name of this adventurer would probably have been forgotten.
It was at any rate disused, for so soon as Lieutenant Fitcher had been, as he reported to Bradford, “thrust out a dores,” the name of the place was changed to Merry Mount, and the life of debauch and profligacy promised by Morton inaugurated; as a natural consequence, Merry Mount soon acquired so wide a fame for license and disorder that it became the resort of the lawless adventurers who haunted the coast in those days, sometimes calling themselves fishermen, sometimes privateers, and sometimes buccaneers, and the whole affair grew to be a scandal, not only to Godfearing Plymouth, but to those other settlements, of sober, law-abiding folk, scattered up and down the coast, especially when in the spring of 1627 Morton set up a Maypole at Merry Mount, and proclaimed a Saturnalia of a week.
Now a Maypole, and dancing around it crowned with flowers, is in our day a very pretty and pastoral affair, only open to the objections of cold, wet, and absurdity. But in old English times it was a very different matter, being in effect a remnant of heathenesse, and the profligate worship of the goddess Flora. William Bradford, writing an account of the attack upon Merry Mount, expresses himself thus:—
“They allso set up a Maypole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the Indean women for their consorts, dancing and frisking togeather like so many fairies (or furies, rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived and celebrated the feastes of the Roman goddes Flora, or the beastly practices of the madd Bacchinalians.”
Although Plymouth and its neighbors were shocked at these practices, they would not probably have interfered, beyond a remonstrance, with the amusements of the Merry Mountaineers had the matter stopped there, but, as the delegates to Plymouth represented, the selling of fire-arms to the Indians, teaching them to shoot, and inflaming their murderous passions with alcohol, was a very different matter, a matter of public import, and one to be arrested by any means before it went farther.
So after this long digression, tiresome no doubt, but essential to understanding what follows, we come back to Myles Standish and his eight men, “first-comers” all of them, pulling up their boat upon the shore at Wessagusset, just as they had done five years before. As they turned toward the path leading to the stockade, a man came hurriedly down to meet them.
“Good-morrow, Master Bursley,” cried the captain cheerfully. “We are on our way to Merry Mount, and called to tell you so.”
But Bursley held up his hand with a warning gesture, and so soon as he was near enough hoarsely muttered in unconscious plagiarism,—
“The devil’s broke loose.”
“Say you so, Bill Bursley!” responded Standish, showing all his broad white teeth. “I did not know he’d ever been in the bilboes!”
“Morton’s here at the house, full of liquor and swearing all sorts of wicked intent toward—well now, Captain, if you won’t take it amiss, I’ll tell you that he calls you Captain Shrimp!”
“Following Master Oldhame,” replied Standish carelessly. “I must marvel at the lack of sound wit at Wessagusset when so small a jest has to serve so many men. But you say this roysterer is here in your house?”
“No, in Jeffries’ house. He came this morning asking that we should return with him to Merry Mount and help him against the ‘Plymouth insolents’ as he called you.”
“And what answer did he get, Master Bursley?”
“What but nay?” demanded Bursley with a glance of honest surprise. “Was not I one of those who came the other day to Plymouth begging Governor Bradford to take order with this rebel? But he has been drinking, and is in such a woundy bad humor that but now he drew a knife upon Jeffries, and may have slain him outright before this.”
“Say you so! Then, let us hasten and bury him with all due honors!” exclaimed the captain, in whose nostrils the breath of battle was ever a pleasant savor. “Howland, Alden, Browne, all of you, my merry men! Leave the boat snug, and follow to the house, to chat with Master Morton who awaits us there.”
And the captain sped joyously up the path, looking to the priming of his long pistols, and loosening Gideon in his scabbard as he went. A rod from the house, however, a bullet nearly found its billet in his brain, while on the threshold stood Morton, his face flushed, his gait unsteady, and a smoking pistol in his hand.
“Hola! Captain Shrimp, I warn you stand out of range of my pistol practice. You might get a hurt by chance!” cried he, raising another pistol, but before it could be aimed, or the captain take action, somebody within the house struck up the madman’s arm, and as he turned savagely upon this new foe, Standish, whose muscles were strong and elastic as a panther’s, sprang across the intervening space, and seizing his prisoner by the collar shouted,—
“Yield, Morton, or you’re but a dead man!”
“One man may well yield to a mob,” muttered Morton sullenly; and seeing that he was disarmed, Standish released his hold saying quietly,—
“Fair and softly, Master Morton! Governor Bradford sends me and these men, praying for your company at Plymouth, so soon as may be. If you will go quietly, well; but if you resist, you will go all the same; so choose you.”
“The Governor of Plymouth does me too much honor to send so many of his servants with the major-domo at the head,” replied Morton bitterly. “And sith as you say the invitation may not be refused, I’ll e’en accept it, but would first return to Merry Mount to fetch some clothes and set my house in order.”
“Your return to Merry Mount will be as the governor orders hereafter. I was bid to bring you to Plymouth without delay, and that I shall do.”
“But not to-night, I trust, Captain Standish,” interposed Jeffries. “A shrewd tempest is threatening, and by the time it is past, night will be upon us and no moon.”
“With the shoals and sandbars of this coast thick as plums in a Christmas pudding,” remarked Philip De la Noye, whereat Peter Browne growled, “Make it a Thanksgiving pudding, an it please you, Master Philip. We hold no Papist feasts here.”
Stepping outside the door, Standish took a survey of the skies, the sea, and the forest, already waving its green boughs in welcome to the coming rain.
“Do you hear the ‘calling of the sea,’ Captain?” asked a Cornish man, placing his curved hand behind his ear, and bending it to catch the deep murmur andwail that float shoreward from the hollow of ocean when a thunder-storm is gathering in its unknown spaces.
“Yes,” replied Standish in an unusually hushed voice, “we will stay awhile; perhaps the night, if our friends can keep us.”
“Glad and gayly,” said Jeffries, who, truth to tell, was a little afraid that the remaining garrison of Merry Mount might descend upon his house in the night to rescue their leader or avenge his loss.
“And we’ll feast you on the pair of wild turkeys my boy shot to-day,” cried Bursley. “Come, we’ll make a night on’t, sith there are not beds enough for all to lie down.”
“With your leave, sirs, I will claim one of those beds and take my rest while I may,” broke in Morton sourly. “I have no mind for reveling with tipstaves and jailers.”
“Ne’ertheless you might keep a civil tongue in your head, Morton,” angrily exclaimed Browne, but Standish interposed,—
“Tut, tut, man! Never jibe at a prisoner. A bruised creature ever solaces itself with its tongue, and so may a bruised man. Let him alone!”
“Thank you for nothing, Captain Shrimp!” snarled Morton; but Standish only nodded good-humoredly, and began looking about to see if the log hut could be made secure for the night. Finally, a small bedroom off the principal or living room was set aside for Morton, the window shutter nailed from the outside, and a man set to watch beside him, and be responsible for his safety.
The turkeys were soon plucked, dressed, and each hung by a string tied to one leg before a rousing fire, so oppressive for the June night, that Standish retreatedto a shed at the back of the house, and stood watching the magnificent spectacle of the tempest now in full force. On one side lay the primeval forest, dense and gloomy with its evergreen growth, through whose serried ranks the mad wind ploughed like a charge of cavalry, rending the giants limb from limb, lashing the bowed heads of those who resisted, trampling down in its savage fury old and young, the sturdy veterans and the helpless saplings.
At the other hand lay the ocean, seen through a slant veil of hurtling rain, its waters flat and foaming like the head of a tigress that lays back her ears and gnashes her teeth as she crouches for her spring, and ever and anon, between the crashing peals of thunder and the splitting report of some lightning bolt riving the heart of oak or mast of pine, came the weird “calling of the sea,” the voice of deep crying unto deep:—
“Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye!” “But hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we shall have sealed the servants of our God!”
In face of this vast antiphony, Morton of Merry Mount and his concerns sank to insignificance; and so felt Myles Standish, who had all the love of nature inseparable from a great heart; but his had not been so great had it been capable of slighting the meanest duty, and his last act before midnight when he lay down for a few hours’ repose was to see that his prisoner was both safe and comfortable, and that two reliable men were upon the watch. One of these was Richard Soule and the other John Alden, to whom the captain said,—
“Now mind you, Jack, it has been a hard day’s work,and our friends’ hospitality full liberal. Do you feel your head heavy? If so, say the word, and I’ll watch myself and be none the worse for it on the morrow. Speak honest truth now, lad.”
But Alden so indignantly protested that nothing could tempt him to sleep in such an emergency, and so affectionately besought his friend to take some rest, that the captain at length complied, much to the delight of Morton, who, feigning sleep, had listened to the conversation.
Twelve o’clock, and one, and two passed quietly, yet not unnoted, for Morton, among other claims to distinction, was the possessor of a “pocket-clock,” the only one at Wessagusset that night, since even Standish did not aspire to such luxury, and was well content to divide his day by the sun and the dial, if it were clear, or by his instinct, if it were stormy, while the night was told by its stars, the deeper and lessening darkness, or the chill that always precedes the dawn. Half past two, and the prisoner turned himself silently upon his bed. At its foot sat John Alden, his snaphance between his knees, and his head fallen forward and sidewise till he seemed to be peering down its barrel; but alas, his stertorous breathing proclaimed that nature had succumbed to fatigue and the watchman was fast asleep.
A smile of elfish glee widened Morton’s already wide and loose-lipped mouth and twinkled in his beady eyes, as without a sound, and with the cautious movements of a cat, he stole off the bed, seized his doublet which had been laid aside, and crept out of the bedroom into the kitchen where, with his head and shoulders sprawling over the table, and his piece lying upon it, Richard Soule lay sweetly dreaming of seizing the rebel by thehair of his head, and dragging him to the foot of a gallows high as Haman’s. With the same malicious grin and the same cat-like movement Morton stole rapidly past this second Cerberus, pausing only to secure his snaphance. The outer door was made fast by an oaken bar dropped into iron staples, and this the runaway lightly lifted out and stood against the wall; but as he opened the door, the storm tore it from his hand, threw down the bar, extinguished the candles, and roused the sleepers.
Myles Standish, whose vigilant brain had warned him even through a heavy sleep that there was danger in the camp, was already afoot and groping for the ladder whereby to descend from his loft when the shriek of the wind and the bewildered outcries of the watch told him what had happened, and like a whirlwind he was down the steps, calling upon Alden and Soule, and loudly demanding news of their prisoner.
“He’s gone! He’s gone!” cried Soule, while Alden mutely bestirred himself with flint and steel to strike a light. When it was obtained, and disastrous certainty replaced the captain’s worst suspicions, his anger knew no bounds, and the hot temper, generally controlled, for once burst its limits and poured out a short, sharp torrent of words that had better never have been spoken, until at last John Alden, slowly roused to a state of wrath very foreign to his nature, retorted,—
“The next time that Nell Billington is brought before the court as a scold, it might be well to present Myles Standish along with her. What say you, Dick?”
“Haw! Haw!” roared Soule, who, although a worthy citizen, was not a man of fine sensibilities. Standish glanced at him with angry contempt, and then fixed hiseyes upon Alden with a look before which that honest fellow shrunk, and colored fiery red as he stammered,—
“I—I said amiss—nay, then,—forgive me, Captain.”
“The captain can easily forgive what the friend will not soon forget, John,” said Standish gravely, for indeed the brief treason of his ancient henchman had struck deep into the proud, loving heart of the soldier. “But,” continued he in the same breath, “this is no time for private grievances—follow me!”
And opening the door he dashed out into the night, and down the path to the rude pier where his own boat and the two belonging to the settlement were made fast. As he approached, a figure slipped away, and was lost in the neighboring thicket; Myles could not see it, but surmised it, and quick as thought a rattling charge of buckshot followed the slight sound hardly to be distinguished amid the clashing of branches, the scream of the wind, and the sobbing blows of the surf upon the shore.
Morton, lying flat upon his face behind a big poplar, heard the shot fall around him, and knew that more would come; so, pursuing the tactics of his Indian allies, he wriggled backward, still clinging as closely as possible to mother earth, until, arrived at the roots of a giant oak, he drew himself upright behind it, and stood silent and waiting. The captain waited also, and in a moment came the green glare both men counted upon, and while Myles springing forward searched the thicket with another storm of shot and then with foot and sword, Morton, taking a rapid survey of the situation, selected his route, and sheltered by the crash of thunder which drowned all other sounds sprang from the oak to a clump of cedars higher up the hill, and so, guided by thelightning, and screened from the quick ear of his pursuer by the thunder, he gradually gained the trail made by the Indians between Wessagusset and the head waters of the tidal river Monatoquit; crossing this channel with infinite danger, the fugitive made his way down the other bank, and about daylight reached Merry Mount greatly to the astonishment of the only three of his comrades who remained at home, the rest of the garrison having gone under guidance of some of their Indian allies to trade for beaver in the interior.
Standish meanwhile, finding that the prisoner had made good his escape, returned to the house, and setting aside the condolences of his hosts and the shamefaced penitence of Richard Soule, for John Alden said never a word, he passed the remaining hours of darkness in examining his weapons, in pacing up and down his narrow quarters, gnawing his mustache, fondling the hilt of Gideon, and looking out of the door or the unglazed window-place. The hosts meantime bestirred themselves to prepare a savory meal of venison steaks, corn cakes, and mighty ale, to which, just as the first streaks of daylight appeared through the breaking clouds, the whole party sat down, the stern and silent captain among them, for angry and mortified though he was, the old soldier had served in too many rude campaigns not to secure his rations when and where they might be had. But the meal was very different from the jolly supper of the night before, and it was rather a relief when the captain rising briefly ordered,—
“Fall in, men! To the boat with you. Our thanks for your kind entertainment, Master Jeffries, and you, Master Bursley. We will let you know the ending of our enterprise so soon as may be.”
And as the sun rose across the sea, whose blue expanse dimpled and laughed at thought of its wild frolic during his absence, the Plymouth boat, crossing the mouth of the Monatoquit and skirting its marshy basin, drew in to the landing place of Merry Mount, not without expectation of a volley from some ambush near at hand. None such came, however, and so soon as the boat was secured, the captain, deploying his men in open order that a shot might harm no more than one, led them up the gentle slope and halted in the shelter of a clump of cedars, whose survivor stands to-day lifeless and broken, but yet a witness to the mad revels of Merry Mount and their sombre ending. His men safe, Standish himself advanced to parley with the garrison. As he emerged from the shelter of the grove Alden silently stepped behind, and would have followed, but the captain, without looking round, coldly said,—
“Remain here, Lieutenant Alden, until you are ordered forward,” and the young man slunk back just as a bullet whistled past the captain’s ear. Pulling his handkerchief from his pocket Standish thrust his bayonet through the corner, and holding it above his head, advanced until Morton’s voice shouted through a porthole beside the door,—
“Halt, there, Captain Shrimp! I’m on my own domain here, garrisoned, armed, victualed, and ready for a siege. What do you want, Shrimp?”
“I demand the body of Thomas Morton, and if the garrison of this place are wise, they will yield it up before it is taken by force of arms and their hold burned over their heads.”
A little silence ensued, for the threat of fire was a formidable one, and Morton’s three assistants hadcounted the enemy’s force as it landed, and were now clamoring for surrender. But he, who at least was no coward, retorted upon them with a grotesque oath that alone, if need be, he would chase these psalm-singers into the ocean, and returning to the porthole shouted again,—
“Hola! Captain, Captain Shrimp”—
“I hold no parley with one so ignorant of the uses of war as to insult a flag of truce,” interposed Standish, and Morton laughing boisterously rejoined,—
“I cry you mercy, noble sir, and will in future, that is to say, the near future, treat you with all the honor due to the Generalissimo of the Plymouth Army. And now deign, most puissant leader, to satisfy me as to the intent of the Governor of Plymouth should he gain possession of the body of Thomas Morton, that is to say of the living body, for should you see fit to carry him naught but a murdered carcass, well I wot he would hang it to the wall of his Fort upon the hill to keep company with the skull of Wituwamat. So again I demand—and I crave your pardon, most worshipful, if I am somewhat prolix; but indeed it is such a merry sight to watch your noble countenance waxing more and more rubicund and wrathful while I speak”—
“When I have counted ten I shall order the assault if I have no reasonable answer sooner,” interrupted Standish briefly. “One, two”—
“Hold, hold, man! Why so violent and rash? Tell me in a word what will Bradford do with me an I yield?”
“Send you to England for trial.”
“Trial on what count?” And as he asked the question Morton’s voice took on a new tone, one of anxiety and even alarm, for conscience was clamoring that a darkstory of robbery and murder might have followed him from the western shores of Old England to the eastern coast of New. But Standish’s reply reassured him.
“For selling arms and ammunition to the Indians contrary to the king’s proclamation.”
“And what is a proclamation, Master General?” demanded the rebel truculently. “Mayhap you do not know that I, Thomas Morton, Gentleman, am a clerk learned in the law, a solicitor and barrister of Clifford’s Inn, London, and I assure you that a royal proclamation is not law, and its breach entails no penalty. Do you comprehend this subtlety, mine ancient? Suppose Ihavebroken a proclamation of King James’s, what penalty have I incurred, if not that of the law?”
“The penalty of those who disobey and insult a king, whatever that may be,” sturdily replied Standish. “But all that”—
“Nay, nay; know you not, most valiant Generalissimo, that while a law entered upon the statute book of England remains in force until it is repealed, a royal proclamation dies with the monarch who utters it? King James’s proclamation sleeps with him at Westminster, and I never have heard that King Charles has uttered any.”
“Let it be so! I know naught and care less for these quips and quiddities of the law. The Standishes are not pettifoggers of Clifford’s nor any other Inn. My errand is to fetch you to Plymouth, and there has been more than enough delay already. Will you surrender peaceably?”
“Surrender! Why look you here, man, or rather take my word for it sith you may not look. My table is spread with dishes of powder, and bowls of shot, and flagons ofDutch courage; we are a goodly garrison, and armed to the teeth; we are behind walls, and could, if we willed, pick you off man by man without giving you the chance of a return shot. In fact, it is only my tenderness of human life that holds me back from greeting you as you deserve”—
“Enough, enough! I will wait here no longer to be the butt of your ribaldry. Before you can patter a prayer we will smoke you out of your hole like rats.”
And Myles was in fact retreating upon the body of his command when Morton hailed again,—
“Hold, hold, my valiant! I was about to say that I purpose surrender, both to save the effusion of human blood and to prevent damage to the house, which although no lordly castle serves our turn indifferently well as a shelter.”
“You surrender, do you?”
“On conditions, Captain. The garrison shall retain its colors and arms, and march out with all the honors”—
“Pshaw, man! I know as well as you that four of your men are away, and that there can be no more than three with you. As for conditions, it is our part to dictate them, and I hereby offer your men their freedom if they abandon the evil practices learned of their betters. For yourself I promise naught but safe convoy to Plymouth.”
“‘Perdition seize thee, ruthless’ Shrimp!” shouted Morton in a fury; “we will come out and drive you into the sea to feed the fishes.”
“Ay, come out as fast as you may, or you’ll be smoked out like so many wasps,” retorted Standish, tearing away his flag of truce, and waving his sword assignal for the advance of his little troop, four of whom carried blazing torches. But Morton, although he had stimulated his courage a little too freely, had not quite lost sight of that discretion which is valor’s better part, and absolutely sure that whatever Standish threatened he would fully perform, he resolved at all events to save his house; so seizing a handful of buckshot he crammed it into his already overloaded piece, called upon his men to follow, and flinging open the door rushed out shouting,—
“Death to Standish! Death! Death!” But the clumsy musket was too heavy for his inebriated grasp, and before he could bring it to an aim Standish sprang in, seized the barrel with one hand and Morton’s collar with the other, at the same time so twisting his right foot between the rebel’s legs as to bring him flat upon his back, while the blunderbuss harmlessly exploding supplied the din of battle.
“There, my lad, that’s a Lancashire fall,” cried Standish with an angry laugh. “They didn’t teach you that in Clifford’s Inn, did they now?”
“Oh, murder! murder! I’m but a dead man! Oh! Oh!” shrieked the voice of one of the besieged, and Standish turning sharply demanded,—
“Who gave the order to strike? Alden, how dare you attack without orders!”—
“I attacked nobody, Captain Standish,” replied John Alden more nearly in the same tone than he had ever addressed his beloved commander. “I carried my sword in my hand thus, and was making in to the house when this drunken fool stumbled out and ran his nose against the point. He’ll be none the worse for a little blood-letting.”
“Two of my fellows were drunk, and one an arrant coward, or you had not made so easy a venture of your piracy,” snarled Morton viciously, and one of the younger of the Plymouth men would have dealt him a blow with the flat of his sword, but Standish struck it up saying sternly,—
“Hands off, Philip De la Noye, or you’ll feel the edge instead of the flat of my sword. Know you nothing, nothing at all of the usages of war that you would strike an unarmed prisoner!”
A few moments more and the whole affair was over. Morton’s three men, foolish, worthless fellows, hardly dangerous even under his guidance, and perfectly harmless when deprived of it, were set at liberty with a stern warning from Standish that they were simply left at Merry Mount on probation, and that the smallest disobedience to the law prohibiting the sale of fire-arms, or instruction of the Indians in their use, would at once be known at Plymouth and most severely punished.
“As for your Maypole, and your Indian blowzabellas, and your dancing and mummery,” concluded the captain, “I for one have naught to say, except that there must be some warlock-work in the matter to tempt even a squaw to frisk round a Maypole with such as you.”
Morton, sullen, silent, and disarmed, was meantime led to the boat between Alden and Howland, the other men after, and last of all Standish muttering,—
“Better if there had been a garrison strong enough to hold the position. Then we might have burned the house and haply slain the traitor in hot blood.”
THE KYLOE COW.
“Barbara! Wife!”
“I am here, Myles, straining the milk. I shall make some furmety for supper. Even Lora begins to beg for it, and the boys dote upon it, little knaves!”
“Let the furmety wait for a bit, and come out here to see old Manomet in the evening light. ’Tis a sight I never tire of.”
“Ay, ’tis very fair,” replied Barbara coldly, as she came and sat for a moment upon the bench at the cottage door, where Myles was wont to smoke his pipe, and muse upon many matters never brought to words.
A little lower down the hill Alick and his brother Myles were playing with John and Joseph Alden, while Betty, a stick in her hand, drove all four boys before her, she with mimic airs of anger and they of terror.
“Very fair!” echoed the captain irritably. “You know naught and care less for Nature, Bab. Your thought never gets beyond your furmety pot or Alick’s breeches.”
“And that’s all the better for you and Alick, Myles,” replied the wife in her usual placid tones; but then, with one of those sudden revulsions by which placid people occasionally surprise their friends, she drew in her breath with something between a sob and a groan and burst out:
“Oh, Myles! Myles! Nature do you call it, and Inot love the face of Nature do you say! Nay, man, this is not Nature, these dark woods and barren sands and lonesome hills, with never a chimney in sight,—that’s not the Nature I love and long for. My heart goes back to the pleasant fields and good old hills of Man. There are mountains grander by far than yon dark Manomet, as you call it, and yet pranked all over with cottages, where honest folk find a home and the stranger is ever welcome. And then the fair valleys between, with the peaceful steads where men are born and die in sight of their fathers’ graves, and the old thatched roofs, and the stonecrop on the walls, and the roses clambering over the casements, and oh, the little kyloe cows coming home at night, and the poultry”—
She paused abruptly and threw her apron over her face. Myles carefully knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid it upon a ledge above the bench, and taking his wife by the arm led her into the house where he might seat her upon his knee with no risk of scandalizing chance spectators. Then he calmly said,—
“The worst of quiet creatures like you, Bab, is that a man never knows the fire’s alight till the house is in a blaze. Now as you, or was it Priscilla Alden, said once of me, ‘A little pot’s soon hot,’ and all the world is forced to know it, but you,—art homesick for the old country, lass?”
“Nay, Myles, there is no home to be sick for; all is changed there; but I would like it better if we had a little holding of our own, and our own cow, and some ducks, and a goose fattening for Michaelmas.”
“But you share the great red cow with Winslow’s folk, and have milk enough for your furmety, sweetheart!” And the grim warrior smiled as tenderly asa mother upon the flushed wet face so near his own. Barbara smiled too, and wiping away the tears sat upright, but was not allowed to leave her somewhat undignified position upon her husband’s knee.
“There, Myles, ’tis past now, and I will be more sensible”—
“Prythee don’t, child! I like thee better thus.”
“Nay, but we’re growing old folk, goodman, and it behooves us to be sober and recollected”—
“Nonsense, nonsense, Bab; there’s no lass among them all that shows so fair a rose upon her cheek, or such a wealth of sunny hair, as my Bab, and as for thine eyes, lass, they are a marvel”—
“Now! now! now! well then, dear, I’ll behave myself, after all that sweet flattery, and—come, let us go out and look at Manomet.”
“Nay. Your longing for a place you may call your own, and have your kine and poultry and all that about you, marries so well with a thought I’ve been turning over and over in my mind for a month or more, that I’ll e’en give it you now, and Manomet and the furmety may wait another ten minutes, or so.”
“Well, then, let me but take my knitting”—
“No. You shall do naught but listen, and you shall sit where you are! For once I’ll have your whole mind”—
“For once, Myles!”
“Ay, for once,—look as grieved as you may out of those eyen of yours! Well enough do you know that Alick, and little Myles, and now Mistress Lora have well-nigh pushed their poor old dad out of their mother’s heart”—
“Myles! Dost really think it, love?”
The captain held his wife as far from him as her seatupon his knee would allow, and eagerly read her fair troubled face, her tender blushes, quivering lips, and lovely, loving eyes, where the tears stood and yet were restrained from falling—read and read as men devour with incredulous eyes some voucher of almost incredible good fortune. Then he slowly said,—
“Truly God has been very good to me, my wife. His name be praised.”
It was a rare aspiration from those bearded lips, not innocent of the strange oaths and fierce objurgation well known to the soldiery of that day,—‘our army in Flanders,’—and over Barbara’s face came a look of such joy and peace as transformed its quiet comeliness to true beauty. But it was she who with woman’s tact dropped a veil over that moment’s exaltation before it should degenerate into commonplace.
“What is your plan, dear?” asked she, and her husband, with a half-conscious feeling of relief, drew a long breath, and said,—
“Oh—yes. Well, Bab, I, as well as you, would be content to live a little farther from some of our townsfolk; it is not here as it was at first, or even when you came. Then we were all of one mind and one interest, and if I could not belong to their church as they call it, at least I respected their beliefs, and they let mine alone. But now, amid all this bickering with Lyford and Oldhame”—
“But Oldhame has gone, and so has Lyford, and are forbidden to come hither again,” interposed Barbara, and her husband slowly and dubiously replied, “I know, Bab, I know; but for all that somewhat of ill feeling in the town has grown out of that affair, and though there’s no man on God’s earth so near to me as WilliamBradford, and none I reverence more than the Elder, or had rather smoke a pipe with than Surgeon Fuller, there are others that are to my temper like a red rag to a bull, and it’s safer all round that we should not day by day be forced to rub shoulders. So the long and short on’t is, Bab, for I’m not good at speechifying, it needs Winslow for that, I have spoken to Bradford about taking possession of that sightly hill across the bay”—
“The one you fired a cannon at, the other day?” interrupted Barbara slyly.
“Yes—that is, you goose, I fired toward it, just to see how far the saker would carry.”
“Nay, I think it was a sort of salute you were giving to some fancy of your own, Myles, anent that hill.”
“Well, then, since you will have me make myself out no older than Alick, I had been marking how the headland stood up against the gold of the western sky, and it minded me so of Birkenclyffe at Duxbury, and of my boyhood at Chorley and Wigan, and of fair days gone by”—
He paused, and Barbara knew that his thought was of Rose, the sweet blossom of his youth, Rose, whom he had carried in his pride to the neighborhood of the stately domain that ought to have been his and hers, and spent there with her almost the only idle month of his life. She knew, and her heart contracted with a slow, miserable pang, but she only said,—
“Yes, it does look like Birkenclyffe. And you think you could be happy in living there, Myles?”
“Happy!” echoed the soldier moodily. “I should be happy if the wars would break out afresh, and Gideon and I might hear once more the music that we love. We rust here, we two.”
“But the children, Myles! The boys so like their father, and Lora—would you have them orphans, and me”—
“Ah, Lora! I did not tell you when I came home from England, wife, for I did not want to hear any jibes and gainsaying”—
“Oh, Myles, do I jibe at you?”
“Well, no,—no Bab, not jibes; but you know, lass, we never were quite of a mind about the Standish dignities”—
“Dear heart, we have left all that behind us in the Old World! Here we Standishes have dignity and observance in full measure, because we belong to thee, love. Captain Standish, head of the colony’s strong men, is the founder of a new race in this New World.”
“Nay, nay, Barbara, you talk but as a woman, and you never did rise up to the lawful pride of your birth”—
And the captain all unconsciously put his wife off his knee, and rising, strode up and down the room, tugging at his red beard, and frowning portentously. Barbara, her hands folded in her lap, and a sad smile upon her lips, sat watching him.
“It is as well to tell you now as to keep it for years,” broke out the captain suddenly. “Nothing will change it, that is, nothing but Alexander’s death”—
“Alexander’s death! Not our boy, Myles!”
“No, no, no, child! Alexander, son of my cousin Ralph Standish of Standish Hall. When I was in England I went to see him as I told you.”
“Yes, dear.”
“I went to enforce upon him, newly come to the estates, my just and honest claim to my grandfather’s inheritance which Ralph’s grandfather juggled out ofthe orphan boy’s hands, and which they have kept ever since.”
“I supposed that was your errand, but as I saw naught had come of it I asked you no questions, Myles.”
“And therein showed yourself the kindly sensible woman you ever were, wife. But there is more to the matter. Ralph is an honest fellow, and after some days of looking into the matter he confessed the justice of my claim. I tell you, Bab, we went through those old parchments like two weasels from the Inns of Court; Morton of Clifford’s could have been no subtler; we had out the old deeds from the muniment-room, and sent to Chorley Church for the registry book, where are set down the marriage of my father and mother and my own birth and baptism; and I showed him Queen Bess’s commission to her well-beloved Myles Standish, born on that same date, and at the last, over a good pottle of sack, he confessed to me that I was in the right, but added, with a smile too sly for a Standish to wear, that I should find it well-nigh impossible to prove the matter at law, for, as he was not ashamed to say to my beard, neither he nor his lawyers would help me, and he knew, though he had the decency not to say it, I have no money to tickle the palms of the judges, the commissioners, the court officials, and the Lord Harry alone knows who they are, but all too many for me.”
“Then your cousin is a knave and a robber!”
“Nay, nay, Bab! Nay, I know not that one could expect a man to strip himself of half his estate if the law bade him keep it”—
“You would, Myles.”
“Ah, well, I was ever a thriftless loon, with no trader’s blood in my veins to show me how to keep or to getmoney. Ralph’s grandmother was fathered by a man who made his money in commerce.”
And the captain smiled as one well content with his own chivalrous incapacity, then hastily went on. “But though Ralph would not give me mine own, nor even let me take it if I tried, he had an offer to make on his part. His oldest son, Alexander by name, was then an infant of two years, a sturdy little knave already scorning his petticoats, and Ralph proposed that we should solemnly betroth him then and there to our Lora”—
“But Lora was not born when you were in England five years ago, Myles.”
“No; but I knew that our two little lads must in course of time have a sister, and counted on her. Truth to tell, Barbara, Ralph and I picked a name for her off the family tree. Lora.”
“If I had known it, the child never should have borne the name, and if I could I would change it now!”
And Barbara, seriously angry, rose from her chair and would have left the room, but her husband detained her.
“There, look you, now! I knew you would take it amiss, and told Ralph so, and he bade me keep it to myself, at all odds till the girl was born and named, and so I have. And yet I do not see what angers you so, Barbara, except that you ever favored your mother’s family, and held your Standish blood too cheap.”
“That quarrel well-nigh parted us ere ever we came together, Myles. Haply it had been better if we had been content to rest simply cousins and never married.”
“Commend me to a good woman for thrusts both deep and sure when once she is angered,” cried Myles,flinging out of the house and up the hill to his den in the Fort.
But when Alick and Betty Alden raced each other thither to tell him that supper was ready, the choleric captain had fully recovered his temper, and found his wife so placid and quietly cheerful that he supposed she also had both forgiven and forgotten.
Which shows that the great Captain of Plymouth understood the strategy of battle better than that of a woman’s heart. Nor did he ever note, that from that day Barbara never spoke her daughter’s name if it could possibly be avoided, calling her generally “my little maid,” and as the child grew, addressing her as May, the sweet old English contraction of maiden.
A few weeks later, as Barbara set the stirabout that sometimes served instead of furmety upon the table, her husband entered, and throwing his hat into Lora’s lap said in a tone of well deserving,—
“There, Bab, I’ve bought out Winslow’s share in the red cow for five pounds and ten shillings, to be paid in corn, and I’ve satisfied Pierce and Clark for their shares with a ewe lamb apiece, so now it is mine, and I give it to you. She’s not the kyloe cow you were longing for, but she’s your own.”
“Thank you, Myles,” replied Barbara, flushing with pleasure. “And is it quite settled that we are to go over to the Captain’s Hill as they begin to call it?”
“Duxbury, I mean to call it in due time. Yes, dame, the men and I are going over to-morrow morning to fell timber, and you shall have some sort of shelter of your own over there before you’re a month older.”
THE UNEXPECTED.
It was just as true in 1625 as it will be in 1895 that nothing is certain to occur except the unexpected; but the idea had not yet been phrased, and even if it had been, William Bradford’s turn of mind was absolutely opposed to the epigrammatic, so it was in sober commonplace that he remarked,—
“I never thought to have spoken with you again in Plymouth, Master Oldhame, but sith you urge pressing business as your excuse for coming hither, I am ready to hear it.”
The governor sat in his chair of office, and the Assistants were ranged each man in his place. At the end of the platform stood John Oldhame, and behind him Bartholomew Allerton and Gyles Hopkins, each carrying a pike, and looking very important.
But except for these nine men the great chamber where we assisted at the Court of the People was empty, and the sad afternoon light fell across the vacant benches, and glimmered upon the low-browed wall upheld by sturdy knees of oak, with a sort of mournful curiosity quite pathetic; this curiosity was, however, reflected in the minds of the townsfolk of Plymouth in a degree far more ludicrous than pathetic, man often falling short of the dignity of nature.
All that they knew, these good people, was that about noon a Nantasket boat had rounded Beach Point, anchored in the channel, and sent a skiff ashore under command of William Gray, the elder of two brothers, representing the solid men of Nantasket at that day. Stepping on the Rock, Master Gray demanded to be led to the governor, a demand complied with the more readily that as he declined to communicate his business to any one else. Dinner-time came and went, and as the town returned to its posts of observation it noted William Gray rowing back to the vessel, receiving a passenger into his skiff, and bringing ashore the very John Oldhame whom Plymouth had so ignominiously dismissed some two years before. The same, and yet a very different John Oldhame from the drunken ruffler of that day, or the blustering bully who a year before that had been solemnly exiled from Plymouth; yes, a strangely meek and quiet John Oldhame this, who, looking neither to the right nor the left, strode up the hill to the Fort, apparently not noticing, certainly not resenting, the attendance of the two men-at-arms who escorted or guarded him, as one might elect to call it.
So much had Plymouth seen, and Helena Billington, arms akimbo, and head inclined to one side, was beginning to vituperate the tyrants who had beguiled an unfortunate gentleman into their clutches, and now would clap him up in jail, when those very tyrants severally appeared coming out of their houses and leisurely climbing the hill.
“The governor, and the Elder, and the captain, and the doctor, and Master Winslow, and Master Allerton,” counted she breathlessly, and not without a certain awe at sight of all the authority of the colony paradedbefore her eyes; and as the last doublet disappeared within the gate, she sagely shook her head, with the conclusion, “Well, gossip, it passeth my comprehension or thine, and I’ll e’en hie me under cover when it rains, for only a fool will stay out to get drenched.”
From which somewhat blind apothegm we may perhaps evolve the theory that Goodwife Billington was not one of those whom our modern slang declares “don’t know enough to go in when it rains!”
“Seat yourself an you will, Master Oldhame, and speak your errand,” repeated the governor a little more indulgently, for in fact Oldhame’s weather-and-timeworn face and somewhat bowed shoulders suggested ill health or great suffering, a look supplemented by his voice, as dropping upon the bench which young Allerton pushed forward he slowly said,—
“My thanks, Governor Bradford. I have come here to-day upon an errand so strange that I can scarce credit it myself, and I know not that in my half century of years I have ever charged myself with the like.
“Man, it is to crave pardon for my ill offices to you, and these your associates, and to all the town of Plymouth, where I repaid kind entertainment and many good turns with as much of evil and malevolence. Can you, as Christian men, forgive me?”
“As Christians,” began Bradford, after a pause of unfeigned astonishment, “we are bound to forgive injuries greater than those you have offered us, which indeed did not harm us as you intended. But as prudent men, we would fain know before receiving you again to our confidence what are the grounds of your repentance.”
“Right enough, Master Bradford, right enough! Itbehooves every man to be prudent, and the burned dog dreads the fire. But the matter is here. A year or more agone I and other men loaded a small ship with goods, bought mainly on credit from the French and English vessels at Monhegan and Damaris Cove, to truck them at the Virginia colony for tobacco and other matters which sell well to the sailors and fishermen; but outside the Cape here, we fell upon Malabar and Tucker’s Terror, and all those fearsome shoals and reefs that drove back your own Mayflower from the same voyage, and to cap our misfortunes a shrewd storm out of the northeast seized us at advantage, and shook and worried us as you may see a dog torment a wolf caught in a trap, and sans power to defend himself.
“Now in that extremity some of the mariners bethought them of God, who verily was not in all their thoughts, and so fell on prayer, making loud lamentations of their sins and professing desire of amendment and satisfaction. So as I listened, and marveled if those men were verily worse than other men, or than me, of a sudden a flash as of lightning pierced my soul and showed me mine own enormous wickedness, and how it well might be that I was the Jonah for whom an angry God would slay all this company. Natheless I did not cry out as Jonah did, for I knew not if there was a great fish prepared to swallow me when my shipmates should fling me over, nor did I feel within myself the prophet’s constancy and courage to abide three days alive in a fish’s belly; so I held mine own counsel, and getting behind the mast I fell upon my knees and heartily abased myself before God, confessing my sins, and most especially my ill-doing toward you men of Plymouth, and as the heat of my devotion bore me on, Ivowed that so God would spare me alive, and not make shipwreck of all this company for my sin, I would humble myself before those I had wronged, and would, if I might, do them as much good as I had done harm. Then, sirs, believe it or not as you will, but as I finished that prayer and made that vow, the wind fell, as though some mighty hand had gathered it back, and held it powerless; the ship that had lain all but upon her beam-ends, and in another moment must have capsized, righted herself, and stood amazed and quivering, like a horse curbed in upon the very brink of a precipice; the sea still ran high, but the tide so bore us up, and carried us so kindly, that two men at the helm could manage it again, and the master, recovering his spirit that had been well-nigh dashed with the imminent peril of his occasions, so ingeniously manœuvred his course in and out among those sholds as to fetch us through into the open sea, although so crippled and battered that we could no more than make back to Gloucester for repairs.
“There I found another vessel bound south, and took passage with my venture, secure that now my voyage should be prospered as indeed it was, and I stayed in Virginia something over a year, trading and laying by money.
“And now, masters, here I am in fulfilling of my vow. I have, and I do crave pardon and forgetfulness of my former wrong-doing, and to prove that my repentance is fruitful, I here bring you in solid cash for the use of the colony five-and-twenty rose-nobles, good money, honestly gained.”
And with a smile of self-approval not unmixed with surprise at his own position, Oldhame brought a grimy canvas bag from the depths of one of the pockets ofhis pea-coat, and planted it with a pleasant thud and jingle upon the table in front of the governor, who raised his hand as if to push it back, but restrained the gesture, and after a moment’s hesitation rose, and taking the penitent by the hand said in his grandly simple way,—
“No man can do more than to confess himself sorry for wrong-doing, and to offer satisfaction for sin. Zaccheus did no more, and the Son of God became his guest. Master Oldhame, we receive you again as our friend and comrade, and make you welcome to our town whensoever you may see fit to visit us. As for this money, if you will retire for a little, I will take counsel with my advisers here, and tell you our mind. Will you walk about the town, or will you await our summons outside? Bartholomew, Master Oldhame is no longer a prisoner but a guest; go with him where he will, and Gyles, wait you without to summon him, when we are ready.”
But Oldhame went no farther than a sunny angle of the Fort, where, seated upon the section of a tree-trunk set there by Captain Standish, he lighted his pipe, folded his arms, and fixing his eyes upon Captain’s Hill sat smoking in stolid silence, rather to the disappointment of Bart Allerton, who was a sociable young man, and would have liked the news from Virginia.
The penitent’s mood had changed, however, and he was suffering from the reaction consequent upon most unwonted acts of self-sacrifice. He really was sincere in his contrition, and had honestly offered that bag of gold as satisfaction for the injury done and intended toward Plymouth. But five-and-twenty rose-nobles, representing more than forty dollars of our money, meant in that day and place four or five times as much, and was asum neither lightly won, nor lightly to be spent; so that Oldhame half unconsciously fell to meditating how far it would have gone toward purchasing English goods for another voyage to Virginia, or for his own maintenance while resting from his labors. He had told his story, and made his peace-offering in a moment of exaltation, and now the exaltation was all gone, and a certain flat and disgusted mood had seized upon its vacant place. Human nature is not essentially different in the nineteenth nor will be in the twentieth century from what it was in the seventeenth.
“The governor prays your company, Master Oldhame,” announced Gyles Hopkins; and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, Oldhame pocketed it and followed into that dusky chamber, where still the Court of the People seemed to fill the benches with ghostly presence waiting to hear and confirm their governor’s decision.
“We pray you be seated, Master Oldhame,” began Bradford, motioning to a chair beside the table. “Bartholomew and Gyles you are dismissed, and see that we are not interrupted.”
He paused while the men-at-arms withdrew, closing the door with a heavy bang, which echoed gloomily through the empty room.
Then Bradford, referring now and again to his associates, told the grisly penitent that the opportunity he craved of doing a good turn to Plymouth was at hand, and the money he proffered would aid in carrying out the enterprise. This was no other than the transportation of Thomas Morton to England, and there delivering him to the authorities who waited to punish him for offenses committed before seeking the shelter of the New World. After his capture by Standish, Mortonhad been brought to Plymouth, but as he was too troublesome a prisoner to be held there, some brilliant mind had hit upon the idea of marooning him upon one of the Isles of Shoals, where, having no boat, he was perfectly sure to be found when wanted, and at the same time quite out of danger. The season for the return home of the English fishing-vessels had now arrived, and Plymouth was already in treaty with the master of the Dolphin to carry their rebellious prisoner as passenger; but it was most desirable that some competent person should accompany him, and perhaps none could be found more suitable than Oldhame, to whom the position was now offered. If he chose to accept it, the five-and-twenty rose-nobles, “said to be contained in this bag which we have not opened,” and at the words Bradford laid a hand upon the bag and threw a penetrating glance at Oldhame, whose face flushed guiltily, for one of those nobles had indeed been so grievously clipped as to lose a good third of its value, and he knew it, although the governor only guessed it, “this money, be it less or more, shall be used by you, Master Oldhame, to pay Plymouth’s proportion of the expense of this transportation, and the remainder shall be our recognition of your services and loss of time. Do you accept the offer, friend?”