CHAPTER II

THE NAME OF MILES

IN the great cabin two huge, smoky lanterns, that swayed from the beams overhead, cast blending white circles in the middle space, while the corners still remained dusky. Somewhere, there in the dark, a woman was crying hysterically, and others, calmer, but with startled, white faces, were standing beyond the group of men, who were gathered round the door of the Billingtons' cabin. Miles saw about him all the faces, terrified or menacing, but it was blurrily, as in a dream. He kept telling himself it was all a dream, an ugly dream, and presently he would awake to find he had never gone with Francis Billington, and very glad he would be to awake so.

But the grasp on his neck--it was big John Alden, the cooper from Southampton, who had dragged him out into the great cabin--was real, and so, he now found, were the faces of the men who confronted him. The Elder, William Brewster, with his gray hair, and grave Governor Carver, he noted among them, with a hopeless feeling that all the majesty of the company was come thither to judge him. Close by, he heard Francis Billington crying, with tearful sobs, not dry howls alone, but Miles dropped his shamed eyes to the floor of the cabin and did not look at his companion. He heard Goodman Billington's rough voice, thick with abuse and threats against his son, and then he heard the Elder cut him short: "Peace now, friend. Maybe the lad is hurt."

Just then, from within the Billingtons' cabin, whence a light smoke still drifted, spoke a quick, deep voice: "Come you in and lend a hand, Alden. There is work for two needs despatch. The floor here is over shoe thick with powder."

"Ay, Captain Standish," the young man answered promptly, and loosed his hold on Miles's collar.

There was a little movement in the group of men, and Master Stephen Hopkins, stepping closer to the cabin door, peered in and spoke solemnly: "A full keg of powder broke open! 'Tis by the mercy of Heaven alone the ship was not blown into atoms."

"I did not have it in mind to blow up the ship," Miles faltered, raising his eyes. "I did but touch off a squib--because it would burn bravely." There the words choked in his throat, for, a little back from the other men, he caught sight of his father, and Goodman Rigdale's arms were folded, his heavy brows drawn close together, and his lips, beneath his beard, set in a way Miles knew of old. "I did not mean it," he repeated huskily, and, gazing at the floor again, began crushing a fold of his doublet in his hand.

About him there was questioning and answering, he knew, and he heard Francis whimper: "'Twas Miles. He touched off squibs, he did."

"Squibs do not make such a noise as that we heard," Governor Carver interrupted sternly.

"'Twas daddy's fowling piece. Miles Rigdale and I shot her off, and he--"

"Let Miles Rigdale rest," the Elder admonished. "Do you tell us of Francis Billington."

Bit by bit a fairly accurate story was drawn from the two boys, though by such slow and woful stages that before it was ended Captain Miles Standish and John Alden, with their hands all grimed with powder, came out from the cabin. Miles stole a fearful side-glance at the Low Country soldier, who, being trained in the brutal discipline of the camps, was likely to prove a harsher judge than the Elder or the Governor, but, to his relief, he saw the Captain halt beside Goodman Billington, to whom he growled out some pithy advice as to the expediency of keeping his powder covered up and out of reach of mischievous hands.

Miles took heart a little then, as much as he could take heart while he knew Goodman Rigdale was frowning in the background, and even ventured to look up when he heard Elder Brewster say, in a tone which a trace of amusement and much relief made almost kindly: "Well, well, 'twas no Guy Fawkes conspiracy, it seems, only the folly of two scatter-brained lads. Your Excellency scarce will set them in the bilboes?"

"Nay, I leave it to their fathers to teach them not to meddle with such tools in future," Governor Carver answered gravely; and thereupon, with a surly mutter or so from other fathers in the company as to what the two culprits deserved to get, the men scattered to weightier affairs.

As the group thinned, Miles was left face to face with his father, who, making a curt sign for him to come after, led the way to the door of the cabin. Miles felt queer and empty at the pit of his stomach, and his fingers trembled as he began unhooking his doublet, but he followed along bravely. His eyes were still downcast, and, as he stepped, he counted the planks in the flooring and tried to think of nothing but their number.

Out in the darkness of the forward deck his father gave him such punishment as he looked for,--a beating with a rope's end, so hard that Miles had to set his teeth tight and clench his hands to keep from crying. Once, in the midst, Goodman Rigdale stayed his arm, and in the instant's cessation Miles, standing in his shirt-sleeves, felt the wind from across the harbor strike cold on his hot flesh, that was quivering with the blows. "That is for that you near destroyed the ship," his father spoke, gravely and without anger. "Now I must flog you for that you disobeyed me, and had to do with one of those Billington imps."

The second whipping ended, Miles huddled on his doublet, stiffly and awkwardly, glad of the darkness that hid his face. Goodman Rigdale was speaking again: "And ere you lie down to-night, my son, remember to give thanks unto God that by His mercy He has preserved you from being cast into His presence with the deaths of all that are within this ship upon your soul."

Miles did not quite follow the words, but, with a sense that he was the chiefest of sinners, and with a keen realization that his back and sides were smarting, he gulped out an unsteady "Yes, sir," and blindly fled away.

Aft of the foremast, as he stumbled uncertainly, he ran against a woman, and at once he knew it was his mother. In an unformed way he was aware that she had been waiting to comfort him, and at each blow had suffered more than he. Her voice was quavering now, though she tried hard to keep her everyday tone: "Come, come down to the cabin now. Father has shot a bird, and I've made a broth to our supper. Come, deary, it is turning chill here."

Shaking off the hand she laid on his arm, Miles broke away and ran to the mainmast, where the hatchway yawned. Slipping and swinging on the steep ladder, he descended headlong; he was not going to his father's cabin, nor did he know whither he was going, only that he wanted to be by himself. On the orlop deck he halted an instant before passing down into the hold; below, there would be many people, while here, for the moment, he was alone. He stood blinking at the dim lantern that hung by the ladder, till slowly it grew blurry to his eyes, and, raising his bent arm, he hid his face.

It seemed only a moment before he heard someone come tramping up from the hold, and felt a hand on his shoulder. He was turned round; he had to look up; and he saw, standing over him, Master Hopkins, very grim and stern, as was his wont. "I am glad to see these tears of repentance, Miles Rigdale," he spoke severely.

Miles wriggled out of his hold. "I am not repentant," he cried. "I wish I _had_ blown _you_ up. Now you can go bid my father flog me again." With that he dodged the hand Hopkins put out to detain him, and, jumping over some coils of rope, scrambled away out of reach.

Clambering over the chests and kegs that were placed upon the orlop, he paused only when he reached the next cleared space, by the forward hatchway that led to the gunroom. There it was all dark, a comfortable, thick blackness, and, to make it safer and lonelier, he crept under a table that was stored among other household stuff.

For a moment he sat panting, and listened to the lap, lap of the waves upon the side of the ship and to his own heavy breathing, but he heard no sound of any one's pursuing him. Doubtless Master Hopkins had gone away to tell every one that he was crying and repentant, Miles tormented himself; no matter, he was never coming out to be jeered at and preached to; he would stay under the table forever, and he would not shed another tear to please them.

So he sat, rigid and still, and each moment grew more keenly aware that he was sore from his beating, that his head ached, and his burnt hand throbbed, and his heart was big with a great burden of shame. Of a sudden, in the stillness and dark, he heard a sob. Then he found it was himself, lying with his head buried in his arms against the crosspiece that braced the legs of the table, and crying helplessly.

He had lost track of the minutes, but he had lain there a long time, he knew, for his arms were numb with the pressure of the crosspiece against them, and his throat ached with much sobbing, when he caught the sound of a footstep on the planking of the orlop. At the same moment, light beat against his smarting eyelids, and, opening his eyes, he raised his head to look.

The edges of the table under which he crouched were silhouetted blackly against the yellow lantern-glow, which crept midway into his shelter. Following with his eyes along the light, he could see beyond the table the joinings of the planks of the floor, a bit of the ladder that led to the main deck, and by the ladder, in shadow as the lantern was raised, the lower part of a man's body.

Miles stared breathlessly at the commonplace leather shoes and kersey breeches,--all the rest the table hid from his view,--while he strove to hold back a sob that was halfway up his throat. It would out, but he tried to turn it into a sneeze, which ended in a mournful, indefinable gurgle.

Instantly the light of the lantern, swinging round, swept almost into his face, and a deep voice commanded: "Come out hither."

Miles sat up, tense and braced. "Is it you, Captain Standish?" he asked, in a small voice. Not that, to his knowledge, Miles Standish had ever hurt any one, but he was a brusque, peremptory man, reputed of a fiery temper; it was for this, probably, that Master Hopkins had sent him hither, as one fitted to deal out further punishment to such a criminal as Miles Rigdale.

"Come out, and you'll speedily find if 'tis I," Standish's voice rejoined grimly.

Miles rubbed his sleeve across his eyes, the rough frieze hurting them rarely, then dubiously crept from his shelter. The straight course was to crawl toward the light, but to go that way would land him squarely at the Captain's feet,--a last touch of ignominy that he could not endure. So he scrambled painfully over the crosspieces and round the table-legs, till he came out upon the open floor the width of the table-top from the enemy.

"It's naught but you, is it?" the Captain greeted him, and turned the lantern so the light fell full upon him.

The boy struggled hastily to his feet. "Ay, sir," he nodded, without speaking or looking up.

The other drew a step nearer. "You're one of the knaves who tried to blow up the _Mayflower_, are you not?" he questioned sternly. "Did you steal down here to fire the magazine and finish the work?"

"I--I did not go for to blow up the ship, sir," Miles pleaded, raising his eyes. With amazed relief, he saw that, for all his gruff tone, the Captain looked more amused than angry.

Standish must have taken closer note of him, too, for he asked abruptly: "You're John Rigdale's lad, are you not?"

"I am Miles Rigdale."

The lantern was lowered suddenly. "My namesake, are you? Do you not think, sirrah, you bear too good a name to drag it into a powder-burning matter such as this?"

"I do not hold it a good name," Miles burst out. "I would they had called me plain Jack."

"Wherefore, pray you?"

"Miles is no name at all," the boy hesitated, between shyness and the desire to vent a long-standing resentment. "It makes me think of the stone in our village that said: 'Thirteen miles to London.'"

"Tut, tut, lad! Have you no Latin?"

Miles slipped one hand under the edge of the table against which he leaned, and picked at a splinter he found there, while he stammered: "N--no, sir. There was no school in our village, and, had there been, my father could not spare me from the farm. I must help him, for I'm mighty strong for my years," he added gravely. "And I never want to go sit in a school, either. I am glad there will be no schools here in the plantation, not till I'm a man and can do as I will. I hold that is the best part of all in planting a colony, except the lions and the savages."

"And what do you think to do with the lions and savages, Miles Rigdale?"

"Fight 'em, sir."

Captain Standish chuckled softly in his beard. "You'll fight 'em, eh? 'Tis a great pity, in truth, no one has told you what name you bear. You should know that Miles in the Latin tongue signifies 'a soldier.'"

Miles forgot that his cheeks were tear-stained and his eyes swollen, and looked up happily into the speaker's face. "I am right glad of that," he announced. "'Tis a good enough name, after all." He was sorely tempted to ask the Captain if he had been named that after he proved himself a soldier in the wars, or if they named him first and he grew to it afterward, but he concluded that would be over-bold.

Though, after all, he began to doubt if Captain Standish were such a terrible body. He looked pleasant enough now, as he stood in the lantern light,--a stocky, square-shouldered man of some six and thirty years, with yellow-brown hair and beard, and eyes so deep set under his brows Miles could not tell their color. The linen bands at his neck and wrists were small and plain, and along the sides of his doublet of dark maroon kersey the rubbing of armor had worn down the cloth. He was not so fine a gentleman, doubtless, as young Master Edward Winslow, but he looked the man of war, through and through, and, moreover, he neither scolded nor preached at a small sinner; Miles began to be glad in his heart that he bore the same name as the Captain.

"So, after all, you're content to be named 'Soldier' Rigdale?" Standish suddenly read the expression of his face.

"'Tis a soldier that I mean to be," Miles confessed. "I like the smell of powder."

"So it seems," the Captain answered, in the dryest possible tone, and then, as Miles's cheeks began to burn, went on hastily: "Which was it, you or the Billington lad, put out the fire? We found the blanket on the floor of the cabin."

"Mayhap 'twas I. I do not recall it clearly."

The Captain reached out his hand, and, taking Miles by a fold of the doublet-sleeve, lifted his arm. "No doubt 'twas you," he said; "you've blistered your hand here."

"I know. It aches," Miles whispered, with a sudden husky dropping of his voice.

"You'd better go to your mother straightway and ask her to put oil on it; that will soon draw out the fire."

"I can't," Miles gulped. "I can never go out among the people again. When they all think I tried to blow them up,--and when every one will know I have been newly whipped. I shall stay here forever." His voice died down as he spoke the last: it did not sound manly, but uncommon silly.

"You'd get mighty hungry if you did," the soldier answered him coolly. "You're going to your mother now, my man. Run along with you. I've to go on down into the gunroom, but I'll light you up the ladder."

Miles gave a tremulous gasp of resignation, and scuffed slowly to the foot of the ladder, where he paused and smeared the back of his hand across his cheeks; then turned to his companion. "Captain Standish," he hesitated; then, as it was the only possible way of learning what he wished to know before he showed himself among the company, he blurted out desperately, "Will you tell me, is my face clean?"

Captain Standish looked down at him with a funny expression in his eyes. "I think 'twill serve in a half light, if you slip directly into your father's cabin."

"Thank you, sir," Miles answered; then added hastily, "You see, there was something flew into my eye, and one that did not know might think--I had been crying."