CHAPTER XVIII
AT NAUSET VILLAGE
EASTWARD of Nauset, unchecked by headlands, as was Plymouth Harbor, butsweeping away into the very sky line, lay the ocean. The tide was nowrolling in; far out at sea the water all was ridged, and, as the wavespressed shoreward, their crests, heaving up, burst into white foam.With each inward swell the water crept nearer, till now it reached thebare rock where Miles Rigdale, his knees level with his chin and hisarms cast round them, was perched.
Overhead, Miles knew the sky was bright, and the dazzle of the waterwas ever present to his eyes. He strove to think on naught but thebarren glare before him, yet beneath, in his heart, he was consciousall the time of an aching weight of misery and sick fear. For this wasNauset; he had but to turn his head, and, far up the sandy beach, wherethe storm-swept pines began, he could see the cluster of wigwams, and,nearer, squatting upon the shore, the stolid Indian folk who had doggedhim thither.
Only that morning he had reached Nauset. There had been more than fourand twenty hours of journeying, through unknown villages, and by seain a frail bark canoe, the pitching of which, under the stroke of thewaves, had frightened him sorely. All, indeed, had been fright andconfusion and the wearying effort to hide his terror. For the Indiansof Manomet doubtless would beat Trug over the head again till he wasdead, and they would send Dolly far away, as they had sent him, perhapsdo worse. Miles buried his face against his knees, and bit his lipshard.
Of a sudden, he was lifted bodily from the rock where he sat. The whitewater eddied all round it, he noted, and the warrior who held him hadstepped through it to fetch him ashore. For a moment after he was setupon his feet, he stood staring out upon the dazzling sea, then turnedand 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 ofwigwams; in their scant shadow the men--the warriors of Nauset, andthose who had fetched Miles hither--lay smoking, and, liking theirsurly 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 stoodwaiting and watching the women, though he no longer sought to talk tothem. For they did not show a friendly curiosity, such as the squawsat Manomet had shown, but rather scowled upon him, as if they alreadyknew enough of white folk. It was from this place that the trader Hunt,who stole Squanto, had kidnapped seven Indians, and it was here--Milesremembered only too clearly every scrap of his elders' tales--thatonly the last summer, in revenge for Hunt's dealings, three Englishmentrading thither had been slain.
So the heart within him was heavy indeed, when at length he set himselfdown amongst the warriors at the noon meal. His place was next thechief of the village, whom men called Aspinet, just as it had beenat every village where he had sat to eat, but this chieftain was notfriendly, as the others had seemed. What few gutturals he uttered weredirected to his warriors, not to Miles, nor did he offer to give theboy food.
Of necessity, Miles imitated the others by thrusting his hands into thekettle and laying hold on the great claw of a lobster; it was so hotit burned his fingers sharply, but, mindful that he was watched, heheld it fast till he could lay it on the trampled sand at his side. Hisfingers smarted, and he dared not raise his eyes from the lobster, lestthe tears of pain that were gathering in them be seen. Fumblingly hedrew forth his whittle and was making a clumsy effort to dig the meatfrom the shell, when a dusky hand suddenly closed on his wrist, and thewhittle 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 wigwamand 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, ina stout voice, spoke to Chief Aspinet: "That whittle is mine. Give itback to me."
A moment he stood fronting the Chief and his warriors, then, witha sudden feeling that for sheer alarm he would presently burst outcrying, he turned and walked slowly from the circle of the feasters. "Ishall not eat of your food nor come into your house till you give backmy whittle," he flung over his shoulder in a quavering voice.
With that he passed out at the doorway and set himself downcross-legged in the deep sand in the lee of the wigwam. The sun ofearly afternoon poured scorchingly upon him, and the sand, as he siftedit between his fingers, was warm. Out above the ocean he could see agreat white gull that flashed in the strong light.
A little shadow from the wigwam fell upon him, and bit by bitbroadened, while he stupidly watched the strip of dark advance acrossthe white sand. It must be mid-afternoon, he reasoned out, when thewarriors, crammed with food, sauntered from the wigwam, and severalcame leisurely to squat in the shade close by him.
Among them was Aspinet himself, Miles's whittle thrust defiantly inhis leathern girdle, and the sight of that braced the boy's resolutionin soldierly fashion; he must not seem afraid or willing to bear anaffront from a savage, he knew. So, with a steady face, he addressedthe Chief again, seeking this time to find the Indian words: "When yourpeople come to us at Patuxet we do not rob them. And you were best notrob me, else Captain Standish will burn your wigwams."
For an instant the Chief puffed slowly at his tobacco pipe, andimpassively eyed Miles's face; then he spoke, with some broken words ofEnglish and his native words so slowly uttered that Miles could halfcomprehend 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 savedmost of their goods and hid it in the ground. We made them tell uswhere it was. Then we made them our servants. They wept much when weparted them. We gave them such meat as our dogs eat. We took away theirclothes. They lived but a little while."
Miles's eyes were wide and his lips parted with frank horror; onlyfor a moment, then he recalled the hint of such a happening that haddrifted to Plymouth, and the very reiteration of the story made it alittle less shocking. "That was a French ship, and they are a differentrace from us," he said slowly. "An Englishman would not 'a' wept foryou. And _I_ shall not." He drove his hands hard into the sand andblinked fast; the rough dirt hurt his burnt fingers, and he did notdoubt the English folk, even the Captain, were so glad to be rid ofhim that they would leave him there forever, to the mercies of ChiefAspinet.
Squalid though the Indian wigwams were, he was faintly glad when theshadows had so lengthened on the land and so darkened the sky and seathat it was time to go to rest, for at least the blackness would screenhis face from the peering eyes of his captors. It was to Aspinet'swigwam they led him, but the courage to refuse the Chief's dubioushospitality no longer endured in Miles; he would forgive their takinghis knife, if they did not use him as they had used the luckless Frenchsailors.
Obediently he snuggled down in one corner of the bed that ran roundthe wigwam, crowded and comfortless as was his bed at Manomet, buthere 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 theincoming tide that grew fainter and fainter.
Dolly and Trug, taken from him, he knew not to what, and the safelittle town of Plymouth whence he had fled,--all were present to him.He thought that he and Dolly, with the old dog beside them, weretrudging up the path from the landing, only there were trees all alongthe path, like the limes along the church lane at home in England, andthe houses were not log cabins, but English cottages. He knocked atthe door of Stephen Hopkins's house, and at the same time it was theEnglish farmhouse where his father had dwelt, and, when they opened thedoor to him, it was his mother who, coming across the hall, took him inher arms and drew him in.
The blackness of the wigwam and the heavy breathing of the savages cameonce more to his consciousness. He dragged himself wearily up on oneelbow. Through the opening in the side of the wigwam he saw the skyquite dark, and he heard the receding swash of the ebbing tide. Yonderwas the ocean, and a few miles westward lay Cape Cod Bay, and across itsnug Plymouth. If he only w
alked along the shore, followed the coastline, he would come home.
There was no plan, scarce any hope in him, only he knew the English hadforgotten him, and he could not endure it longer with a stolid faceamong the Indians. Almost ere he thought it out, yet with instinctiveprecaution, he slipped off the bed, and, holding his breath, crouchedlistening on the floor.
Slowly and carefully, with the trodden dirt firm beneath his hands, hewrithed his way to the door-opening. The morning air struck coldly onhis cheeks, so that for an instant he shrank back, but there was in itsomething free that emboldened him to press on.
Out through the door into the chilly morning, which to his moreaccustomed eyes seemed so pale, he felt detection was certain. But nocry alarmed him, no motion betrayed him. The soft sand deadened everysound, as he crept through it, hands and knees. The debris of twigs,higher up at the verge of the pine woods, pressed cruelly againsthis palms, but, for all the pain, he still crawled on, till darknessthickened about him, and above him the pine branches stirred.
Springing to his feet, Miles ran forward, fast as two frightened legscould bear him. Brambles that plucked at his tattered sleeves made himhalt, with heart a-jump; tougher young shoots near tripped him; butpantingly he held on his way. Through the branches he could catch aglimpse of the dull sky and one very bright star that he judged shonein the west, so he headed toward it.
Little by little the star faded from before his eyes, and the skylightened, whereat Miles ran the faster. A swamp, thick with juniper,barred his course, and fearfully he turned southward to pick his wayabout 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 dawnmight well alarm him, he did not heed it now, as, through the treesbefore him, he caught the pounding note of waves, and, a little later,broke forth upon a broad expanse of meadow, beyond which rumbled thegreat sea.
Yonder, very far to west, lay Plymouth, Miles told himself, and, witha foolish happiness springing in his heart, he stumbled briskly alongthrough the sparse growth at the edge of the wood. The morning lightnow was sprinkling the sea on his right hand, and the sky was changingfrom lead-color to clear blue. Out from the forest a brook, all awakewith the dawning, came gurgling, so Miles stopped to drink, and tarriedto 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 thecoarse grass of a great salt marsh, where the new-risen sun struck hotupon him. At the verge of the marsh an arm of the sea reached into theland, so Miles had no course but to wade in, shoes and all. The waterwas cold as the sun before had been hot. He clambered forth on the farside all a-shiver and, with his head bent, began to run for warmth'ssake, 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 theNauset Indians.
He trudged back to the camp with them,--there was no other way. One ofthem, 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 inthe face, but the other, catching his arm, muttered something that madehim desist. So Miles stole round and walked beside the second Indianon the trip back. They did not offer to carry him nor to slacken theirpace, and he feared to vex them with lagging behind. His shoes, wherehe had waded through the salt water, were stiffening, so they hurt hisfeet 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 abouthim and talked among themselves, while he waited, with his flesha-quiver, but his chin thrust bravely upward. But, in the end, theyonly hustled him into a wigwam, where they left him with two squawswho were pounding corn. Miles flung himself upon the couch, in thefarthest corner, and hid his face in his arms, but rigidly he heldhimself 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 verytemples.
He had come to count the rhythmic strokes in a sort of stupor, whereinhe knew only that the pestles beat, when suddenly they ceased.Out-of-doors he heard a whooping and a scuffling of many naked feet inthe sand. He pressed himself closer against the wall of the wigwam;they were coming to deal with him now. He shut his eyes tightly andburied his head deeper between his arms.
They had come into the wigwam. He ought to stand up and show them hewas not afraid, but he could not, and, when some one grasped him by thearm, 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 ascore of other hostile faces, but he gave them no heed, for over himstood his old Plymouth acquaintance, the interpreter Squanto. With agreat cry of relief, Miles flung his arms about him. "Oh, Squanto, takeme home, quick, quick!" he begged; and in the next breath, "Where'sDolly? You must find Dolly."
"Miles made out the figures of the men in the shallop."]
The little squaw and the puppy dog were safe, Squanto explainedleisurely; the Captain and his warriors had come in the big canoe andtaken them, and now they waited yonder for Miles himself. "I'll go tohim 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 andhis warriors would feast Squanto and the Indians who came with him,and the savages ate long and deliberately. Miles, unable to swallow amorsel, sat between his friend Squanto and one who came with him calledIyanough, the Sachem of Cummaquid, a young Indian with so gentle abearing 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 rosefrom the feast at last, when Aspinet came up to him, but the Chief wasin a humble mood now and merely handed back the whittle, which Milesclapped promptly into his pocket. Aspinet would have put round his necka chain of white beads too, but Miles shook his head disapprovingly; hewanted no presents of the uncivil Chief. Yet when Squanto said, "Takeum," 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 warriorstook up their march across the Cape. One of them lifted Miles in hisarms, and, though the boy would have preferred some other bearer thana Nauset man, he contented himself, since Squanto and Iyanough walkedclose 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 werebeginning to show, just as Miles had seen them come out above the pinyhills of Plymouth. The branches bent noiselessly apart, as the swifttrain pressed forward through the woods. The moon was up now; Miles,glancing back, saw it gleam amid the boughs, and at first its staringlight startled him. Then they came through the trees out on broad sandagain; the tide was far down, and out yonder, where the line of moonlitwater began, lay the English shallop, with its sails all white.
Down the beach the naked feet of the Indians pattered; now the watersplashed noisily beneath their tread, knee high, waist high. Clearlyand 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, theirfaces almost.
It was Captain Standish himself, who, slipping his ready musket to onehand, reached over the gunwale and, grasping Miles by the waistband,dropped him down into the bottom of the shallop. As he did so heuttered something that sounded like a fervent "Thank God!"
Miles neither heard nor heeded that, but he did remember of a suddenthat he was a wretched, little fugitive criminal, now delivered intothe hands of English justice, and even his hero, who had been hisfriend, had thought fit to take him up roughly and drop him downagainst his boots. He rolled a little out of the way, and, crouchingagainst the side of the boat, buried his face in his arms.
Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish Page 18
