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 onlydid 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 wigwamdoor, 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."
"Ido 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 acquaintancespaddled 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 intothe 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 ofedibles,—"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 wentto 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 servehim 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 notfollowed; 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 sooncome 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 shouldsleep 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 frightenedeyes 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.
EASTWARD of Nauset, unchecked by headlands, as was Plymouth Harbor, but sweeping away into the very sky line, lay the ocean. The tide was now rolling in; far out at sea the water all was ridged, and, as the waves pressed shoreward, their crests, heaving up, burst into white foam. With each inward swell the water crept nearer, till now it reached the bare rock where Miles Rigdale, his knees level with his chin and his arms cast round them, was perched.
Overhead, Miles knew the sky was bright, and the dazzle of the water was ever present to his eyes. He strove to think on naught but the barren glare before him, yet beneath, in his heart, he was conscious all the time of an aching weight of misery and sick fear. For this was Nauset; he had but to turn his head, and, far up the sandy beach, where the storm-swept pines began, he could see the cluster of wigwams, and, nearer, squatting upon the shore, the stolid Indian folk who had dogged him thither.
Only that morning he had reached Nauset. There had been more than four and twenty hours of journeying, through unknown villages, and by sea in a frail bark canoe, the pitching of which, under the stroke of the waves, had frightened him sorely. All, indeed, had been fright and confusion and the wearying effort to hide his terror. For the Indians of Manomet doubtless would beat Trug over the head again till he was dead, and they would send Dolly far away, as they had sent him, perhaps do worse. Miles buried his face against his knees, and bit his lips hard.
Of a sudden, he was lifted bodily from the rock where he sat. The white water eddied all round it, he noted, and the warrior who held him had stepped through it to fetch him ashore. For a moment after he was set upon his feet, he stood staring out upon the dazzling sea, then turned and passed slowly up the sand, through a patch of sparse beach grass, to the village.
Slowly though he loitered, he came at last to the sunny cluster of wigwams; in their scant shadow the men—the warriors of Nauset, and those who had fetched Miles hither—lay smoking, and, liking their surly looks little, he stepped presently into the Chief's great wigwam, where the squaws were cooking.
He was hungry, for he had not eaten since last evening, so he stood waiting and watching thewomen, though he no longer sought to talk to them. For they did not show a friendly curiosity, such as the squaws at Manomet had shown, but rather scowled upon him, as if they already knew enough of white folk. It was from this place that the trader Hunt, who stole Squanto, had kidnapped seven Indians, and it was here—Miles remembered only too clearly every scrap of his elders' tales—that only the last summer, in revenge for Hunt's dealings, three Englishmen trading thither had been slain.
So the heart within him was heavy indeed, when at length he set himself down amongst the warriors at the noon meal. His place was next the chief of the village, whom men called Aspinet, just as it had been at every village where he had sat to eat, but this chieftain was not friendly, as the others had seemed. What few gutturals he uttered were directed to his warriors, not to Miles, nor did he offer to give the boy food.
Of necessity, Miles imitated the others by thrusting his hands into the kettle and laying hold on the great claw of a lobster; it was so hot it burned his fingers sharply, but, mindful that he was watched, he held it fast till he could lay it on the trampled sand at his side. His fingers smarted, and he dared not raise his eyes from the lobster, lest the tears of pain that were gathering in them be seen.Fumblingly he drew forth his whittle and was making a clumsy effort to dig the meat from the shell, when a dusky hand suddenly closed on his wrist, and the whittle was wrenched from his grasp.
For one nightmare-like instant the world seemed struck from under him; then Miles was aware of the reality of the smoky walls of the wigwam and of those grim-faced savages who sat round him. He stood up slowly, with his knees a-tremble, but he thrust out his hand bravely, and, in a stout voice, spoke to Chief Aspinet: "That whittle is mine. Give it back to me."
A moment he stood fronting the Chief and his warriors, then, with a sudden feeling that for sheer alarm he would presently burst out crying, he turned and walked slowly from the circle of the feasters. "I shall not eat of your food nor come into your house till you give back my whittle," he flung over his shoulder in a quavering voice.
With that he passed out at the doorway and set himself down cross-legged in the deep sand in the lee of the wigwam. The sun of early afternoon poured scorchingly upon him, and the sand, as he sifted it between his fingers, was warm. Out above the ocean he could see a great white gull that flashed in the strong light.
A little shadow from the wigwam fell upon him, and bit by bit broadened, while he stupidly watchedthe strip of dark advance across the white sand. It must be mid-afternoon, he reasoned out, when the warriors, crammed with food, sauntered from the wigwam, and several came leisurely to squat in the shade close by him.
Among them was Aspinet himself, Miles's whittle thrust defiantly in his leathern girdle, and the sight of that braced the boy's resolution in soldierly fashion; he must not seem afraid or willing to bear an affront from a savage, he knew. So, with a steady face, he addressed the Chief again, seeking this time to find the Indian words: "When your people come to us at Patuxet we do not rob them. And you were best not rob me, else Captain Standish will burn your wigwams."
For an instant the Chief puffed slowly at his tobacco pipe, and impassively eyed Miles's face; then he spoke, with some broken words of English and his native words so slowly uttered that Miles could half comprehend the import of his speech: "We do not fear the coat-men. Thus did we to them. There was a ship broken by a storm. They saved most of their goods and hid it in the ground. We made them tell us where it was. Then we made them our servants. They wept much when we parted them. We gave them such meat as our dogs eat. We took away their clothes. They lived but a little while."
Miles's eyes were wide and his lips parted with frank horror; only for a moment, then he recalled the hint of such a happening that had drifted to Plymouth, and the very reiteration of the story made it a little less shocking. "That was a French ship, and they are a different race from us," he said slowly. "An Englishman would not 'a' wept for you. AndIshall not." He drove his hands hard into the sand and blinked fast; the rough dirt hurt his burnt fingers, and he did not doubt the English folk, even the Captain, were so glad to be rid of him that they would leave him there forever, to the mercies of Chief Aspinet.
Squalid though the Indian wigwams were, he was faintly glad when the shadows had so lengthened on the land and so darkened the sky and sea that it was time to go to rest, for at least the blackness would screen his face from the peering eyes of his captors. It was to Aspinet's wigwam they led him, but the courage to refuse the Chief's dubious hospitality no longer endured in Miles; he would forgive their taking his knife, if they did not use him as they had used the luckless French sailors.
Obediently he snuggled down in one corner of the bed that ran round the wigwam, crowded and comfortless as was his bed at Manomet, but here neither Trug nor Dolly lay beside him. The sound of the sea, too, was strange; out-of-doors hecould hear it,—the slow crash of the incoming tide that grew fainter and fainter.
Dolly and Trug, taken from him, he knew not to what, and the safe little town of Plymouth whence he had fled,—all were present to him. He thought that he and Dolly, with the old dog beside them, were trudging up the path from the landing, only there were trees all along the path, like the limes along the church lane at home in England, and the houses were not log cabins, but English cottages. He knocked at the door of Stephen Hopkins's house, and at the same time it was the English farmhouse where his father had dwelt, and, when they opened the door to him, it was his mother who, coming across the hall, took him in her arms and drew him in.
The blackness of the wigwam and the heavy breathing of the savages came once more to his consciousness. He dragged himself wearily up on one elbow. Through the opening in the side of the wigwam he saw the sky quite dark, and he heard the receding swash of the ebbing tide. Yonder was the ocean, and a few miles westward lay Cape Cod Bay, and across it snug Plymouth. If he only walked along the shore, followed the coast line, he would come home.
There was no plan, scarce any hope in him, only he knew the English had forgotten him, and hecould not endure it longer with a stolid face among the Indians. Almost ere he thought it out, yet with instinctive precaution, he slipped off the bed, and, holding his breath, crouched listening on the floor.
Slowly and carefully, with the trodden dirt firm beneath his hands, he writhed his way to the door-opening. The morning air struck coldly on his cheeks, so that for an instant he shrank back, but there was in it something free that emboldened him to press on.
Out through the door into the chilly morning, which to his more accustomed eyes seemed so pale, he felt detection was certain. But no cry alarmed him, no motion betrayed him. The soft sand deadened every sound, as he crept through it, hands and knees. The debris of twigs, higher up at the verge of the pine woods, pressed cruelly against his palms, but, for all the pain, he still crawled on, till darkness thickened about him, and above him the pine branches stirred.
Springing to his feet, Miles ran forward, fast as two frightened legs could bear him. Brambles that plucked at his tattered sleeves made him halt, with heart a-jump; tougher young shoots near tripped him; but pantingly he held on his way. Through the branches he could catch a glimpse of the dull sky and one very bright star that he judged shone in the west, so he headed toward it.
Little by little the star faded from before his eyes, and the sky lightened, whereat Miles ran the faster. A swamp, thick with juniper, barred his course, and fearfully he turned southward to pick his way about it. When once more he turned westward, the sky was pale as lead, and the birds were beginning to sing. But though the coming of dawn might well alarm him, he did not heed it now, as, through the trees before him, he caught the pounding note of waves, and, a little later, broke forth upon a broad expanse of meadow, beyond which rumbled the great sea.
Yonder, very far to west, lay Plymouth, Miles told himself, and, with a foolish happiness springing in his heart, he stumbled briskly along through the sparse growth at the edge of the wood. The morning light now was sprinkling the sea on his right hand, and the sky was changing from lead-color to clear blue. Out from the forest a brook, all awake with the dawning, came gurgling, so Miles stopped to drink, and tarried to empty the sand from his shoes; he guessed he must have run leagues, for he was very tired.
But up he got and tramped on pluckily at his stoutest pace, through the coarse grass of a great salt marsh, where the new-risen sun struck hot upon him. At the verge of the marsh an arm of the sea reached into the land, so Miles had no course but to wade in, shoes and all. The waterwas cold as the sun before had been hot. He clambered forth on the far side all a-shiver and, with his head bent, began to run for warmth's sake, across another bit of marsh and up a little wooded slope of sand. Headlong he plunged down the opposite slope, and there, in the hollow, by a brookside, unmoved as the pine trees themselves, stood two of the Nauset Indians.
He trudged back to the camp with them,—there was no other way. One of them, when they came up to him, as he stood numb with the surprise, uncertain whether to run or front them boldly, struck him a buffet in the face, but the other, catching his arm, muttered something that made him desist. So Miles stole round and walked beside the second Indian on the trip back. They did not offer to carry him nor to slacken their pace, and he feared to vex them with lagging behind. His shoes, where he had waded through the salt water, were stiffening, so they hurt his feet sorely; by the time he came into the camp he was fairly limping, yet that was but a little pain beside what might be before him.
Yet no one did him hurt. A throng of people gathered scowlingly about him and talked among themselves, while he waited, with his flesh a-quiver, but his chin thrust bravely upward. But, in the end, they only hustled him into a wigwam, where they left him with two squaws who were poundingcorn. Miles flung himself upon the couch, in the farthest corner, and hid his face in his arms, but rigidly he held himself from crying. The stone pestles that ground the corn went thud, thud, till his head so ached it seemed as if they beat upon his very temples.
He had come to count the rhythmic strokes in a sort of stupor, wherein he knew only that the pestles beat, when suddenly they ceased. Out-of-doors he heard a whooping and a scuffling of many naked feet in the sand. He pressed himself closer against the wall of the wigwam; they were coming to deal with him now. He shut his eyes tightly and buried his head deeper between his arms.
They had come into the wigwam. He ought to stand up and show them he was not afraid, but he could not, and, when some one grasped him by the arm, spite of himself, he cried out in nervous terror.
"Me friend. You not know Squanto?" grumbled a voice he remembered.
Miles sprang to his feet. The lodge was full of savages, Aspinet and a score of other hostile faces, but he gave them no heed, for over him stood his old Plymouth acquaintance, the interpreter Squanto. With a great cry of relief, Miles flung his arms about him. "Oh, Squanto, take mehome, quick, quick!" he begged; and in the next breath, "Where's Dolly? You must find Dolly."
men standing in watter next to small boatload of soldiers"Miles made out the figures of the men in the shallop."
"Miles made out the figures of the men in the shallop."
The little squaw and the puppy dog were safe, Squanto explained leisurely; the Captain and his warriors had come in the big canoe and taken them, and now they waited yonder for Miles himself. "I'll go to him straightway," cried Miles, with a laugh that caught in his throat.
But, like it or no, he must wait yet a time, for Chief Aspinet and his warriors would feast Squanto and the Indians who came with him, and the savages ate long and deliberately. Miles, unable to swallow a morsel, sat between his friend Squanto and one who came with him called Iyanough, the Sachem of Cummaquid, a young Indian with so gentle a bearing that the boy felt near as safe with him as with an Englishman.
He could not help a little movement of repulsion, though, as they rose from the feast at last, when Aspinet came up to him, but the Chief was in a humble mood now and merely handed back the whittle, which Miles clapped promptly into his pocket. Aspinet would have put round his neck a chain of white beads too, but Miles shook his head disapprovingly; he wanted no presents of the uncivil Chief. Yet when Squanto said, "Take um," he thought well to obey the interpreter.
They came forth at length from the wigwam,under a twilight sky, and, in some semblance of order, the whole throng of Aspinet's warriors took up their march across the Cape. One of them lifted Miles in his arms, and, though the boy would have preferred some other bearer than a Nauset man, he contented himself, since Squanto and Iyanough walked close by.
At a good pace they passed up into the scrub pines of the sand hills, and turned westward, where, in the dull sky, the restful stars were beginning to show, just as Miles had seen them come out above the piny hills of Plymouth. The branches bent noiselessly apart, as the swift train pressed forward through the woods. The moon was up now; Miles, glancing back, saw it gleam amid the boughs, and at first its staring light startled him. Then they came through the trees out on broad sand again; the tide was far down, and out yonder, where the line of moonlit water began, lay the English shallop, with its sails all white.
Down the beach the naked feet of the Indians pattered; now the water splashed noisily beneath their tread, knee high, waist high. Clearly and more clearly Miles made out the figures of the men in the shallop, erect and musket in hand, the gleam of the corselets and helmets, their faces almost.
It was Captain Standish himself, who, slipping his ready musket to one hand, reached over thegunwale and, grasping Miles by the waistband, dropped him down into the bottom of the shallop. As he did so he uttered something that sounded like a fervent "Thank God!"
Miles neither heard nor heeded that, but he did remember of a sudden that he was a wretched, little fugitive criminal, now delivered into the hands of English justice, and even his hero, who had been his friend, had thought fit to take him up roughly and drop him down against his boots. He rolled a little out of the way, and, crouching against the side of the boat, buried his face in his arms.
AT last the shallop had put off from the Nauset shore. The babel of clamorous Indians sank down, and, in its stead, sounded the thud of muskets laid by and the clatter of sweeps fitting to the rowlocks. Sharp English commands Miles heard too, but still he did not raise his head, till some one lifted him to his feet.
All about him gleamed the hard whiteness of moonlight, under which the idle sail looked vast and ghostly and the faces of the men around him seemed unfamiliar. But he heard Captain Standish's voice: "Come, Miles, clamber forward with you. Your sister is fair sick for the sight of you."
He saw it was the Captain who had lifted him up, and he caught the arm that held him. "I'm sorry, sir, oh, I'm mighty sorry; I won't fight another duel nor run away," he whispered huskily.
"Don't cry, my man," the Captain spoke hurriedly. "It's well over and you're safe with us now. Here, Gilbert Winslow, help him forward; and,Stephen Hopkins, draw you nearer; I've a word to say."
Dumbly obedient, Miles clambered forward over the thwarts. Young Gilbert Winslow, one of the rowers, put out a hand to steady him, and, to the boy's thinking, grasped his arm roughly. They need not begin punishing him at once, he reflected miserably; he was sorry for all he had done, but when he tried to tell them so, even the Captain had thought him whimpering because he had been afraid.
Then for a moment he forgot his wretchedness, as he reached the forward thwart where Alden sat, and from beside him heard Dolly's voice pipe up. Miles slipped upon the reeling bottom of the shallop, and, stumbling closer to his sister, put his arms about her. "You're here, Dolly?" he asked, in a whisper, half afraid to let his voice sound out. "You're safe, you and Trug?"
Such a ragged, tousled Dolly as she was, half hidden in the folds of Alden's cloak, and almost too weary even to talk. She was quite safe, though, she found energy to tell him, and Trug was there behind her, tied in the peak of the bow. He was sore with his bruises, but Goodman Cooke said he would live, for all that. The Indians of Manomet had done neither of them further hurt, but had sent them to the Sachem Iyanough, who was a good man and haddelivered them to the English that very morning. So it was all well, but for the poppet.
"Did they take it from you?" questioned Miles, mindful of his own experience with the whittle.
"N—no," answered Dolly, beginning to sniffle. "I—I did give her to a little maid at Manomet. Because she ground the corn and fetched wood all day, and she had no poppet. I gave it to her, and—and the bad old Chief, he took her away from the little maid—he did tear her up and make red cloth of her—and he tied her in his hair, my poppet Priscilla." Dolly curled herself up against Alden's arm and wept wearily.
"Very like Priscilla Mullins can make you another," the young man suggested kindly, though his face, in the moonlight, looked amused.
"'Twould not be she," wailed Dolly, provoked at such stupidity, and went on to cry as only a very tired little girl can cry.
But Miles, quite tearless, leaned back against Alden's knees, and, without daring to look at the men about him, gazed up into the shimmery sky. All the time, though, he was conscious that yonder in the stern sat Master Stephen Hopkins, and he thought of him and tormented himself with wondering what punishment he would inflict till he felt it almost a relief, when at last his guardian came striding across the rowers' seats toward him.
He came, indeed, but to help Alden unfurl the sail, for they were now well out from shore, and the breeze, though of the faintest, was worth calling to their aid. But when that task was done, Master Hopkins set himself down on the thwart by Alden, and presently spoke to Miles, who started guiltily, for all nothing worse was said than, "Take my cloak here, Miles Rigdale, and wrap it about you."
It was chilly, now they were out on the open bay, as Miles, in his torn shirt, knew, but, without looking at the speaker, he shrank away, muttering: "I wish it not. I am not cold, sir."
"Take the cloak as I bid you," Master Hopkins repeated, in as stern a voice as if it were a dose of poison he were pressing upon Miles. "Let me have no more of this sullenness."
He spoke so sharply and loudly that every one must hear; Miles thought to feel the indignant eyes of the company turn toward him. "I—I want to go up in the bow beside Trug," he whispered Alden, and, eager to put as much space as possible between himself and Master Hopkins, clambered over the thwart into the peak. There he crouched close to the battered old dog, who licked his hands, and lay so covered by the cloak that he could see only the blank moon rolling through the blue-black sky.
But, though he did not look on his companions, he could hear their voices distinctly. Alden it waswho spoke first: "We are not heading for home the quickest way, are we, sir? We follow the shore—"
"'Tis that the Captain holds it best that we stand in to land and get fresh water," Hopkins made answer. "After that we are to hasten our shortest way unto Plymouth. For there's ill news astir at Nauset."
"What might that be?"
"They tell us the Narragansetts, that fierce tribe to southward, have risen and spoiled some of Massasoit's men and taken the King himself prisoner."
There was an instant's silence, during which Miles listened strainingly, then Alden spoke in a different, slow tone: "And after they have dealt with Massasoit, should they attack Plymouth because it is allied to him—"
"The pick of our fighting men are here in the shallop," Hopkins answered deliberately.
Miles felt something press against his legs as he lay, heard a sleepy whimper from Dolly. "Let your sister rest by you, Miles," spoke Alden, bending over him. "I'm going to aid at the sweeps."
"And you, Miles," added Master Hopkins, "were best give your thought to praying unto God that your mad prank may not prove the means of drawing the men from Plymouth at her greatest need."
Once more there was silence, save for the steady creak, creak of the oars against the thole-pins, and now and again the flap of the listless sail. Mileslay quite still and stared at the round moon, yet did not see it, for before his eyes loomed only the unguarded cottages of Plymouth, white under the moonbeams, and, crawling toward them from the black pine hills, the slinking forms of the Narragansett warriors. Even when he shut his eyes and, at last, for sheer exhaustion, slumbered, he saw in his dreams the sleepy little settlement, all unconscious of the danger crowding close upon it, and the horror of this that his own folly had made possible startled him into wakefulness again.
He saw the mast sway blackly against the dull heavens, whence the moon had dropped, and, with something of comfort in their mere presence, heard the men grumbling inaudibly, as they tugged at the sweeps. A dead chill was in the morning wind, so gladly he huddled the cloak more closely about him and drowsed once more. But the same vision of leaping savages and blazing cottages burned before his eyes, till, with a half stifled cry, he started up, as through his dreams rang an Indian whoop.
All about him yellow sunshine rippled on the water; English voices sounded cheerily, and with them mingled the clatter of Indian tongues. So much of his dream was true, yet it could be no attack upon the shallop, for Dolly, quite unconcerned, sat gazing down at him from the nearest thwart.
"You are to get up," she greeted him gayly. "We are at Cummaquid to eat breakfast with Sachem Iyanough; the Captain and some of the men have gone ashore unto him, and they have sent us roast fish hither, and there is clean bread from home. And you are to rise and eat with us, Master Hopkins says."
At that name Miles, still half dazed with sleepiness, sprang to his feet. Near at hand, across the noisy blue water, gleamed the green shores of Cummaquid, where he could see a swarm of dusky figures, and in their midst the glitter of the armored Englishmen. But nothing of the shore or even of the folk about him was quite real, save the voice of Master Hopkins; Miles did not look at his face.
Creeping into the stern sheets, as he was bidden, he choked down the food that was given him, good bread and fish, that seemed to him gall and ashes. For the men about him spoke anxiously of the need of getting speedily to Plymouth, till Miles, heavy with the sense of guilt, scarcely dared stir or breathe, or even think. Only when Master Hopkins rose from beside him did he venture so much as to shift his position; then he swung about stealthily and leaned his head upon one arm that rested on the gunwale. He let one hand droop into the water, and, watching the ripples slip between his fingers, thought only of their flow and fall.
So he was still sitting, in what looked a sullen fit, when a good capful of wind came ruffling it along the water, and the Captain and his squad splashed noisily from the shore. Miles heard about him the clatter of their embarkation, the creak of the hoisted sail, the brisk voices of the men, and he longed to slip back to his old place in the bow, away from them, but he durst not venture it. He stared down into the blue water, that now began to press more swiftly through his hand, and, when he lifted his eyes, the green shore was fading in the distance.
With a creak of the cordage, the shallop came about on a fresh tack, so only dazzling water that made his eyes ache now lay before Miles. Through the rents in his shirt he felt the sun hot on his bare shoulders, and involuntarily he made a restless movement. "What's amiss, Miles?" spoke the Captain's quick voice. Miles did not answer, but, feeling rebuked, sat silent, and studied the grain of the wood in the seat on which he perched.
But the Captain, sitting next him, began to ask him questions in a curt, matter-of-fact tone, as to what Indian villages he had entered, and whether he had noted signs of warlike preparation, to all of which Miles answered hesitatingly, a little frightened, because the men about him silenced their talk to hark to him.
Once he glanced sidewise at Standish, but thelatter's brows were puckered and his eyes preoccupied, so Miles, not knowing whether he was worried about the savages or angry with him, looked again at his shoes. But when the Captain relapsed into grave silence, his fear grew greater than his shame before rebuke; so at last he plucked the Captain's sleeve and whispered him: "Is there any chance, sir,—maybe shall we come to Plymouth ere the Indians kill all the people?"
"What set such a mad fancy in your head?" Standish asked, almost sharply. "There's not an Indian within six league of Plymouth. Don't worry yourself for that, lad; you'll find the village as you left it, and all the women ready to weep over you."
At these first comforting words he had received since he boarded the shallop, Miles plucked up heart and drew closer to Captain Standish. But speedily he took note of the anxiety that made the Captain forgetful of him, and, with a new sorrow, he told himself that to his hero he was no longer "Miles, my soldier," but a foolish boy, who, because he was little, must be spoken to gently, and not even let know the full extent of the evil he had brought about. For, spite of Standish's cheerful speech, he could see clearly enough that every man in the craft was troubled and longing to reach the endangered settlement.
But the wind blew lightly, in veering flaws, so theshallop must make tedious long tacks, while the hours rolled out. The heat began to go from the air, so Miles was glad to wrap himself in a spare cloak, as the Captain ordered; and the sun, in the west, slipped behind gray clouds. The water darkened, and the twilight had fallen in earnest, when at last the shallop tacked in at the outer entrance of Plymouth Harbor.
At first the thickly wooded beach point screened the shore, but, as the little craft rounded it, the dim hills across the harbor were visible, and there, on the greatest hill, too low for stars, Miles saw sparks of light twinkle.
It was as if the men in the shallop all drew breath again, and Miles himself, forgetting his guilt and the punishment in store for him, cried joyfully: "They're safe!"
But in a moment half the joy went from him, for, when Alden, in the bow, fired his musket thrice, with startling reëchoes, Master Hopkins told him grimly that the signal was to let the people yonder know he had destroyed neither himself nor his sister by his sinful foolhardiness. Miles hung his head sorrily, and, for all Captain Standish presently clapped him on the shoulder and bade him look how the people flocked to the landing, did not glance up till, with a splash of oars in the quiet water, the shallop lay to, by the dark rock.
In the thick twilight the faces of the people gathered thither could not be made out, but all the colony was there, Miles guessed by the babel of voices, and, after they had lifted him ashore, he knew it was Priscilla Mullins who hugged him undignifiedly, and he thought it was Mistress Brewster who cried when she spoke to him. But he had no time to make certain, for just then Master Hopkins grasped him by the arm and led him away up the hill to his house.
Within the familiar living room a candle was alight, that set Miles blinking as he was brought in from the darkness, but he made out Mistress Hopkins, with an anxious scowl on her brows, though, for all Miles's torn shirt, she did not scold one word, and he saw Constance, with her eyes red, and Giles, who had tramped in after him, and Dotey and Lister. "Then they didn't hang you?" Miles cried to the latter, too weary to be civil.
"Hang who?" asked Ned, pretty sheepishly, as his master's eyes were upon him.
"You said they were going to hang you—"
"Not I, never," vowed Ned, with his face flushing, and, slouching off into the bedroom, rattled the door to behind him.
Miles followed him thither speedily,—he was not to be coddled by two soft-hearted women, Master Hopkins said,—and Giles and Dotey cametoo. They questioned him eagerly of his adventures, but Miles, unflattered even by such attention, would not speak of Indians or of birch canoes, just poured forth his woes in a weary voice upon the verge of tears: he would surely be soundly whipped, and Ned had said they would be hanged and they hadn't been, and if Ned hadn't said it, he wouldn't 'a' run away.
"I am right sorry, for your sake, I was not dealt with less mercifully," Lister said bitterly, and Miles, glancing up at him, was checked in his lamentation; truly, Ned looked miserable, with his face white and a noticeable limp in his gait, and Dotey, too, had one hand bandaged, but, most awe-inspiring of all, Miles noted, as Ned unfastened his shirt, a vivid red mark about the base of his neck. "What was it they did to you, then?" he asked, but neither of the Edwards seemed eager to explain.
"They just tied 'em neck and heels," Giles volunteered presently, as he began undressing. "And before they'd kept them so an hour, they promised amendment and—Hey, Ed Dotey, make Ned cease throwing shoes at me."
With a wrangling word or two peace was restored, and the young men took themselves to rest; Miles noted that the ex-duellists drew the line at sharing one bed, for Ned Lister lay down beside him, while Giles and Dotey slept together.
How quiet and clean it seemed in the little chamber, Miles thought; and how blessed it was that the Indians had not fallen on Plymouth! Involuntarily he sighed for very peace and happiness, then lost all sense of comfort at the recollection of the morrow and the punishment deferred that yet would surely come. "Ned, O Ned," he began, and shook Lister, who was lying with his head between his arms. "Tell me, Ned, how greatly does it hurt to be tied neck and heels?"
"Um-m-m!" groaned the exasperated Lister. "Miley, if you say 'neck and heels' to me again, I'll wake up and thrash you."