CHAPTER XIX

FALLEN AMONG FRIENDS

AT last the shallop had put off from the Nauset shore. The babel of clamorous Indians sank down, and, in its stead, sounded the thud of muskets laid by and the clatter of sweeps fitting to the rowlocks. Sharp English commands Miles heard too, but still he did not raise his head, till some one lifted him to his feet.

All about him gleamed the hard whiteness of moonlight, under which the idle sail looked vast and ghostly and the faces of the men around him seemed unfamiliar. But he heard Captain Standish's voice: "Come, Miles, clamber forward with you. Your sister is fair sick for the sight of you."

He saw it was the Captain who had lifted him up, and he caught the arm that held him. "I'm sorry, sir, oh, I'm mighty sorry; I won't fight another duel nor run away," he whispered huskily.

"Don't cry, my man," the Captain spoke hurriedly. "It's well over and you're safe with us now. Here, Gilbert Winslow, help him forward; and, Stephen Hopkins, draw you nearer; I've a word to say."

Dumbly obedient, Miles clambered forward over the thwarts. Young Gilbert Winslow, one of the rowers, put out a hand to steady him, and, to the boy's thinking, grasped his arm roughly. They need not begin punishing him at once, he reflected miserably; he was sorry for all he had done, but when he tried to tell them so, even the Captain had thought him whimpering because he had been afraid.

Then for a moment he forgot his wretchedness, as he reached the forward thwart where Alden sat, and from beside him heard Dolly's voice pipe up. Miles slipped upon the reeling bottom of the shallop, and, stumbling closer to his sister, put his arms about her. "You're here, Dolly?" he asked, in a whisper, half afraid to let his voice sound out. "You're safe, you and Trug?"

Such a ragged, tousled Dolly as she was, half hidden in the folds of Alden's cloak, and almost too weary even to talk. She was quite safe, though, she found energy to tell him, and Trug was there behind her, tied in the peak of the bow. He was sore with his bruises, but Goodman Cooke said he would live, for all that. The Indians of Manomet had done neither of them further hurt, but had sent them to the Sachem Iyanough, who was a good man and had delivered them to the English that very morning. So it was all well, but for the poppet.

"Did they take it from you?" questioned Miles, mindful of his own experience with the whittle.

"N--no," answered Dolly, beginning to sniffle. "I--I did give her to a little maid at Manomet. Because she ground the corn and fetched wood all day, and she had no poppet. I gave it to her, and--and the bad old Chief, he took her away from the little maid--he did tear her up and make red cloth of her--and he tied her in his hair, my poppet Priscilla." Dolly curled herself up against Alden's arm and wept wearily.

"Very like Priscilla Mullins can make you another," the young man suggested kindly, though his face, in the moonlight, looked amused.

"'Twould not be she," wailed Dolly, provoked at such stupidity, and went on to cry as only a very tired little girl can cry.

But Miles, quite tearless, leaned back against Alden's knees, and, without daring to look at the men about him, gazed up into the shimmery sky. All the time, though, he was conscious that yonder in the stern sat Master Stephen Hopkins, and he thought of him and tormented himself with wondering what punishment he would inflict till he felt it almost a relief, when at last his guardian came striding across the rowers' seats toward him.

He came, indeed, but to help Alden unfurl the sail, for they were now well out from shore, and the breeze, though of the faintest, was worth calling to their aid. But when that task was done, Master Hopkins set himself down on the thwart by Alden, and presently spoke to Miles, who started guiltily, for all nothing worse was said than, "Take my cloak here, Miles Rigdale, and wrap it about you."

It was chilly, now they were out on the open bay, as Miles, in his torn shirt, knew, but, without looking at the speaker, he shrank away, muttering: "I wish it not. I am not cold, sir."

"Take the cloak as I bid you," Master Hopkins repeated, in as stern a voice as if it were a dose of poison he were pressing upon Miles. "Let me have no more of this sullenness."

He spoke so sharply and loudly that every one must hear; Miles thought to feel the indignant eyes of the company turn toward him. "I--I want to go up in the bow beside Trug," he whispered Alden, and, eager to put as much space as possible between himself and Master Hopkins, clambered over the thwart into the peak. There he crouched close to the battered old dog, who licked his hands, and lay so covered by the cloak that he could see only the blank moon rolling through the blue-black sky.

But, though he did not look on his companions, he could hear their voices distinctly. Alden it was who spoke first: "We are not heading for home the quickest way, are we, sir? We follow the shore--"

"'Tis that the Captain holds it best that we stand in to land and get fresh water," Hopkins made answer. "After that we are to hasten our shortest way unto Plymouth. For there's ill news astir at Nauset."

"What might that be?"

"They tell us the Narragansetts, that fierce tribe to southward, have risen and spoiled some of Massasoit's men and taken the King himself prisoner."

There was an instant's silence, during which Miles listened strainingly, then Alden spoke in a different, slow tone: "And after they have dealt with Massasoit, should they attack Plymouth because it is allied to him--"

"The pick of our fighting men are here in the shallop," Hopkins answered deliberately.

Miles felt something press against his legs as he lay, heard a sleepy whimper from Dolly. "Let your sister rest by you, Miles," spoke Alden, bending over him. "I'm going to aid at the sweeps."

"And you, Miles," added Master Hopkins, "were best give your thought to praying unto God that your mad prank may not prove the means of drawing the men from Plymouth at her greatest need."

Once more there was silence, save for the steady creak, creak of the oars against the thole-pins, and now and again the flap of the listless sail. Miles lay quite still and stared at the round moon, yet did not see it, for before his eyes loomed only the unguarded cottages of Plymouth, white under the moonbeams, and, crawling toward them from the black pine hills, the slinking forms of the Narragansett warriors. Even when he shut his eyes and, at last, for sheer exhaustion, slumbered, he saw in his dreams the sleepy little settlement, all unconscious of the danger crowding close upon it, and the horror of this that his own folly had made possible startled him into wakefulness again.

He saw the mast sway blackly against the dull heavens, whence the moon had dropped, and, with something of comfort in their mere presence, heard the men grumbling inaudibly, as they tugged at the sweeps. A dead chill was in the morning wind, so gladly he huddled the cloak more closely about him and drowsed once more. But the same vision of leaping savages and blazing cottages burned before his eyes, till, with a half stifled cry, he started up, as through his dreams rang an Indian whoop.

All about him yellow sunshine rippled on the water; English voices sounded cheerily, and with them mingled the clatter of Indian tongues. So much of his dream was true, yet it could be no attack upon the shallop, for Dolly, quite unconcerned, sat gazing down at him from the nearest thwart.

"You are to get up," she greeted him gayly. "We are at Cummaquid to eat breakfast with Sachem Iyanough; the Captain and some of the men have gone ashore unto him, and they have sent us roast fish hither, and there is clean bread from home. And you are to rise and eat with us, Master Hopkins says."

At that name Miles, still half dazed with sleepiness, sprang to his feet. Near at hand, across the noisy blue water, gleamed the green shores of Cummaquid, where he could see a swarm of dusky figures, and in their midst the glitter of the armored Englishmen. But nothing of the shore or even of the folk about him was quite real, save the voice of Master Hopkins; Miles did not look at his face.

Creeping into the stern sheets, as he was bidden, he choked down the food that was given him, good bread and fish, that seemed to him gall and ashes. For the men about him spoke anxiously of the need of getting speedily to Plymouth, till Miles, heavy with the sense of guilt, scarcely dared stir or breathe, or even think. Only when Master Hopkins rose from beside him did he venture so much as to shift his position; then he swung about stealthily and leaned his head upon one arm that rested on the gunwale. He let one hand droop into the water, and, watching the ripples slip between his fingers, thought only of their flow and fall.

So he was still sitting, in what looked a sullen fit, when a good capful of wind came ruffling it along the water, and the Captain and his squad splashed noisily from the shore. Miles heard about him the clatter of their embarkation, the creak of the hoisted sail, the brisk voices of the men, and he longed to slip back to his old place in the bow, away from them, but he durst not venture it. He stared down into the blue water, that now began to press more swiftly through his hand, and, when he lifted his eyes, the green shore was fading in the distance.

With a creak of the cordage, the shallop came about on a fresh tack, so only dazzling water that made his eyes ache now lay before Miles. Through the rents in his shirt he felt the sun hot on his bare shoulders, and involuntarily he made a restless movement. "What's amiss, Miles?" spoke the Captain's quick voice. Miles did not answer, but, feeling rebuked, sat silent, and studied the grain of the wood in the seat on which he perched.

But the Captain, sitting next him, began to ask him questions in a curt, matter-of-fact tone, as to what Indian villages he had entered, and whether he had noted signs of warlike preparation, to all of which Miles answered hesitatingly, a little frightened, because the men about him silenced their talk to hark to him.

Once he glanced sidewise at Standish, but the latter's brows were puckered and his eyes preoccupied, so Miles, not knowing whether he was worried about the savages or angry with him, looked again at his shoes. But when the Captain relapsed into grave silence, his fear grew greater than his shame before rebuke; so at last he plucked the Captain's sleeve and whispered him: "Is there any chance, sir,--maybe shall we come to Plymouth ere the Indians kill all the people?"

"What set such a mad fancy in your head?" Standish asked, almost sharply. "There's not an Indian within six league of Plymouth. Don't worry yourself for that, lad; you'll find the village as you left it, and all the women ready to weep over you."

At these first comforting words he had received since he boarded the shallop, Miles plucked up heart and drew closer to Captain Standish. But speedily he took note of the anxiety that made the Captain forgetful of him, and, with a new sorrow, he told himself that to his hero he was no longer "Miles, my soldier," but a foolish boy, who, because he was little, must be spoken to gently, and not even let know the full extent of the evil he had brought about. For, spite of Standish's cheerful speech, he could see clearly enough that every man in the craft was troubled and longing to reach the endangered settlement.

But the wind blew lightly, in veering flaws, so the shallop must make tedious long tacks, while the hours rolled out. The heat began to go from the air, so Miles was glad to wrap himself in a spare cloak, as the Captain ordered; and the sun, in the west, slipped behind gray clouds. The water darkened, and the twilight had fallen in earnest, when at last the shallop tacked in at the outer entrance of Plymouth Harbor.

At first the thickly wooded beach point screened the shore, but, as the little craft rounded it, the dim hills across the harbor were visible, and there, on the greatest hill, too low for stars, Miles saw sparks of light twinkle.

It was as if the men in the shallop all drew breath again, and Miles himself, forgetting his guilt and the punishment in store for him, cried joyfully: "They're safe!"

But in a moment half the joy went from him, for, when Alden, in the bow, fired his musket thrice, with startling reƫchoes, Master Hopkins told him grimly that the signal was to let the people yonder know he had destroyed neither himself nor his sister by his sinful foolhardiness. Miles hung his head sorrily, and, for all Captain Standish presently clapped him on the shoulder and bade him look how the people flocked to the landing, did not glance up till, with a splash of oars in the quiet water, the shallop lay to, by the dark rock.

In the thick twilight the faces of the people gathered thither could not be made out, but all the colony was there, Miles guessed by the babel of voices, and, after they had lifted him ashore, he knew it was Priscilla Mullins who hugged him undignifiedly, and he thought it was Mistress Brewster who cried when she spoke to him. But he had no time to make certain, for just then Master Hopkins grasped him by the arm and led him away up the hill to his house.

Within the familiar living room a candle was alight, that set Miles blinking as he was brought in from the darkness, but he made out Mistress Hopkins, with an anxious scowl on her brows, though, for all Miles's torn shirt, she did not scold one word, and he saw Constance, with her eyes red, and Giles, who had tramped in after him, and Dotey and Lister. "Then they didn't hang you?" Miles cried to the latter, too weary to be civil.

"Hang who?" asked Ned, pretty sheepishly, as his master's eyes were upon him.

"You said they were going to hang you--"

"Not I, never," vowed Ned, with his face flushing, and, slouching off into the bedroom, rattled the door to behind him.

Miles followed him thither speedily,--he was not to be coddled by two soft-hearted women, Master Hopkins said,--and Giles and Dotey came too. They questioned him eagerly of his adventures, but Miles, unflattered even by such attention, would not speak of Indians or of birch canoes, just poured forth his woes in a weary voice upon the verge of tears: he would surely be soundly whipped, and Ned had said they would be hanged and they hadn't been, and if Ned hadn't said it, he wouldn't 'a' run away.

"I am right sorry, for your sake, I was not dealt with less mercifully," Lister said bitterly, and Miles, glancing up at him, was checked in his lamentation; truly, Ned looked miserable, with his face white and a noticeable limp in his gait, and Dotey, too, had one hand bandaged, but, most awe-inspiring of all, Miles noted, as Ned unfastened his shirt, a vivid red mark about the base of his neck. "What was it they did to you, then?" he asked, but neither of the Edwards seemed eager to explain.

"They just tied 'em neck and heels," Giles volunteered presently, as he began undressing. "And before they'd kept them so an hour, they promised amendment and--Hey, Ed Dotey, make Ned cease throwing shoes at me."

With a wrangling word or two peace was restored, and the young men took themselves to rest; Miles noted that the ex-duellists drew the line at sharing one bed, for Ned Lister lay down beside him, while Giles and Dotey slept together.

How quiet and clean it seemed in the little chamber, Miles thought; and how blessed it was that the Indians had not fallen on Plymouth! Involuntarily he sighed for very peace and happiness, then lost all sense of comfort at the recollection of the morrow and the punishment deferred that yet would surely come. "Ned, O Ned," he began, and shook Lister, who was lying with his head between his arms. "Tell me, Ned, how greatly does it hurt to be tied neck and heels?"

"Um-m-m!" groaned the exasperated Lister. "Miley, if you say 'neck and heels' to me again, I'll wake up and thrash you."