CHAPTER XVIII

AT NAUSET VILLAGE

EASTWARD of Nauset, unchecked by headlands, as was Plymouth Harbor, but sweeping away into the very sky line, lay the ocean. The tide was now rolling in; far out at sea the water all was ridged, and, as the waves pressed shoreward, their crests, heaving up, burst into white foam. With each inward swell the water crept nearer, till now it reached the bare rock where Miles Rigdale, his knees level with his chin and his arms cast round them, was perched.

Overhead, Miles knew the sky was bright, and the dazzle of the water was ever present to his eyes. He strove to think on naught but the barren glare before him, yet beneath, in his heart, he was conscious all the time of an aching weight of misery and sick fear. For this was Nauset; he had but to turn his head, and, far up the sandy beach, where the storm-swept pines began, he could see the cluster of wigwams, and, nearer, squatting upon the shore, the stolid Indian folk who had dogged him thither.

Only that morning he had reached Nauset. There had been more than four and twenty hours of journeying, through unknown villages, and by sea in a frail bark canoe, the pitching of which, under the stroke of the waves, had frightened him sorely. All, indeed, had been fright and confusion and the wearying effort to hide his terror. For the Indians of Manomet doubtless would beat Trug over the head again till he was dead, and they would send Dolly far away, as they had sent him, perhaps do worse. Miles buried his face against his knees, and bit his lips hard.

Of a sudden, he was lifted bodily from the rock where he sat. The white water eddied all round it, he noted, and the warrior who held him had stepped through it to fetch him ashore. For a moment after he was set upon his feet, he stood staring out upon the dazzling sea, then turned and passed slowly up the sand, through a patch of sparse beach grass, to the village.

Slowly though he loitered, he came at last to the sunny cluster of wigwams; in their scant shadow the men--the warriors of Nauset, and those who had fetched Miles hither--lay smoking, and, liking their surly looks little, he stepped presently into the Chief's great wigwam, where the squaws were cooking.

He was hungry, for he had not eaten since last evening, so he stood waiting and watching the women, though he no longer sought to talk to them. For they did not show a friendly curiosity, such as the squaws at Manomet had shown, but rather scowled upon him, as if they already knew enough of white folk. It was from this place that the trader Hunt, who stole Squanto, had kidnapped seven Indians, and it was here--Miles remembered only too clearly every scrap of his elders' tales--that only the last summer, in revenge for Hunt's dealings, three Englishmen trading thither had been slain.

So the heart within him was heavy indeed, when at length he set himself down amongst the warriors at the noon meal. His place was next the chief of the village, whom men called Aspinet, just as it had been at every village where he had sat to eat, but this chieftain was not friendly, as the others had seemed. What few gutturals he uttered were directed to his warriors, not to Miles, nor did he offer to give the boy food.

Of necessity, Miles imitated the others by thrusting his hands into the kettle and laying hold on the great claw of a lobster; it was so hot it burned his fingers sharply, but, mindful that he was watched, he held it fast till he could lay it on the trampled sand at his side. His fingers smarted, and he dared not raise his eyes from the lobster, lest the tears of pain that were gathering in them be seen. Fumblingly he drew forth his whittle and was making a clumsy effort to dig the meat from the shell, when a dusky hand suddenly closed on his wrist, and the whittle was wrenched from his grasp.

For one nightmare-like instant the world seemed struck from under him; then Miles was aware of the reality of the smoky walls of the wigwam and of those grim-faced savages who sat round him. He stood up slowly, with his knees a-tremble, but he thrust out his hand bravely, and, in a stout voice, spoke to Chief Aspinet: "That whittle is mine. Give it back to me."

A moment he stood fronting the Chief and his warriors, then, with a sudden feeling that for sheer alarm he would presently burst out crying, he turned and walked slowly from the circle of the feasters. "I shall not eat of your food nor come into your house till you give back my whittle," he flung over his shoulder in a quavering voice.

With that he passed out at the doorway and set himself down cross-legged in the deep sand in the lee of the wigwam. The sun of early afternoon poured scorchingly upon him, and the sand, as he sifted it between his fingers, was warm. Out above the ocean he could see a great white gull that flashed in the strong light.

A little shadow from the wigwam fell upon him, and bit by bit broadened, while he stupidly watched the strip of dark advance across the white sand. It must be mid-afternoon, he reasoned out, when the warriors, crammed with food, sauntered from the wigwam, and several came leisurely to squat in the shade close by him.

Among them was Aspinet himself, Miles's whittle thrust defiantly in his leathern girdle, and the sight of that braced the boy's resolution in soldierly fashion; he must not seem afraid or willing to bear an affront from a savage, he knew. So, with a steady face, he addressed the Chief again, seeking this time to find the Indian words: "When your people come to us at Patuxet we do not rob them. And you were best not rob me, else Captain Standish will burn your wigwams."

For an instant the Chief puffed slowly at his tobacco pipe, and impassively eyed Miles's face; then he spoke, with some broken words of English and his native words so slowly uttered that Miles could half comprehend the import of his speech: "We do not fear the coat-men. Thus did we to them. There was a ship broken by a storm. They saved most of their goods and hid it in the ground. We made them tell us where it was. Then we made them our servants. They wept much when we parted them. We gave them such meat as our dogs eat. We took away their clothes. They lived but a little while."

Miles's eyes were wide and his lips parted with frank horror; only for a moment, then he recalled the hint of such a happening that had drifted to Plymouth, and the very reiteration of the story made it a little less shocking. "That was a French ship, and they are a different race from us," he said slowly. "An Englishman would not 'a' wept for you. And _I_ shall not." He drove his hands hard into the sand and blinked fast; the rough dirt hurt his burnt fingers, and he did not doubt the English folk, even the Captain, were so glad to be rid of him that they would leave him there forever, to the mercies of Chief Aspinet.

Squalid though the Indian wigwams were, he was faintly glad when the shadows had so lengthened on the land and so darkened the sky and sea that it was time to go to rest, for at least the blackness would screen his face from the peering eyes of his captors. It was to Aspinet's wigwam they led him, but the courage to refuse the Chief's dubious hospitality no longer endured in Miles; he would forgive their taking his knife, if they did not use him as they had used the luckless French sailors.

Obediently he snuggled down in one corner of the bed that ran round the wigwam, crowded and comfortless as was his bed at Manomet, but here neither Trug nor Dolly lay beside him. The sound of the sea, too, was strange; out-of-doors he could hear it,--the slow crash of the incoming tide that grew fainter and fainter.

Dolly and Trug, taken from him, he knew not to what, and the safe little town of Plymouth whence he had fled,--all were present to him. He thought that he and Dolly, with the old dog beside them, were trudging up the path from the landing, only there were trees all along the path, like the limes along the church lane at home in England, and the houses were not log cabins, but English cottages. He knocked at the door of Stephen Hopkins's house, and at the same time it was the English farmhouse where his father had dwelt, and, when they opened the door to him, it was his mother who, coming across the hall, took him in her arms and drew him in.

The blackness of the wigwam and the heavy breathing of the savages came once more to his consciousness. He dragged himself wearily up on one elbow. Through the opening in the side of the wigwam he saw the sky quite dark, and he heard the receding swash of the ebbing tide. Yonder was the ocean, and a few miles westward lay Cape Cod Bay, and across it snug Plymouth. If he only walked along the shore, followed the coast line, he would come home.

There was no plan, scarce any hope in him, only he knew the English had forgotten him, and he could not endure it longer with a stolid face among the Indians. Almost ere he thought it out, yet with instinctive precaution, he slipped off the bed, and, holding his breath, crouched listening on the floor.

Slowly and carefully, with the trodden dirt firm beneath his hands, he writhed his way to the door-opening. The morning air struck coldly on his cheeks, so that for an instant he shrank back, but there was in it something free that emboldened him to press on.

Out through the door into the chilly morning, which to his more accustomed eyes seemed so pale, he felt detection was certain. But no cry alarmed him, no motion betrayed him. The soft sand deadened every sound, as he crept through it, hands and knees. The debris of twigs, higher up at the verge of the pine woods, pressed cruelly against his palms, but, for all the pain, he still crawled on, till darkness thickened about him, and above him the pine branches stirred.

Springing to his feet, Miles ran forward, fast as two frightened legs could bear him. Brambles that plucked at his tattered sleeves made him halt, with heart a-jump; tougher young shoots near tripped him; but pantingly he held on his way. Through the branches he could catch a glimpse of the dull sky and one very bright star that he judged shone in the west, so he headed toward it.

Little by little the star faded from before his eyes, and the sky lightened, whereat Miles ran the faster. A swamp, thick with juniper, barred his course, and fearfully he turned southward to pick his way about it. When once more he turned westward, the sky was pale as lead, and the birds were beginning to sing. But though the coming of dawn might well alarm him, he did not heed it now, as, through the trees before him, he caught the pounding note of waves, and, a little later, broke forth upon a broad expanse of meadow, beyond which rumbled the great sea.

Yonder, very far to west, lay Plymouth, Miles told himself, and, with a foolish happiness springing in his heart, he stumbled briskly along through the sparse growth at the edge of the wood. The morning light now was sprinkling the sea on his right hand, and the sky was changing from lead-color to clear blue. Out from the forest a brook, all awake with the dawning, came gurgling, so Miles stopped to drink, and tarried to empty the sand from his shoes; he guessed he must have run leagues, for he was very tired.

But up he got and tramped on pluckily at his stoutest pace, through the coarse grass of a great salt marsh, where the new-risen sun struck hot upon him. At the verge of the marsh an arm of the sea reached into the land, so Miles had no course but to wade in, shoes and all. The water was cold as the sun before had been hot. He clambered forth on the far side all a-shiver and, with his head bent, began to run for warmth's sake, across another bit of marsh and up a little wooded slope of sand. Headlong he plunged down the opposite slope, and there, in the hollow, by a brookside, unmoved as the pine trees themselves, stood two of the Nauset Indians.

He trudged back to the camp with them,--there was no other way. One of them, when they came up to him, as he stood numb with the surprise, uncertain whether to run or front them boldly, struck him a buffet in the face, but the other, catching his arm, muttered something that made him desist. So Miles stole round and walked beside the second Indian on the trip back. They did not offer to carry him nor to slacken their pace, and he feared to vex them with lagging behind. His shoes, where he had waded through the salt water, were stiffening, so they hurt his feet sorely; by the time he came into the camp he was fairly limping, yet that was but a little pain beside what might be before him.

Yet no one did him hurt. A throng of people gathered scowlingly about him and talked among themselves, while he waited, with his flesh a-quiver, but his chin thrust bravely upward. But, in the end, they only hustled him into a wigwam, where they left him with two squaws who were pounding corn. Miles flung himself upon the couch, in the farthest corner, and hid his face in his arms, but rigidly he held himself from crying. The stone pestles that ground the corn went thud, thud, till his head so ached it seemed as if they beat upon his very temples.

He had come to count the rhythmic strokes in a sort of stupor, wherein he knew only that the pestles beat, when suddenly they ceased. Out-of-doors he heard a whooping and a scuffling of many naked feet in the sand. He pressed himself closer against the wall of the wigwam; they were coming to deal with him now. He shut his eyes tightly and buried his head deeper between his arms.

They had come into the wigwam. He ought to stand up and show them he was not afraid, but he could not, and, when some one grasped him by the arm, spite of himself, he cried out in nervous terror.

"Me friend. You not know Squanto?" grumbled a voice he remembered.

Miles sprang to his feet. The lodge was full of savages, Aspinet and a score of other hostile faces, but he gave them no heed, for over him stood his old Plymouth acquaintance, the interpreter Squanto. With a great cry of relief, Miles flung his arms about him. "Oh, Squanto, take me home, quick, quick!" he begged; and in the next breath, "Where's Dolly? You must find Dolly."

The little squaw and the puppy dog were safe, Squanto explained leisurely; the Captain and his warriors had come in the big canoe and taken them, and now they waited yonder for Miles himself. "I'll go to him straightway," cried Miles, with a laugh that caught in his throat.

But, like it or no, he must wait yet a time, for Chief Aspinet and his warriors would feast Squanto and the Indians who came with him, and the savages ate long and deliberately. Miles, unable to swallow a morsel, sat between his friend Squanto and one who came with him called Iyanough, the Sachem of Cummaquid, a young Indian with so gentle a bearing that the boy felt near as safe with him as with an Englishman.

He could not help a little movement of repulsion, though, as they rose from the feast at last, when Aspinet came up to him, but the Chief was in a humble mood now and merely handed back the whittle, which Miles clapped promptly into his pocket. Aspinet would have put round his neck a chain of white beads too, but Miles shook his head disapprovingly; he wanted no presents of the uncivil Chief. Yet when Squanto said, "Take um," he thought well to obey the interpreter.

They came forth at length from the wigwam, under a twilight sky, and, in some semblance of order, the whole throng of Aspinet's warriors took up their march across the Cape. One of them lifted Miles in his arms, and, though the boy would have preferred some other bearer than a Nauset man, he contented himself, since Squanto and Iyanough walked close by.

At a good pace they passed up into the scrub pines of the sand hills, and turned westward, where, in the dull sky, the restful stars were beginning to show, just as Miles had seen them come out above the piny hills of Plymouth. The branches bent noiselessly apart, as the swift train pressed forward through the woods. The moon was up now; Miles, glancing back, saw it gleam amid the boughs, and at first its staring light startled him. Then they came through the trees out on broad sand again; the tide was far down, and out yonder, where the line of moonlit water began, lay the English shallop, with its sails all white.

Down the beach the naked feet of the Indians pattered; now the water splashed noisily beneath their tread, knee high, waist high. Clearly and more clearly Miles made out the figures of the men in the shallop, erect and musket in hand, the gleam of the corselets and helmets, their faces almost.

It was Captain Standish himself, who, slipping his ready musket to one hand, reached over the gunwale and, grasping Miles by the waistband, dropped him down into the bottom of the shallop. As he did so he uttered something that sounded like a fervent "Thank God!"

Miles neither heard nor heeded that, but he did remember of a sudden that he was a wretched, little fugitive criminal, now delivered into the hands of English justice, and even his hero, who had been his friend, had thought fit to take him up roughly and drop him down against his boots. He rolled a little out of the way, and, crouching against the side of the boat, buried his face in his arms.