Trug was the big, grizzled mastiff, who had guarded the house and the cattle faithfully for so many years that even stern John Rigdale had not the heart to leave him to strangers; and Solomon, with the wise eyes of royal yellow, was the fat house-cat, whom Dolly had insisted on bringing with her to the new home.
"If it had been my pet, 'twould 'a' had to bide in England," Miles had told himself, in one bitter, jealous moment, of which he was justly ashamed. For, without question, Goodman Rigdale cared equally for his two children, only he held Miles, being a stubborn chip of manhood, needed frequent beatings, such as the Scriptures enjoined on good fathers to give their sons, whereas Dolly was just a little wench, with gray eyes like her mother, so she received very gentle whippings and triumphantly lugged Solomon on shipboard.
The sleek, striped creature lay beside her now, for Dolly, still ailing with her cough, was resting on the bunk beneath the blankets. Wrestling Brewster, a big-eyed, silent child, sat by her, and, sorry to tell, joined forces with the little girl in rumpling poor Solomon's fur. "You are the best pussy," Dolly purred meantime, and, either because of her flattery or because the warm blankets were comfortable, the cat made no movement to leave her.
Ordinarily Miles sniffed at the conversation of eight-year-olds, such as his sister, but this afternoon he gladly lingered in the cabin, for the accomplishments of the Brewster lads were amazing enough to lift them to the rank of companions. Both could jabber Dutch quite as fast as Miles could speak English, and Love, the talkative one, could tell wonderful stories of the queer Low Country city of Leyden, where all his short life had been spent. It was of Leyden he spoke now, sitting beside Miles on the turned-up mattress, where at night Goodman Rigdale and his son slept, and Miles, with a question here and there to draw out what he sought, listened again to the story of the Pilgrims.
Love had good reason to know it well, for his father, Elder Brewster, had been from the first one of the leaders of the little company. He had given all his substance to help the cause of that faith which the bishops of the great Established Church of England held it right to crush out; he had suffered imprisonment for the sake of that faith; and finally, that he and his friends might worship God as they thought best, had gone into exile in Holland.
There for twelve years the Pilgrim church held its own, though its members, for all their efforts to support themselves in that strange country, fared hardly and poorly. Good Deacon Fuller, the physician, had been glad to earn his living as a say or serge maker; Master William Bradford had been a maker of fustian; and the Elder had maintained his family and aided his poorer companions by teaching English to Danish and German gentlemen, and later by printing English books.
Love told also of Master Carver, the recently elected governor of the company, who had given his whole fortune to the Pilgrim cause; and he spoke of gallant Master Edward Winslow, who, travelling in the Low Countries with his newly married wife, had come to know and to respect the Pilgrim folk and finally to cast in his lot with theirs. And, best of all, Love could tell of Captain Standish.
There the boy turned to what Miles had been waiting to hear, and be sure that now he eagerly drank in each word: how the Captain came of a great family in Lancashire, where he had a vast estate which his kinsfolk had taken from him,—so Love had once heard him say to the Elder; how he had fought bravely against the wicked Spaniards, as far back as the time of Queen Bess, when Miles Standish was a very young man indeed; and how, of a sudden, he had come with his young wife and joined himself to the Pilgrims, why, none could say, for he was "not of our faith," Love gravely quoted the older people.
That last did not greatly displease Miles, perhaps because his own father was rather a Puritan than an ardent Separatist, as those were called who, like the Pilgrims of Leyden, broke off all communion with the Established Church. Goodman John Rigdale grumbled about the bishops and the vestments of the clergymen and other matters which Miles neither heeded nor comprehended, but, for all his grumbling, as often as the law insisted, he and his household went to church. One of the first and liveliest recollections of childhood which Miles kept, was of how the red light from the painted windows that his father hated used to shift along the dark oak of the old pews.
Lately, though, John Rigdale had spoken out too openly against the service book, and there had been a citation before the ecclesiastical court. Miles scarcely understood the matter, but he knew that Dun-face, the pet heifer, had been sold to pay a fine, and that their landlord, swearing that he was too good a Church of England man to suffer a pestilent Separatist hold a farm of him, had refused to renew the lease, bought long ago by Miles's grandfather, which now ran out.
Then had come Master Stephen Hopkins, the London tanner, whose first wife had been a distant cousin of John Rigdale's, and he had talked of the new country over seas, where a man might have land and a farm of his own for the asking and worship to please his conscience, not the king's bishops. Master Hopkins had already made up his mind to embark with the people from Leyden; he had met their agent, Master Cushman, and he was acquainted with some of the London merchants who had formed a partnership with the Leyden people, the Londoners to furnish money to pay the expenses of the long voyage, the Separatists to give themselves and their families to defend and till the plantation thus gained.
In the end, Master Hopkins's statements were so weighty that Goodman Rigdale followed his example. The stout farm horse and the cows and the pigs were all led away to market, and Dolly cried over each one; and Goodwife Rigdale, too, wept a little when most of the bits of furniture were sold. But Miles thought it all very merry and stirring,—the breaking up of the home he had known, the journey to Southampton, all amidst new sights and sounds, and the ship, and the long voyage over the sea, till the Mayflower dropped anchor off Cape Cod.
He was more than a bit weary of the voyage and the ship now, however, as he sat on the turned-up mattress in his father's stuffy little cabin. The dead air was cold without being bracing, and Miles broke short Love's discourse on the journey of the Leyden Pilgrims into England, by springing up and stamping his chilled feet.
"It is a shrewd cold day," said his companion. "See!" He puffed at the air, and his breath made a little white cloud. "Maybe we'd best go up on deck and run."
At that word the two older boys turned to the door, but Wrestling shook his head and, pressing closer to Dolly, whispered: "Before I go, I want that you show me the Indian basket."
Miles overheard, and delayed to draw from beneath the bunk the deal box in which the treasure was kept. Wrestling was so young that he seemed hardly more than a baby, and as a baby Miles had a kindly, protecting feeling for him; when he rose with the box he opened it so the little boy might have the first sight. Within lay a tiny basket all of silk grass, pictured on which in black and white were birds and flowers of a curious pattern.
"Did your father truly bring it from the Indians?" Love asked.
"He brought it home to me," Dolly explained proudly. "It was in an Indian house, and my father found it when he went ashore with Captain Standish. And so he brought it to me."
Wrestling touched the fragile thing gingerly. "I wish our father fought the Indians once," he murmured.
"It is better to be an Elder," Love rebuked him sternly; then added, lest Dolly's feelings be hurt, "though, to be sure, there can be but one Elder in a company. The rest must be fighting men, must they not, Miles?"
But Miles gave no heed; for just then the sound of soft footsteps made him glance to the open door, at which the light drifted in, and there, standing on the threshold, he saw his mother.
Years afterward, when he looked back, Miles realized Goodwife Rigdale had been a young woman then, not above thirty, but in those days it seemed to him she must be old, because she was his mother; he even wondered that she had not hair streaked with gray, like Mistress Brewster. Mothers were always old, he generalized rashly, just as they were always gentle-spoken and full of kindness; only that last judgment he revoked, after he came aboard the Mayflower and heard Goodwife Billington, a true London virago, rail at her sons and saw her cuff them.
But his own mother was not to be belittled by naming her with Ellen Billington; she was everything that was good and to be loved, even if she did not wear such a brave gown as Mistress Winslow, nor have such pink cheeks as Mistress Standish. Miles drew away from the bunk, against which he had been leaning, to make room for her to sit, though he did it awkwardly, because Love and Wrestling were looking.
"I'll bide a bit now with my little maid," she said, as she drew the blankets more closely about Dolly. "You'll want to be running up on deck now, I can guess, deary, and Love and Wrestling too, if Mistress Brewster will suffer it."
"Mother, is the shallop in sight?" Miles cried eagerly. For, since the exploring party sailed forth a week before, there had come so great a storm that hearts aboard the Mayflower were not a little anxious for their welfare.
"They've made out a sail to the southward, I heard the talk run. Go you and learn further, Miles. Your father will be on deck too."
Miles reddened a little; why would she speak as if he were a young boy, to need his father? "Come, lads," he said, in a very old tone, to hide his mortification, and led the way from the cabin. As he passed out at the door, he heard a sorrowful wail from Dolly: "O me! Mammy, can I not run about with them soon?"
But Miles forgot Dolly's woes and all, when he clambered into the bracing air of the deck, whither the most of the hale ones of the company had, like himself, bustled to watch the approaching shallop. Shreds of dappled cloud half obscured the east, but low in the west the sun was cold and yellow, and its light flecked the water and made the sail of the distant craft gleam like gold.
Miles stared till for very dazzle he could see no longer, then turned his gaze inboard, where it rested on the slender figure of a woman, who leaned against the mainmast. When the light got out of his eyes, he perceived it was Mistress Rose Standish, who, while he was still gazing on her, came to the bulwark beside him, but, without seeming to see him, stood looking toward the shallop.
Once and again Miles glanced up at her, thinking how bonny she was with the flush on her cheeks and her brown hair straying from beneath her hood across her forehead; and then he grew suddenly hot, for she chanced to look down, and their eyes met. He drew away bashfully and stared again at the shallop; the sun had now dropped lower, so the waves around it were sombre, but within the boat sparkled a gleam of light on metal armor. Miles almost thought to be able to distinguish the forms of the men, and presently their faces. "Yon is the Captain," he broke out, half aloud.
"Do you see him, too?" Mistress Standish spoke, as if he had addressed her.
"That's he, by the mast, with the steel corselet."
She looked down again, and the boy noted her eyes were moist, though she smiled as she said: "You seem to know the Captain very well, sir."
"I'd know him anywhere," Miles answered earnestly. "You understand, he was right kind to me."
Then he broke off speech, for the shallop was now fairly alongside, and the men in her were calling to those on shipboard greetings and questions and answers. Mistress Standish moved quickly toward the gangway, and Miles saw her meet the Captain, when he clambered up the ladder.
Next after him came Master William Bradford, and suddenly it struck with a shock on Miles's remembrance that Mistress Bradford was dead, drowned alongside the Mayflower on the very day after the shallop sailed, and her body carried away among the waves. Master Bradford, for all the weariness in his movements, looked cheerful and hopeful as he gained the deck, and his eyes went glancing over the women gathered there with such a certainty of meeting one that, child though he was, Miles realized something of the pity of it.
But after Elder Brewster had led Master Bradford away, the horror and the pity slipped quickly from Miles. Drawing over closer to the gangway ladder, he stood watching the rest of the shallop's company scramble to the deck, and, listening to every scrap of speech, was soon eager as any of the other boys in questioning the sailors and Hopkins's man, Dotey.
The minutes ran on till dim twilight had darkened upon the water, when at last, bursting with news, Miles clambered down again to Goodwife Rigdale in the cabin. "They've found a place for us to settle, mother," he announced, barely within the door.
Goodwife Rigdale hushed him with a finger on her lips; Dolly was asleep, so he must speak softly.
Miles curled himself up on the floor at his mother's feet, with his elbow on her knee, and whispered: "'Tis at a place called Thievish Harbor—"
"Nay, that's an ill name," commented the Goodwife.
"'Tis because a savage stole a harpoon from a ship's boat that once put in there to truck, so says Robert Coppin, the pilot. It lies across a great bay here, and there are fair green islands and many brooks and cleared land and tall trees. We are going thither, all of us, mother. The ship is to sail so soon as the wind favors. And if they like of it on further look, we'll go ashore and stay. I want to go ashore again," he ended wistfully; "the week's out that father said I must stay on the ship. Won't you beg him take me ashore first thing when we come thither, mother?"
The flickering light that reached them from the lantern hung outside the cabin door was blotted out then, as Goodman Rigdale himself came in. Miles dared ask no favors of him directly, however, but, scrambling to his feet, stood silent and unobtrusive, though he listened eagerly to all his father had to say of Thievish Harbor, which he called Plymouth. "So it is named on the maps that were drawn by Captain Smith," he said, to which Goodwife Rigdale answered quickly: "I am glad for the name. Do you not have in mind, John, how kindly the people at our English Plymouth dealt by us when we had to put in at their harbor?"
But this new Plymouth in America bore little resemblance to Plymouth in Devonshire, as Miles found, to his surprise, when he had his first sight of the place where the company was to settle. It was on the afternoon of the day succeeding the return of the shallop that, the wind at last favoring, the Mayflower steered her course for the bay of Plymouth. The sunshine was strong and clear, and the air mild, so Goodwife Rigdale suffered Dolly come up on deck, where, well wrapped in a cloak, she stood between her mother and Miles.
Others in plenty, all the passengers who could walk about, were watching for a glimpse of the new home, but Miles, in his eagerness, scarcely heeded his companions. He strained his eyes to see the headlands, brave with evergreen, loom higher and higher, and ran to question his friend, Giles Hopkins, who had been talking with the sailors, as to what they were. Giles explained that the one on the left was not the mainland, but a well-wooded point, and on the right yonder the farther of the two islands, with the trees, was where the exploring party had spent their Sabbath.
By the time Miles returned to his mother with the news, they were running in between the point and the islands, and presently, well within the harbor, they dropped anchor in a safe mooring ground. All about them were headlands and islands; far to the right, across the bay, rose a great hill; and just over opposite where the ship lay a broad space of open land, with high hills behind, could be made out.
"Yonder's where we'll settle," Miles assured his mother.
"I see no houses," protested Dolly. "I thought there would be cottages, maybe. Must we lie in the woods, mammy?"
"Nonsense! We'll build houses," scoffed Miles; he would have blushed to own that, half unconsciously, he, too, had cherished the fancy of seeing on the New England shore straggling streets and tiny cottages, as in old Plymouth.
"You'll build houses, Miles?" teased his sister.
"Father and I and all the men," the boy bragged. "Build them of great logs. Then in the spring will come a ship with horses and cows and sheep, and we'll have farms, just as we had at home."
"With a hedge round the dooryard?" Dolly questioned.
"Yes, and meadow-land and ploughed fields. We'll have all in order when the frost leaves the ground," Miles answered confidently.
Then he looked up at his mother, and was astonished to see that for once her eyes were not on her children, but on the empty shore over opposite. Her face was wistful, and it came on Miles that perhaps she was not as interested in the farm concerns as he, who was a man, so he said quickly: "And you can have a garden here, mother, full of rosemary and daffadowndillies, just as at home. Maybe you'll not have to labor so hard here," he added more vaguely, not quite understanding her silence.
She smiled a little then. "That's a good lad, Miles," she said, putting her arm about his shoulders; then she bade him go to his mates if he would, and she led Dolly back to the cabin.
Miles stood alone, gazing at the home-shore and wondering where his father's farm would lie. Still thinking on it, he was turning toward the hatchway, when he almost ran into Goodman Rigdale. "O father," Miles broke out before he thought, "may I not go with you when we begin our farm? I'll conduct me well and be obedient."
He stopped, surprised at his own forwardness, and he was more surprised when his father, looking down at him gravely, said without chiding: "Our farm? Ay, Miles, so soon as there is work to do on shore you shall come with me and bear a hand."
"'Tis the forty and third time you've said that in the last sennight," Ned Lister answered dryly. He was lounging in the cabin door, shirt-sleeved and shivering, while Goodwife Rigdale repaired his doublet; Mistress Hopkins, to whom the task ordinarily fell, lay ill, and her stepdaughter, Constance, was so busied that, to relieve her, Alice Rigdale had taken the young man and his mending off her hands.
"Why do you not put on your cloak, if you be cold, Ned Lister?" Dolly spoke up.
"Because 'tis too much labor to fetch it, Puss," Ned answered, whereat Miles laughed, and the Goodwife's brows puckered; another might have said it was because the sewing gave her trouble, but Miles, who felt uncomfortably that his mother disapproved of Ned as a scatter-brained, reckless fellow, guessed that she had not liked that last speech.
He was sure of his guess when she hastened to change the subject: "Does it still rain upon deck, Edward?"
"Rain and naught else; the third day of it now, yet by the look it might pour on for a week."
"And my daddy's yonder in the wet on shore," murmured Dolly, pressing close against her mother's knee, and the Goodwife sewed more slowly, with her eyes downcast.
But Miles burst into lamentation: "I think they might 'a' taken me ashore. Since we came into Plymouth Harbor they've explored and explored, and never suffered me to come, but they took Giles Hopkins with them. And now the randevous is built on shore, and some of the men are staying there, it has rained and rained so I cannot go to them. But I'm going to-morrow, the very next time the shallop sails."
"To be sure you shall," Lister answered, as he scrambled into his mended doublet. "I'll take you along with me."
Then he swaggered away jauntily, as if he had promised ample service in return for his mending, and Goodwife Rigdale, with a bit of a sigh, said softly to Miles: "'Tis well meant of Edward Lister to see you safe ashore, but when you are there, remember, you are to stay with your father, not go roving with him."
Miles's satisfaction at Ned's offer was a bit tempered by her words, but he lost the remembrance of them next morning, when he saw the sun was rising clear and the shallop would go shoreward. At once he clattered down to the cabin to get his cap and mittens, and Trug, who must go with him; then ran up on deck again, where, in the chill sunlight, the men were laboring briskly to load the shallop. Miles watched them while they put in the felling-axes and handsaws and hammers, all the tools that were to build the new town of Plymouth, and the biscuit and salt beef and pease that were to form the workers' rations.
About the time the labor was ended, Ned sauntered up to the gangway, and, seeing Miles, very speedily helped him clamber down the ladder, and made Trug leap after him. Master Isaac Allerton, who was settled comfortably in the stern, grumbled at burdening the shallop with children and curs, so Miles put his arms about Trug, and, cuddling down in the bottom of the boat, made himself as still and small as possible lest, after all, the company, thinking better of it, bid him scramble up the gangway ladder again.
But the time for that was past, for the shallop, with her sail hanging sluggish, had crept surely out from the lee of the Mayflower, and now, catching the light breeze, actually stood in to the shore. Miles forgot the discomfort of his seat among the tools while he gazed toward the approaching coast line, where was to be his home. Behind him the sun was up, and the hills that rose away inland from the harbor were bright in the cold, yellow radiance, and the water and the sky that spread about him were both very blue. He glanced back over his shoulder at the dreary old Mayflower, and was surprised to find that, as the sun struck athwart her patched sails, even she was beautiful.
Then the movement of those about him, and the sound of waves crunching on the shingle, made him look forward again. Under the shelter of a high bluff, where a great boulder ran out into the water, he saw those standing who had kept the randevous, and the randevous itself, a rude hut of boughs. In his eagerness Miles jumped up, and Trug, springing up too, began to bark, but no one took note or scolded, for the men were busied in running the shallop in alongside the rock, and some, leaping over the gunwale, were already splashing through the shallow water to the beach.
Ned and Giles Hopkins made the shore thus, so Miles must do the like, and came to land all drenched and dripping. But it was land,—good, stable, brown earth, not the hateful, rolling ship,—he had beneath his feet, and, in the delight of the long unused sensation, he forgot he was wet and chilled, forgot his father awaited him, and there was work to do. He knew only that far and near the shore stretched widely, where a boy could run, so, for choice, he set his face to the bluff that towered above the landing.
Up and up, through the keen, dry bushes, that whipped his hands and face so he laughed in the mere delight of struggling with them, he fought his way till he came breathless to the bare summit. All about him dazzled the blue of the harbor and of the unclouded sky, and yonder on his right, through its fringe of bushes, shone the blue of what seemed a cove. Down the hill rushed Miles, with Trug leaping and barking at his heels, and paused only on the shore of a great brook, that, flowing out between steep bluffs, widened into the sea.
Another was before him there, his distant kinsman, Giles Hopkins, who, for all he was a sober lad of sixteen, was a good comrade to the younger boy. He now bade Miles come upstream to the spring the men had found on their last exploration, and Miles very readily followed him through the scrubby undergrowth, where the cove narrowed on the left hand, and on the right a high bluff kept pace with the boys. "It's on that bluff they mean to set the houses," Giles explained, over his shoulder.
"Then we'll have this big stream in our dooryards," cried Miles. "Won't that be brave? I shall build me a raft, and sail to those wooded hills on the other side whenever I choose. Though, maybe, Indians dwell there," he added, with a dubious glance at Giles; he did not wish to seem afraid, but, though he intended to be a soldier, he did not purpose to fight without a musket and a long sword, and he wondered how much farther from the shore his leader would venture.
But speedily his wonder had an end, for, breaking through a thicket of leafless alders, Giles halted at a little cavity within the sand of the riverbank, where the spring of sweet water bubbled up. Down lay Miles on the turf, and, using his hand for a cup, swallowed his first draught of New England water. "'Tis better than the brackish stuff we have on shipboard," he said, as he wiped his wet hands on his wet doublet.
"The savages must have known the spot," answered the experienced Giles. "We found this path worn down hither from the bluff, and see, here is a line of stepping-stones across the brook."
Miles glanced about him, half nervously, lest along the path or across the stones he see one of their former savage passengers approaching. He was at heart relieved when, as Giles led the way up the bluff, he heard in the distance the sound of an axe crashing on a tree trunk. Giles did not turn toward the sound, however, but went plodding on uphill, for above the bluff a second summit reared itself steeply. Miles panted in his trail, endlessly upward, it seemed, till at last he stood exhausted on a lofty hilltop, whence, far as the sea spread out before him, he beheld the wooded uplands roll away to westward.
Giles was explaining wisely what a proper place this hill was for a fort, and how Captain Standish had advised the company mount upon it guns, which should command to southward the spring, and toward the harbor the landing place and the houses, which were to be built along the river bluff, when Master Hopkins and John Rigdale, tramping thither, ended their sons' holiday.
"Is this the way you would work, Miles?" Goodman Rigdale asked sternly, and, fearing lest the next word sentence him to return at once to the Mayflower, Miles ran eagerly about the task they set him.
All day he tugged chips and branches for the fire at the randevous, but it was work on land, in the free air, where a boy could shout as much as he wished, so he never realized he was weary till night came. He had to pack off to the ship with the other boys and near half the men, but he had no chance to grumble at this, as did some of his mates, for, once aboard the shallop, he leaned against Ned Lister and fell half asleep. Only when the shallop scraped the ship's side did he awake to stagger up the gangway ladder and stumble away to tell Dolly and his mother of the wonders he had seen ashore.
Next day, being Sunday, no work was done, and the next day, being Christmas, Miles, who remembered what a time of merrymaking that was at home, thought he must idle again. But here on Christmas, from sunrise to sunset, it was all stern work. "We stain this virgin soil with no Popish holydays," Master Hopkins said grimly, and, though the rest did not exult in words, they labored with double fervor to show they did no honor to the day.
Miles had his part to do on shore that Christmas and in the days that followed, though it was a different part from that he had hoped to have. When he talked to his mother and Dolly of building cottages, he had fancied that perhaps he would be allowed to sit high up on a ridgepole and drive nails. He knew he would enjoy doing that, but in practice he was set less pleasant tasks: he ran errands, not only for his father, but for every man who chose to send him; he fetched water up the steep bluff from the spring to the workers; and he carried firewood from where the choppers labored upon the bluff to where the first house was building.
On occasion he even tended the fire and saw that the porridge did not burn, and more than once was sent to carry a portion of the food to the men who, unable to rise and get their rations, lay ill in the half-built log cabins. The numbers of these sick ever multiplied, for the close quarters and bad food aboard the Mayflower had caused a fever to break out among her passengers, and the exposure to which the men and boys often recklessly subjected themselves increased the roll of the ailing, and, at last, of the dying.
Miles was sorry, of course, for the men and women who sickened and died, but it was a sorrow that did not go deep enough to prevent his enjoying the open-air life, and the moments of play that he snatched from his work. For death had not come near any that he loved; Dolly and Jack Cooke had been ill, but they were getting better, and none of his other near acquaintances had been touched. To be sure, he himself went sneezing with a great cold, but it meant nothing, any more than did his father's cough; he did not worry for it the half as much as he fretted at the dull routine labors to which he was set.
One day in January he had a hand in more exciting work, for Ned Lister and Giles Hopkins, who were going to cut swamp grass for thatch, invited him to come with them, and Ned even let him carry his sharp sickle. Ned himself turned all his effort to bearing a fowling piece, with the use of which, after the grass was cut, he had been bribed to the afternoon's labor, for he was afflicted with a hard cough that racked him most piteously when he was set to any work but hunting.
So soon as they reached the piece of marshy ground in the deep hollow behind the first range of hills, where grew the grass they sought, one of those coughing fits laid hold on Ned. He really wasn't fit to work, he said, but, when Miles volunteered to do the task for him, he found energy to direct the boy's clumsy attempts with the sickle.
Two bundles of grass the workers were expected to bring home, and Giles cut his, slowly and soberly, while Ned dallied with Miles, till he saw his companion had nearly gathered his share. Then Lister snatched the sickle from Miles, and, finishing the work in a surprisingly short time for a sick man, caught up his piece with the exclamation, "Now we'll go fowling."
Leaving the sickles and the bundles of grass where they lay, the three picked a path round the verge of the marsh and climbed westward over the hills. Last of all Miles trotted along bravely, very proud that he was one of the company, and full of interest at passing so far inland. But on the top of the second long hill, Giles suddenly cried out: "Look yonder. Is not that smoke?"
Against the dull sky to the west Miles saw a little fine curl of gray, and the question was on his tongue's end, when Ned Lister anticipated it: "No, it can be none of our people so far from the shore. Savages, maybe. Say we go down and see."
Shouldering his fowling piece, he set out jauntily, and the two boys came stoutly after. They scrambled down a rough hillslope and through another level piece, all open and stubbly, westward still, where the smoke rose. "This land has been cleared; 'tis true Indian ground here," Ned spoke suddenly, and halted.
Miles stopped short five paces behind his comrades. He looked to the hills ahead, where the bare branches of oak trees stood out clearly against the afternoon sky. It was a lowering sky, and night was coming. He glanced behind him, and saw only the barren wall of hills, no sign of the harbor or of the Mayflower. Ned and Giles were looking at each other with a something so dubious in their faces that Miles felt a griping sensation in his throat. He wondered if he could find his way back as he had come, and, doubting it, drew close to Ned, who had the fowling piece.
Ned was fiddling with the lock of the piece and he spoke rather sheepishly: "I'm not afraid. But I'm not going to run into Heaven knows what with two younkers like you on my shoulders."
"Say we march home, then?" Giles suggested, and straightway, facing round, they retraced their steps pretty smartly.
Miles was still in the rear, and, as he went, he studied the long legs of his companions and thought how much more swiftly they could run for it, if anything came up behind them. Thinking so, he forgot to look to his feet, and, as they descended a gully, fell headlong with a great clattering of stones. "Wait for me!" he cried, in a sharp, high voice that did not sound natural.
Ned glanced back, with his face tenser than its wont. "Here, take the fowling piece, Giles," he said curtly; then, returning to Miles, he lifted him to his feet, and, keeping one hand beneath his arm, helped him to hurry along.
Thus they scurried down the hillside to the swamp, and, catching up their sickles and the thatch, pressed on toward the settlement. Not till they were panting up the landward side of the great hill and caught the faint sound of hammers in the street of the half-built town, did Ned suffer the speed to slacken. "You'll make a gallant soldier one day, Miley," he said then, and began laughing. "Though I take it no one of us was afraid; eh, boys?"
They all agreed they were not in the least frightened, and some such version Ned must have reported to Captain Standish, when he told how they had seen Indian fires. For next day Miles found himself quite a hero in the sight of the other lads, because he had gone far into the woods and walked boldly right into an encampment of the savages. But Goodman Rigdale chided his son sternly for such a harebrained prank, and after that made the boy stay within his sight while he was on shore.
Miles did not greatly mind, for his father and Francis Cooke, the father of his playmate Jack, were now engaged in a delightful work in which he liked to help. Lately the whole company of the Mayflower had been divided into nineteen families, and these two men, who had been placed in one household, were building together a cottage, high up on the hillside. His father's house, Miles insisted upon calling it, though Goodman Rigdale was at pains to explain to him that the cottage belonged not to any one man, but to the whole company; the Pilgrims at Plymouth and the merchants at London, who had advanced the money for the voyage, were to hold everything in common till seven years were up and then divide all equally, and till then no man could call a house his own.
Still, Miles knew that by and by his mother and Dolly and Jack Cooke would come ashore, as other families were coming, and they would live together in that house, so it seemed the same as if it belonged to his father. He looked forward to the time when they would all be under one roof, and he would be suffered to sleep ashore, for, though his father passed his nights at the Common House, there was no room for Miles, who at twilight had to journey off to the ship. But that arrangement drew speedily to an end, for the walls of the house, built of squared logs, soon rose to a good height; the chimney of sticks and clay was finished; and at last it was but a question of thatching the roof.
Of a dull afternoon in mid-January Goodman Rigdale set out to cut swamp grass for the thatch, and took with him Miles, who had not been so far afield since his exploit with Ned Lister. They went steadily up the slope on the shoulder of the great hill, and there Miles, who had run a little ahead with Trug, paused to look back proudly at the stanch, new cottage below. "Those are brave big logs in our house, are they not, sir?" he broke out. "'Twill last us a many years."
"That, or whatever house shall fall to us at the division, will last you all your lifetime," Goodman Rigdale answered shortly. "And you will lease it of no man. You'll hold a house and a farm of your own here one day, Miles."
They tramped on a time in silence, and Miles was making himself sport by crushing in the scum of ice on the pools along their path, when his father spoke suddenly: "You're in a fair way to lead an easier life than your father or your grandfather before you, Miles. And if you be the happier, you should be so much the better man."
"Ay, sir," Miles answered vaguely, and tipped back his head to watch a great bird that went flapping across the sky; he wished his father had brought along a fowling piece.
When they came to the swamp, Goodman Rigdale cut down the grass swiftly, and Miles bundled it, though he found it hard to keep pace with his father. Goodman Rigdale, being in haste, must at the last do the work himself, and, while he bundled the grass, Miles, remembering the stolen pleasures of his last thatching trip, picked up the sickle and tried a slash or two on his own account. He managed to cut his hand, and, though he scarcely felt the pain, because the hand was cold, he stared in some fright when he saw the blood come streaking out.
Goodman Rigdale gave him a rag to tie up the hurt hand, and also gave him some good advice on the need of care with edged tools, which Miles did not think quite called for just then. He tried, however, not to show any sign of pain, because that always displeased his father; and, as he thought he had borne himself quite bravely, he was much hurt, when Goodman Rigdale, on coming down into the settlement, said: "Get you to the shallop now, Miles, and bide on board the Mayflower till I send for you. You'll be of no service with your hand cut. Mayhap you'll be better off with your mother, too. After all, you are but a young lad."
"As you bid, sir," Miles said, respectfully, but very stiffly, and walked away down the path to the landing.
Once he stopped to kick a stone out of his way, and once, before he rounded the base of the bluff, something made him face about and look back to the Common House. His father was standing by the door, watching him, and Miles, feeling much rebuked, walked on rapidly. But the image of his father remained in his mind very clear.
Goodwife Rigdale was busied to and fro in caring for the sick ones, and, at her bidding, Miles ran many an errand, to fetch water from the casks on deck or heat a pot of broth in the ship's galley. But their joint labor soon ended, for, a few days after the boy's return to the ship, came a message from Goodman Rigdale: he was just touched with the fever, he said, though nothing serious, but a many lay sick ashore, and the Goodwife could aid them as well as himself; Mistress Brewster, who, with her family, had gone to the settlement, had offered to shelter her, and he prayed her come.
Next morning Goodwife Rigdale bundled her cloak about her, and set out in the shallop. Miles, standing by the bulwark, watched her go, but only for a time; it had snowed the night before, so the railings were white and smooth to the touch, and he found it of more absorbing interest to poke off strips of the frozen snow, and send them splashing into the cold-looking water beneath the ship's side. By the time he looked again to the shallop, it was so near shore he could no longer make out his mother's figure, and his feet were chilled too, so he went back to Dolly in the cabin.
At first he found it manly and grown up to be left in charge, for so he esteemed his position. The cut in his hand was healing well, and he felt he would have been working ashore, if it were not that some one must mind his father's quarters on shipboard and care for Dolly and Solomon. He ordered his sister about in a paternal manner; he rebuked her severely if she so much as showed her small, snub nose on the frosty deck without wrapping herself up well; and he even insisted on her going to bed punctually at sundown, while he, in the glory of manhood, waited in the great cabin to hear what news those who came from the shore would bring.
But Dolly took her turn when it came to their daily meals, for she had certain deft, housewifely ways, which Miles could not hope to imitate, and he was ashamed even of trying to better himself, after he heard the little woman speak like her mother of "men and boys that set a body's kitchen in a mash." Miles might tug out the pot of broth,—'twas all he was fit for; Goodwife Dolly would herself do the stirring and tasting; and though, among so many cooks, the broth sometimes burned, yet they always contrived to eat it.
The four of them—Miles, Dolly, Jack, and Solomon—ate their food together in the Rigdales' cabin: most times it was only broth, or perhaps salted meat and biscuit, which Goodwife Rigdale, before she went away, had laid out for them; but once Goodman Cooke brought them from the shore a large piece of a cold roast goose. There was but one drumstick, and each felt he should have it,—Jack because he had been ill, and Dolly because she was a girl, and Miles because he was the eldest. Solomon said nothing, but he purred his loudest and rubbed his head against Dolly's knee. They ended by eating the drumstick together, each a bite, turn and turn about, and what they could not get from the bone was left to Solomon, who dragged his ration beneath the bunk, and, with eyes big and fiery, growled at them.
The children remembered that supper, not only because of the cold goose, but because it was the last they ate together, for next morning Goodman Cooke took Jack to the shore. Miles watched his friend's small preparations enviously, and Dolly, who had come also to stand in the doorway of the Cookes' cabin, voiced a sorrowful wish: "I think I'd best go too, and see father and mother."
"They've no place to put you, lass," Goodman Cooke explained. "So soon as there is place, they'll send for you both, be sure. For Doctor Fuller says your father grows heartier, Miles," he went on; "you've no need to worry yourself."
"Indeed, I have not worried," Miles answered, in some surprise.
After Jack went, life on shipboard was not so pleasant. Dolly began to fret for her mother and scoff at Miles's authority; Miles grew cross; and the broth burned oftener than ever, and finally, giving out altogether, left them with nothing to eat but dry biscuit. With this woful tale of starvation, Dolly betook herself at last to Constance Hopkins in the great cabin, and Miles, glad that some one should make known their unhappy state, yet ashamed to do so himself, lagged on behind.
Constance Hopkins was Giles's sister, a slip of a lass, not three years older than Miles, but to him she seemed quite grown up. Certainly she bore the responsibilities of age in those days, for not only must she nurse her stepmother, Mistress Elizabeth Hopkins, who lay helpless in her cabin, but she must care for the baby, Oceanus, born on the voyage across the sea, and the little half-sister, Damaris, a baby also, not two years old. Yet somehow motherly little Constance found time to comfort Dolly, and cook a bit of meat for hungry Miles, and assure them both that their father and mother surely would come soon to look to them.
Dolly hugged the "big girl," but Miles could scarcely do that, and he knew no civil speech to tell his gratitude, so he was glad when, his eyes falling on Damaris, he thought to pick her up. "I'll mind her for you a bit, Constance," he offered.
Damaris was pleased with Miles's tousled hair and sturdy arms, that held her more firmly than her half-sister could; and Miles, never guessing what a source of misfortune her liking would prove to him hereafter, was much elated at his success with her. He tugged baby out on deck to show her the gulls looking for food in the water, and the bright crusted snow that sparkled in the sunshine on the wooded point. Damaris gurgled appreciatively and pulled Miles's hair; then, when he carried her back into the cabin, slept like a kitten, whereat Constance was so relieved and pleased that Miles gladly cared for the baby, his baby, the next day, and the next.