CHAPTER IV

HEWERS OF WOOD AND DRAWERS OF WATER

"TO-MORROW I am going ashore." Thus Miles Rigdale proclaimed, from his perch on the bunk in his father's cabin, to all who might choose to hear.

"'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.