CHAPTER XVII

HOW THEY KEPT THE SABBATH

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 only did 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 wigwam door, 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."

"_I_ do 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 acquaintances paddled 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 into the 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 of edibles,--"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 went to 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 serve him 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 not followed; 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 soon come 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 should sleep 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 frightened eyes 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.