"I tell thee, girl, it was the captain. John Alden is ever at his elbow and striving to imitate him, but our captain is still the leader, and I do honour a man who can think as well as do, and act as well as talk. Of talkers we have enow, the dear knows; Master Winslow and Master Allerton can so argue that they would force you to swear black was white and the moon a good Dutch cheese an they chose, and they can lay out work marvelously well for others to carry out, but I mark that their own hands abide in their pockets for the most part. Then there are plenty of strong arms with no head-pieces, like John Alden and your good friend Gilbert Winslow and John Howland and"--

"Nay, nay, Priscilla, thou shalt not wrong good men so," interrupted Mary, her fair face coloring a little. "The leaders aye must lead, and the younger and simpler aye must follow in every community, and I mark not that those you flout for speaking so well fail of their share in the labor, nor do I think John Alden or the rest would do well to thrust their advice upon their betters. At all rates, yon boat had not slid down so merrily if John Alden had not put his shoulder to the work."

"Yea, put his shoulder where the captain laid his hand," retorted Priscilla with her mocking laugh, and then putting her arm around Mary's shoulders, she added affectionately,--

"What a wise little woman thou art, ever looking at both sides of the matter while I see but one! And in truth, perhaps, it is better that there be these varied excellences, so that all comers may be suited, just as thou art fond of porridge while I would liefer have soup."

"And art a rare hand at compounding it," replied Mary admiringly. "How Desire Minter smacked her lips over the dish thou gavest her the other day."

"That poor Desiree, as my gossip Jeanne De la Noye used to call her! I like well to give her some tasty bit, for it makes her so happy at so little trouble to myself, since I am ever cooking."

"Dost thou really like cooking, Priscilla; or dost thou do it because thou ought, as I do?" asked Mary, who hated the culinary art, and yet was called upon to practice it, as were all young women of the day.

"Oh, I love it," replied Priscilla, with enthusiasm. "My mother and my grandmother and all my aunts were notable cooks, and in the good old days in France before I was born, they say my grandmother's pates and conserves and ragouts were famous all through Lyons, where my grandfather and his father before him were great silk manufacturers with plenty of men and maids and money at their command."

"Ah, Priscilla, thou 'rt hankering after the flesh-pots again! Remember Lot's wife!" and Mary laughed, but gently stole a hand into that of Priscilla, who pressed it tenderly as she replied,--

"Lot's wife spoiled all her cookery with salt, and I'll at least distill none from mine own eyes. How shall I make Robert Cartier know that I want him to come aboard and help me with my father's supper?"

"Beckon to John Alden to send him," retorted Mary promptly. Priscilla turned and fixed her long dark eyes in mock bewilderment upon the other's face.

"And why is it easier to beckon to John Alden than to Robert Cartier, thou foolish girl?" asked she.

"Because Robert is only thy father's servant, and John is thine own and ever waiting thy command," replied Mary demurely, and Priscilla's rich color mounted to her brow as she laughingly retorted,--

"Now, maid Mary, that quip was more like me than thee, and I'll have none of it. 'T is for thee to carry the honey-bag to mollify the stings my naughty tongue must aye inflict. I would I were not so waspish, Mary mine!"

"Thou 'rt naught but what is dear and lovely, and I care for thee beyond any man that ever walked, saving my father," cried Mary, pressing close to her friend's side.

"Then will I be jealous of Master Chilton," murmured Priscilla, the teasing mood again rising to the surface. "For I'll have no rival in thy heart, save only Gilbert Winslow, whom I hope not to oust."

"See, there is John Alden steadfastly regarding us," cried Mary, a little annoyed. "Point thy finger at Robert as he stands staring at the boat, and then beckon. My word for it, John will read the signal aright."

"Why, then, so be it, and if Dame White sees me I'll swear 'twas thee, Mary," and Priscilla half proudly, half shyly made the signal, which was at once understood and acted upon by Alden, who, truth to tell, seldom lost sight of Priscilla when in her company. Cartier receiving the message waded after a boat just leaving the beach, and came aboard dripping wet, an imprudence so common among the younger men of the Pilgrims on that flat coast as to become a serious factor in the terrible mortality which was to sweep off half their number within a few months.

CHAPTER III.

THE SWORD OF STANDISH.

The "little bird," probably John Alden, constant companion of Standish, had sung truly in Priscilla's ear of a second exploring party about to leave the Mayflower in quest of a favorable site for the town and colony the Pilgrims had come forth to found.

To this step they were urged not only by their own wishes, but by the importunities of Captain Jones, who having obeyed his Dutch employers and brought his pa.s.sengers to a point well removed from the Virginian or Manhattan sh.o.r.es whereon they intended to land, was now only desirous to put them ash.o.r.e almost anywhere, and make sail for England while the winter storms held off and his provisions lasted. His own interest, therefore, made him zealous in the Pilgrims' service, and so heartily had he offered his men, boats, and provisions for the expedition that the Pilgrims had made him its leader, some of them still believing in his honesty and friendliness, and some others feeling that the surest way to effect their plans was to induce the surly commander to make them his own. The event proved their shrewdness, for Jones accepted the appointment with great satisfaction, and told off ten of his best seamen to add to the four-and-twenty sound men who were nearly all that the Pilgrims could muster, since, thanks to the secret councils of Rose Standish and her a.s.sociates, all sick or weakly candidates were weeded out from the volunteers, and the Tilley brothers, William Molines, James Chilton, William White, and several others were kindly bidden to remain on board and nurse their strength for the next expedition.

About noon the tide serving, the four-and-thirty adventurers, divided between the ship's long-boat and their own pinnace, took the sea in teeth of a freezing northeasterly gale, and under low-lying clouds whose gray bosoms teemed with snow and sleet.

Thomas English, a mariner engaged as master of the shallop, held the helm, while as many willing hands as could grasp the oars pulled l.u.s.tily in the direction of what is now called the Pamet River, a stream discovered some days previously by a foot expedition under charge of Standish, and considered as a possible seat for their colony. The crowded state of the boats and the head wind rendered the sails useless, and oars proved inefficient to propel so large a boat as the pinnace, while the sea, rapidly rising with the rising wind, broke so dangerously over the quarter that English refused to proceed, and it was hastily resolved to run into what is now called East Harbor, land the pa.s.sengers, and allow the long-boat to return to the ship, while the pinnace lay to until the gale moderated. This was done, but owing to the shoals, the men were obliged to wade knee-deep to reach land, and the cold was now so intense that their clothes froze upon them as they resumed their journey on foot. Well may we believe what William Bradford later said: "Some of our people who are dead took the original of their death on that day."

Marching six or seven miles on foot, the party encamped, building a barricade, or as they called it a "randevous," of pine boughs to protect them from savage beasts or men, and within it kindling a fire beside which they sat down to eat such provisions as they had brought, and to solace themselves with modest draughts of the strong waters they used but not abused.

The next day the exploration was continued both by sea and land, the hardy adventurers marching through snow six inches deep, or upon the loose sands of the beach where the wind flogged them with lashes of icy spray and stinging shards. In pa.s.sing through a belt of woods traces of human presence were to be seen, especially certain young trees bent down and their tops made fast to the earth. Stepping aside to examine one of these, William Bradford suddenly found his leg inclosed in a noose, while the tree, released and springing upward, would have carried him ignominiously with it had not he seized the trunk of another sapling, and l.u.s.tily shouted for help. His comrades came running back, and not without laughter and some grim pleasantries released him. Stephen Hopkins alone understood the trap, and cutting from it a piece of smooth fine cord twisted of wood fibres handed it to Bradford, saying,--

"Here, man, keep it by way of horn-book to teach thee wood-lore in these salvage countries. It is the moral of what we used to see among the Bermoothes some ten years gone by. Ay, and the traps too. I've seen many a wild thing, deer or what not, jerked up by the leg and hanging from a tree like Absalom, until its master came along to cut its throat and dress it, as it hung."

"Glad am I that no such master came to release me," said Bradford laughing ruefully as he rubbed his leg and limped along.

"So thou wert in the Bermudas, Hopkins?" asked Standish who was of the walking party; "wast buccaneering?"

"Nay, Captain, all men do not follow thy trade," replied Hopkins with his boisterous laugh. "Mine was quite another office, for I was lay-reader to Parson Buck, and he was chaplain to Gates who was to be governor of a Virginia colony an' he could have reached it. But like our own adventure it miscarried, and we were wrecked on the Bermoothes. We abode there six months, and the Indians showed us how to trap deer just as Bradford was trapped but now, ho, ho!"

"Lay-reader wast thou?" asked Standish surveying the burly veteran with whimsical interest. "Well, now, I'd never take thee for a parson's lieutenant, Hopkins! I can hardly fancy thee meek and mild with bands under that unkempt beard, and a gown over thy buff jacket. Wert meek and mild in those days, Hopkins, and thy tongue, was 't innocent of strange oaths?"

"A truce to thy jibes, master Captain," retorted Hopkins not half pleased at receiving the jests he so freely offered. "If thou didst but know, my voice was more for war than peace, sith it seemed to me then even as it did before we landed here, that an expedition gone astray is an expedition ended, and that all compacts cease when their conditions cannot be fulfilled. We shipped to go to Virginia, and Gates was to be our governor; well and good, but here we were wrecked on Bermuda, and my rede was that every man was thus released from his promises and free to set forth anew for himself."

"So! Yonder threatening on the Mayflower was not thy first experience in raising sedition and discontent, and trying to turn a G.o.d-fearing community into a nest of pirates!" exclaimed Standish scornfully.

"Well, what came of it in that instance?"

"Why, Gates called a court-martial, tried me for treason by an authority I denied, and sentenced me to death."

"Ay, and what then?"

"Then Parson Buck who could ill spare me, since I writ half his discourses, and the admiral who would not see murder done under cloak of law, they went to Gates and so wrought upon his temper that he set me free and bade me begone, and I went right merrily."

"Thou mindst me of an officer under me, down there by Utrecht," said Standish meditatively. "He, too, was for setting up every man for himself in the plunder of a village we had taken, and I had given orders about."

"And what became of him?" asked Hopkins, as the captain seemed to have finished.

"Oh, there was no parson just there to make use of him, and no admiral to judge about my authority, and he was shot," replied Standish quietly.

Hopkins scowled and laid his hand upon his sword hilt, but Bradford, who had listened with both interest and amus.e.m.e.nt to the conversation, deftly interposed with some question about the route, and Hopkins, who prided himself upon his wood-lore, took the lead, and conducted the party by the easiest route to the spot where they would rejoin their brethren of the boat.

The Pamet River, reached at length, proved unsatisfactory for a settlement, but at its mouth were found sundry matters of interest,--the remains of a palisade formed apparently by civilized hands, the ruins of a log hut, quite different from the wigwams of the savages, and a large mound which when opened proved full of Indian corn, some sh.e.l.led, some on the ear, the yellow kernels variegated with red and blue ones, like the maize still grown in that vicinity. The snow upon the ground would have concealed this "barn," as rustic John Rigdale called it, had not the previous expedition noted and marked it, and the ground was so hard frozen that it must be hewed with the stout cutla.s.ses and axes of the Pilgrims, and the clods pried up with levers. Standish drew his sword with the rest, but after watching for a moment thrust it back into the sheath, saying to Alden who as usual was close beside him,--

"Nay, I'll none of it! What mine own thews and sinews may compa.s.s, I'll undertake right joyfully, but I'll never ask Gideon to risk his edge or his backbone in such rude labors as yon. Every man to his trade, and these are the sappers and miners with whom he has no concern."

"Is Gideon the name of your sword then, Master?" asked Alden half timidly, for Standish had the habit of command and was impatient of much questioning.

Alden however was a favorite, and the captain, like a lover, was won by the admiring glance the young man threw at the sword, as its owner unsheathed it and laid the blade fondly across his palm.

"Why ay," replied he smiling down at it, "I have christened him so; but methinks, like other converts, he finds the new name sit uneasily at times, and would fain hear the old one."

"And what might that be?"

"Ah, that is what no man alive can tell. He who forged it of that rare metal which now and again falls from the skies, and he who first wielded and named it, have lain in the dust well nigh a thousand years, if old tales be true."

"A thousand years! But what is its story,--if you will tell it, Master Standish?" and the young man's face grew bright with excitement as he glanced from the soldier's face to the blade glittering across his palm, and seeming to laugh in the wintry sunshine.