Yes, a Pot of Broth, and one more cla.s.sic than any black broth ever supped by Spartan; more pregnant of Fate than the h.e.l.l-broth compounded by Macbeth's witches; broth in which was brewed the destiny of a great nation, broth but for whose brewing I certainly, and you, if you be of Pilgrim strain, had never been, for in its seething liquid was dissolved a wide-spread and most powerful conspiracy that in its fruition would have left Plymouth Rock a funeral monument in a field of blood.

Hardly an hour after the pinnace had landed its pa.s.sengers at the Rock, and the Pamet, sullenly declining farther hospitality, had proceeded on his way to meet Obtakiest and report his ill success, when Winslow with John Hampden and Hobomok entered the village from the north, sore spent with travel and scanty food, but laden with matter of the profoundest interest. A Council of the chiefs, including nearly all of the Mayflower men, was immediately called together in the Common house, now used altogether for these a.s.semblages and for divine worship, and first Standish and then Winslow were called upon for their reports.

The captain's was given with military brevity.

"I have brought a hundred bushels of corn and all the men I carried away. The savages are no doubt disaffected, and a notorious blood-thirsty rascal called Wituwamat, a Neponset, brought Canac.u.m a knife wherewith to kill some one, and I fancy 't is myself; but though he impudently delivered both knife and message in my presence, he so wrapped up his meaning in new and strange phrases, that I could make but little of it. Perhaps Master Winslow can read my riddle as well as tell his own story."

"Methinks I can, Captain," replied Winslow pleasantly; and then in smooth and polished phrase bearing such resemblance to Standish's rough and brief utterances as a rapier doth to a battle-axe, the future Grand Commissioner narrated how he had found Ma.s.sasoit as it seemed already dying, for he could neither see, nor swallow either medicine or food.

The sachem's wigwam was so crowded with visitors that the white men could scarcely edge their way in, and around the bed circled the powahs at their incantations, "making," said Winslow, "such a h.e.l.lish noise as distempered us that were well, and was therefore unlike to ease him that was sick."

This ended, and about half the guests persuaded to withdraw, the dying chief was with difficulty made to understand who were his visitors, and feebly groping with his hand he faintly murmured,--

"_Winsnow, keen Winsnow?_" (Is it you Winsnow?) To which Winslow gently replied, grasping the cold hand,--

"It is Winslow who is come to see you, sachem."

"I shall never see thee again, Winsnow," muttered the dying man, and those standing by explained that the sight had left his eyes some hours before.

But Winslow, after patiently repeating over and over the message of sympathy and friendship delivered him by the governor, produced a little pot of what he calls a confection of many comfortable conserves, and with the point of his knife inserted a portion between the sick man's teeth.

"It will kill him! He cannot swallow," declared the favorite wife, who stood chafing her lord's hands; but presently as the conserve, prepared by Doctor Fuller and of rare virtue, melted, it trickled down the patient's throat, who presently whispered, "More!" and Winslow well pleased administered several doses. Then, finding the mouth whose muscles had now relaxed, foul with fever, this courtly and haughty gentleman, this necessity of the Lord Protector of England, this Grand Commissioner of the future, with his own hands performed a nurse's loathly work, and ceased not until the sachem, refreshed, relieved, rescued from death, was able to ask for drink, when Hampden prepared some of the confection with water, and Winslow administered it. All night this work went on, and when morning broke, the sick man could see and hear and swallow as well as ever he could, and his appet.i.te returning he demanded broth such as he had tasted at Plymouth.

Now that especial broth was a delicious compound of Priscilla's compounding, and Winslow knew no more of its recipe than you or I do, nor were any materials such as should go to the making of white man's broth at hand. Worst of all, Winslow had never taken note or share in culinary labors, for Susanna was a notable housewife and had both men and maids at her command; but a willing mind is a powerful teacher, and not only Winslow the man, was full of Christian charity, but Winslow the statesman desired intensely that Ma.s.sasoit should remain sachem of the Pokanokets, instead of making way for Corbitant, who had once declared his enmity to the white men, and had only been put down by the strong hand.

So Winslow leaving his patient for a moment went into the fresh air, both to revive himself and to write a hasty note, begging Doctor Fuller to send not only some medicine suited to the case, but a pair of chickens, and a recipe for making them into broth, with such other material as might be needed.

Fifty miles of forest lay between Sowams and Plymouth, but a swift runner was dispatched at once with the missive, and the promise of a rich reward if he hastened his return; then Winslow turned to his fellow-statesman who stood looking on with an amused smile.

"Master Hampden, know you how to make broth?" demanded he.

"I have no teaching but mother wit," replied Hampden. "And you are richer in that than I."

"Nay then--here Pibayo, is that thy name?"

"Ahhe," replied the squaw modestly.

"Thou hast corn in store?"

"Ahhe," again replied the woman, and Winslow making the most of his little stock of Indian words directed her to bruise some of the maize in her stone mortar, and meantime calling for one of the egg-shaped earthen stew-pans used by the natives, he half filled it with water, and settled it into the hot ashes of the open air fire. The maize ready, he winnowed it in his hands, blowing away the husks and chaff, and poured the rest into the boiling water.

"So far well," remarked he gayly to Hampden; "but what next? I remember in the garden of our home at Droitwich there was a gay plot of golden bloom that my mother called broth marigolds, but we shall hardly come by such in this wilderness."

"Methinks there are turnips in broth," ventured Hampden.

"And there are turnips in Plymouth, but that is not here," retorted Winslow. "Come, let us see what herbs Dame Nature will afford."

A little search and some questioning showed the herbalists a goodly bush of sa.s.safras, and Winslow, who with the rest of his generation ascribed almost magical virtues to this plant, enthusiastically tugged up several of its roots, and cleansing them in the brook, sliced them thinly into his broth. Finally he added a handful of strawberry leaves, the only green thing to be found, and leaving the mess to stew for a while, he strained it through his handkerchief, and presented it to his patient who eagerly drank a pint of it.

Perhaps there really is magic in sa.s.safras, perhaps the child of nature throve upon this strictly Pre-Raphaelitish composition, perhaps Indian gruel with strawberry leaves in it and strained through a pocket handkerchief is the disguise under which the Elixir Vitae masquerades among us; certain it is that beneath its benign influence the sachem of the Pokanokets revived so rapidly that when, twenty-four hours from his departure, the runner arrived with the chickens and the physic, his master frankly threw the physic to the dogs, and handed over the fowls to Pibayo, bidding her guard them carefully, feed them well, and order them to lay eggs and provide chickens for future illnesses.

So this was the fateful broth of which we spoke but now, and its results were immediate, for although Ma.s.sasoit himself said nothing more than,--

"Now I perceive that the English are my friends and love me, and while I live I will never forget this kindness that they have showed me," he in a private conclave with some of his most trusted pnieses solemnly charged Hobomok with a message for Winslow, only to be delivered however as upon their return they came within sight of Plymouth. This message, to hear which the Council had been convened, was to the effect that the Neponsets had fully determined to fall upon the Weymouth settlers and cut them off root and branch so soon as two of them, who were ship-carpenters, had completed some boats they were now building to the order of the Indians.

The forty braves of the Neponset tribe were fully equal to this task, and if the Plymouth Colony would remain neutral they had no desire to injure them; but knowing full well that they would not, and having moreover a superst.i.tious dread of Standish's prowess and abilities, they had arranged with all the tribes lying near Plymouth to join with them, and on an appointed day to ma.s.sacre the entire colony.

"Ay, ay," interrupted Standish at this point of Winslow's narrative.

"Now do I comprehend some of the figures and parables of Wituwamat's impudent speech, what time he delivered the knife to Canac.u.m. The b.l.o.o.d.y hound--well, brother, get on with thy narrative."

So Winslow told how Ma.s.sasoit had been urged again and again to join the conspiracy, but never would, although his pride had been indeed sore wounded by a lying story of how the governor and captain and Winslow, his especial friend, having been told of his desperate illness, cared naught for it, not even enough to send Hobomok his own pniese to inquire for him; and now, being undeceived, he would himself have killed the liar, whose name was Pecksuot, but on second thought left him to the white men whom he earnestly charged to take the matter into their own hands, and with no warning, no parley, to go and kill Pecksuot, Wituwamat, Obtakiest, and several other ringleaders of the conspiracy, for, as he a.s.sured them most earnestly and solemnly, unless these men were promptly and effectually dealt with, both the Weymouth colony and themselves would be overwhelmed and ma.s.sacred without mercy. Finally, the sachem added that he as Sagamore of the Pokanokets, and as it were regent of the Ma.s.sachusetts, had authority to order the punishment of these rebels to his expressed commands for peace, and he hereby did so.

"And very sensible and good the sachem's counsel seemeth in my ears,"

remarked Standish complacently.

"Nay, Captain," replied the Elder sternly. "Men's lives are not so lightly to be dealt withal. We came among these salvages to convert them to the knowledge of G.o.d, not to slaughter them."

"Meseemeth, Elder," returned Standish impatiently, "it is a question of our lives or theirs. I should be loth to see your gray hairs dabbled in blood, and Mistress Brewster carried into captivity to drudge as the slave of a squaw."

The elder turned even paler than his wont and covered his eyes with his hand, but murmured,--

"G.o.d His will be done."

"Ay, so say I," replied the captain more gently. "But as I read Holy Writ the chosen folk were often punished for sparing their foes, but never for laying roundly on. 'Go and smite me Amalek and spare not,' is one of many orders, and if the commander-in-chief obeyed not he was cashiered without so much as a court-martial."

Several eager voices rose in reply, but Bradford lightly tapping the table around which the Council was gathered said decisively,--

"These matters are too large, brethren, to be thus discussed. Let each one declare his mind soberly and briefly, and without controversy.

To-morrow is the day appointed for our town meeting and annual election of officers, and I will then lay the case before the whole, and also will rehea.r.s.e our own conclusions. Then, the voice of the majority shall decide the matter."

And so began the reign of "the people" in America, for this was the first great question to be decided since the coming of the Fortune had so enlarged the colony that the Council was no longer composed of the whole, as it was when the treaty with Ma.s.sasoit was concluded.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE SUNSET GUN.

The town meeting was over, and its decisions if important were unanimous, even Elder Brewster, converted perhaps by Standish's Biblical references, giving his voice for the stringent measures rendered necessary by the growth and magnitude of the conspiracy.

Captain Standish with what force he might select was to take the pinnace, and under cover of a trading expedition make a landing at Weymouth, and first of all discover from the colonists themselves the truth of their condition. If it should prove as represented he was to at once attack whatever leaders of the conspiracy might be found, and in especial he was to slay Wituwamat, of whom Ma.s.sasoit had spoken as the heart of the conspiracy, and to bring his head to Plymouth to be set over the gate of the Fort as a proof and a warning to their neighbors on the east, whom they would not now punish, but hoped rather to persuade.

"And now, Captain Standish, it were well that you should select those whom you will have of your company, while we are all gathered together here," said the governor when the primary question had been finally decided.

Standish rose and looked thoughtfully from face to face.

"'T is a hard matter," said he at last with a gleam of pride in his eye. "Here be fifty good men and true, and I need no more than half a dozen."