Standish of Standish Part 35

"Ay, maid."

"Then clear thy memory of it all, and make room for the answer I will give thee."

"And let it be a gentle one, Priscilla."

"Oh, thou knowest how to dress an unwelcome message in comely phrase better than any man of mine acquaintance, unless it be Master Winslow,"

retorted Priscilla bitterly. "So try thy skill on simple NO, for 't is all I have to say."

"But Priscilla, but maiden, bethink thee--be not so shrewd of tongue"--

"Nay, wilt have my reasons, Master Envoy? Well then, I care not for a man who cares not to do his own wooing. I care not for a man so well a.s.sured that I will be held by what he avers is my dead father's bidding, that he can let weeks and months roll by or ever he finds time to convince himself of the matter. I care naught for coat-armor, nor for pedigree, I, whose forbears were honest bourgeoisie of Lyons who scrupled not to give up all for conscience sake, while this man is neither Papist like his kinsfolk, nor Independent like these he lives among. And I care not for a red beard, nor for widowers, nor for men old enough to be my sire"--

"Nay, he is but six-and-thirty, maiden."

"And I am naught-and-twenty, and I am a-weary of thy chat, John Alden, and I fain would be alone, so I wish thee good e'en--and a keener wit."

"But Priscilla," gasped the poor fellow as the wheel was pushed so suddenly aside that he had to spring out of its way, while its mistress whirled past him and up the clumsy stair leading to her nook in the loft of the cabin.

"But Priscilla!" came back in wrathful mimicry from the head of the stair, and while Alden still stood bewildered, in at the open door flocked Mary Chilton, and Desire, and Elizabeth, their girlish laughter bubbling over at some girlish jest, and with a muttered greeting Alden stalked through their midst and was gone.

"He came looking for Priscilla, and is grumly at not finding her,"

whispered Elizabeth Tilley; but Mary Chilton with a wise nod replied, as one who knows,--

"Did he but know it, she's not ill inclined to him when all is said.

Unless I sore mistake she'll say yea next time he asks her."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE.

"A fair and goodly day!" exclaimed Standish ever sensitive to the aspects of nature, although never allowing himself to be mastered by any extremity of weather.

"Ay," replied Bradford. "And yet methinks that cloud rising over Manomet hath a stormy look."

"Let us once weather the Gurnet's Nose, and a south wind will not harm us," ventured Billington, whose out-of-door prowlings had at least made him weatherwise.

"Ay, if south wind is all that it means," said Doctor Fuller gravely.

"But to my mind yon cloud is of no common kind. It minds me shrewdly of those whirlwind or cyclone clouds that used to fright us in the China Seas when I sailed them as a lad."

"Say you so, Surgeon!" replied Bradford looking uneasily at the cloud rapidly rising and enlarging in the southern horizon. "Be ready with the sheets, Peter Browne and Cooke, and Francis Eaton had best stand with Latham at the helm."

"Look! Look you there! 'T is a waterspout!" cried Fuller, pointing excitedly at the cloud, which, driven on with furious force by an upper current of wind unfelt below, was now bellying in a marked and abnormal fashion, while from the lowest point of the convexity appeared a spiral column of dense vapor rapidly elongating itself toward the sea whose waters a.s.sumed a black and sullen aspect, disturbed by chopping counter currents of short waves, which gradually, as the waterspout neared them, fell into its rotary motion, rising at the centre of the whirlpool into a column of foaming water, a liquid stalagmite climbing to meet the stalact.i.te bending to it from above.

"If we had but a heavy gun!" cried Warren. "They say to hit the waterspout in the centre where it joins the other from below will disperse it."

"Knocks the wind out of it," explained Billington.

"But we have nothing better than these bird guns," cried Standish contemptuously touching with his foot the pile of weapons covered with a tarpaulin lying in the bottom of the boat. "And it drives down upon us like a charge of horse. Here, let me to the helm."

"There is no way upon the boat, Captain," expostulated Eaton. "No man can steer without a wind."

"Thou 'rt right, friend," replied the captain gravely, as he felt the rudder give beneath his hand. "There's naught to do but tarry until Master Waterspout declareth his pleasure."

"Until G.o.d declareth His pleasure," amended Bradford quietly. "Men, let us pray."

And baring his head the governor poured forth a strong and manful pet.i.tion to Him who rideth upon the wings of the wind and reigneth a King forever over His own creation.

Standish standing upright beside the useless tiller bared his head and listened reverently, but always with an eye to the waterspout and to the clouds, and as a deep-throated Amen rose from his comrades he gave the tiller a shove and joyously cried,--

"A puff, a breath! Enough to steer us past!" And the boat feeling her helm again careened gently to the little gust of wind out of the west, and slid away upon her course, while the waterspout, more furious in its speed at every instant, swept past and out to sea, where it presently broke and fell with a thunderous explosion.

"Another crowning mercy!" exclaimed Bradford devoutly, and Standish answered with his reticent smile,--

"Had Master Jones of the Mayflower been here, he would have more than ever felt 't is better to be friends than foes with prayerful men."

To the waterspout succeeded light and baffling winds so that labor as they might, it was fully dark when the Pilgrim pinnace entered what is now Barnstable, then c.u.mmaquid Harbor. Anchoring for safety, they lay down to get such rest as the position afforded, and woke betimes in the morning to find themselves high and dry in the centre of the harbor, the channel encircling them and making up toward the land. Upon the sh.o.r.e as seen across this channel appeared some savages gathering clams and muscles.

Bradford at once dispatched Squanto and Tockamahamon, who had come along as guides and interpreters, to interview these men and barter for some of the sh.e.l.lfish, but in a very short time the envoys came splashing merrily back with an invitation for the white men to land and breakfast with Janno, the chief of the Mattakees, who was, the fishermen said, close at hand. They also corroborated the statement that the missing boy had gone down the Cape with the Nausets, and would be found at Eastham, Aspinet's headquarters.

"I see no reason for gainsaying such a comfortable proposal," said Bradford turning with a smile to Standish who cheerily replied,--

"Nor I, so that they leave hostages aboard, and we carry every man his piece ash.o.r.e."

"We must e'en wade for it, sith there is neither dry ground for footing nor water for swimming," suggested Browne stripping off hose and shoon; but as Bradford and Standish began to follow his example they were prevented by the Indians, who offered each a back to the two chiefs, at the same time intimating to the others that if they would but wait all the company should be similarly accommodated. The doctor accepted, but Browne and the rest preferred their own legs as a dependence, and the whole party presently reached sh.o.r.e, where Janno, the handsome and courteous young chief of the Mattakees, stood with several of his pnieses or n.o.bles around him ready to receive them. Squanto at once stood forth as interpreter, and so flowery and mellifluous were the phrases of welcome that he interpreted, that the captain edging toward Bradford muttered,--

"I hope Master Warren will look well after the hostages left aboard, for all this is too sweet to be wholesome. I mistrust treachery, Governor."

"Nay, I mistrust Squanto, Captain," replied Bradford laughing. "The poor fellow doth glorify himself at some cost to the truth, I fancy."

"Beshrew me but before another month I'll know enough of their jargon to need no lying interpreter," muttered Standish, and he kept his word.

The Indian breakfast, already nearly ready, proved both toothsome and plentiful. It consisted of lobsters, clams, and muscles, both cooked and raw, ears of green maize roasted in the husk, and no-cake, that is to say, pounded corn mixed with water and baked in the ashes, the germ and animus of hoe-cake, bannocks, Johnnycake, and all the various forms of maize-bread so well known throughout our land.

Breakfast over Janno rather timidly inquired if the white chiefs would permit the visit of an old squaw of his tribe who much desired to see them.

"Surely if the good woman hath occasion to speak with us," replied Bradford amiably. "Why doth the chief seem to mistrust our willingness?"

"Squaw no speak to brave in council," explained Squanto with an air of shocked propriety; but before he could further explain a bowed and decrepit figure emerged from one of the little huts on the edge of the woods and slowly approached the white men who stepped forward to meet her, desiring Squanto to a.s.sure her of welcome. Coming so close to the little group that Standish muttered, "Sure she is minded to salute us,"

the poor old crone peered into the face of one after another of the white men, then wofully shook her head and began to mutter in her own tongue with strange gesticulations, but as he heard them Squanto uttered a shrill cry of terror, and the sachem stepping forward spoke some words of stern command, before which the old woman humbly bowed and became silent.

"What is it? Would she curse us? What is her grievance? What is her story?" demanded Bradford half indignantly, and Squanto, after some conference with the sachem, informed them that this woman, once called Sunlight-upon-the-Waters, but now known as The-Night-in-Winter, had been mother of seven tall sons who filled her wigwam with venison, and shared their corn and tobacco with her; but three of these sons were among the captives entrapped and sold to slavery by Hunt, and the other four had perished in the plague brought down upon the red men by the curse of The-White-Fool who died about the same time; and thus The-Night-in-Winter, having just cause, hated the white men as she hated death and the devil, and wished to curse them as The-White-Fool had cursed her people, but the sachem would not let her, and now she was doubly bereft of her children, since she might not even avenge them.

"'T is a piteous tale," said Bradford gently when Squanto had finished.

"And we cannot be amazed that this poor heathen mother should thus feel.

There is warrant for it among the cla.s.sics, Surgeon; Medea and others were moved in the same fashion. But Squanto, explain to her that we and all honest white men abhor the course of Master Hunt, and had we found him at such commerce we would have delivered her sons, and thee too, Squanto, out of his hands. Tell her our mind is to deal honestly and Christianly by all men, and here, give her this fair chain, and this length of red cloth. Tell her that she would do ill to curse us, for we are friends to her and her people."