CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE.
"A fair and goodly day!" exclaimed Standish ever sensitive to theaspects of nature, although never allowing himself to be mastered by anyextremity of weather.
"Ay," replied Bradford. "And yet methinks that cloud rising over Manomethath a stormy look."
"Let us once weather the Gurnet's Nose, and a south wind will not harmus," ventured Billington, whose out-of-door prowlings had at least madehim weatherwise.
"Ay, if south wind is all that it means," said Doctor Fuller gravely."But to my mind yon cloud is of no common kind. It minds me shrewdly ofthose whirlwind or cyclone clouds that used to fright us in the ChinaSeas when I sailed them as a lad."
"Say you so, Surgeon!" replied Bradford looking uneasily at the cloudrapidly rising and enlarging in the southern horizon. "Be ready with thesheets, Peter Browne and Cooke, and Francis Eaton had best stand withLatham at the helm."
"Look! Look you there! 'T is a waterspout!" cried Fuller, pointingexcitedly at the cloud, which, driven on with furious force by an uppercurrent of wind unfelt below, was now bellying in a marked and abnormalfashion, while from the lowest point of the convexity appeared a spiralcolumn of dense vapor rapidly elongating itself toward the sea whosewaters assumed a black and sullen aspect, disturbed by chopping countercurrents of short waves, which gradually, as the waterspout neared them,fell into its rotary motion, rising at the centre of the whirlpool intoa column of foaming water, a liquid stalagmite climbing to meet thestalactite bending to it from above.
"If we had but a heavy gun!" cried Warren. "They say to hit thewaterspout in the centre where it joins the other from below willdisperse it."
"Knocks the wind out of it," explained Billington.
"But we have nothing better than these bird guns," cried Standishcontemptuously touching with his foot the pile of weapons covered with atarpaulin lying in the bottom of the boat. "And it drives down upon uslike a charge of horse. Here, let me to the helm."
"There is no way upon the boat, Captain," expostulated Eaton. "No mancan steer without a wind."
"Thou 'rt right, friend," replied the captain gravely, as he felt therudder give beneath his hand. "There's naught to do but tarry untilMaster Waterspout declareth his pleasure."
"Until God declareth His pleasure," amended Bradford quietly. "Men, letus pray."
And baring his head the governor poured forth a strong and manfulpetition to Him who rideth upon the wings of the wind and reigneth aKing forever over His own creation.
Standish standing upright beside the useless tiller bared his head andlistened reverently, but always with an eye to the waterspout and to theclouds, and as a deep-throated Amen rose from his comrades he gave thetiller a shove and joyously cried,--
"A puff, a breath! Enough to steer us past!" And the boat feeling herhelm again careened gently to the little gust of wind out of the west,and slid away upon her course, while the waterspout, more furious in itsspeed at every instant, swept past and out to sea, where it presentlybroke and fell with a thunderous explosion.
"Another crowning mercy!" exclaimed Bradford devoutly, and Standishanswered with his reticent smile,--
"Had Master Jones of the Mayflower been here, he would have more thanever felt 't is better to be friends than foes with prayerful men."
To the waterspout succeeded light and baffling winds so that labor asthey might, it was fully dark when the Pilgrim pinnace entered what isnow Barnstable, then Cummaquid Harbor. Anchoring for safety, they laydown to get such rest as the position afforded, and woke betimes in themorning to find themselves high and dry in the centre of the harbor, thechannel encircling them and making up toward the land. Upon the shore asseen across this channel appeared some savages gathering clams andmuscles.
Bradford at once dispatched Squanto and Tockamahamon, who had come alongas guides and interpreters, to interview these men and barter for someof the shellfish, but in a very short time the envoys came splashingmerrily back with an invitation for the white men to land and breakfastwith Janno, the chief of the Mattakees, who was, the fishermen said,close at hand. They also corroborated the statement that the missing boyhad gone down the Cape with the Nausets, and would be found at Eastham,Aspinet's headquarters.
"I see no reason for gainsaying such a comfortable proposal," saidBradford turning with a smile to Standish who cheerily replied,--
"Nor I, so that they leave hostages aboard, and we carry every man hispiece ashore."
"We must e'en wade for it, sith there is neither dry ground for footingnor water for swimming," suggested Browne stripping off hose and shoon;but as Bradford and Standish began to follow his example they wereprevented by the Indians, who offered each a back to the two chiefs, atthe same time intimating to the others that if they would but wait allthe company should be similarly accommodated. The doctor accepted, butBrowne and the rest preferred their own legs as a dependence, and thewhole party presently reached shore, where Janno, the handsome andcourteous young chief of the Mattakees, stood with several of hispnieses or nobles around him ready to receive them. Squanto at oncestood forth as interpreter, and so flowery and mellifluous were thephrases of welcome that he interpreted, that the captain edging towardBradford muttered,--
"I hope Master Warren will look well after the hostages left aboard, forall this is too sweet to be wholesome. I mistrust treachery, Governor."
"Nay, I mistrust Squanto, Captain," replied Bradford laughing. "The poorfellow doth glorify himself at some cost to the truth, I fancy."
"Beshrew me but before another month I'll know enough of their jargon toneed no lying interpreter," muttered Standish, and he kept his word.
The Indian breakfast, already nearly ready, proved both toothsome andplentiful. It consisted of lobsters, clams, and muscles, both cooked andraw, ears of green maize roasted in the husk, and no-cake, that is tosay, pounded corn mixed with water and baked in the ashes, the germ andanimus of hoe-cake, bannocks, Johnnycake, and all the various forms ofmaize-bread so well known throughout our land.
Breakfast over Janno rather timidly inquired if the white chiefs wouldpermit the visit of an old squaw of his tribe who much desired to seethem.
"Surely if the good woman hath occasion to speak with us," repliedBradford amiably. "Why doth the chief seem to mistrust our willingness?"
"Squaw no speak to brave in council," explained Squanto with an air ofshocked propriety; but before he could further explain a bowed anddecrepit figure emerged from one of the little huts on the edge of thewoods and slowly approached the white men who stepped forward to meether, desiring Squanto to assure her of welcome. Coming so close to thelittle group that Standish muttered, "Sure she is minded to salute us,"the poor old crone peered into the face of one after another of thewhite men, then wofully shook her head and began to mutter in her owntongue with strange gesticulations, but as he heard them Squanto uttereda shrill cry of terror, and the sachem stepping forward spoke some wordsof stern command, before which the old woman humbly bowed and becamesilent.
"What is it? Would she curse us? What is her grievance? What is herstory?" demanded Bradford half indignantly, and Squanto, after someconference with the sachem, informed them that this woman, once calledSunlight-upon-the-Waters, but now known as The-Night-in-Winter, hadbeen mother of seven tall sons who filled her wigwam with venison,and shared their corn and tobacco with her; but three of these sonswere among the captives entrapped and sold to slavery by Hunt, andthe other four had perished in the plague brought down upon the red menby the curse of The-White-Fool who died about the same time; and thusThe-Night-in-Winter, having just cause, hated the white men as she hateddeath and the devil, and wished to curse them as The-White-Fool hadcursed her people, but the sachem would not let her, and now she wasdoubly bereft of her children, since she might not even avenge them.
"'T is a piteous tale," said Bradford gently when Squanto had finished."And we cannot be amazed that this poor heathen mother should thus feel.There is warrant
for it among the classics, Surgeon; Medea and otherswere moved in the same fashion. But Squanto, explain to her that we andall honest white men abhor the course of Master Hunt, and had we foundhim at such commerce we would have delivered her sons, and thee too,Squanto, out of his hands. Tell her our mind is to deal honestly andChristianly by all men, and here, give her this fair chain, and thislength of red cloth. Tell her that she would do ill to curse us, for weare friends to her and her people."
"And ask who was The-White-Fool, and what his story," demanded Standishas Squanto finished rendering the governor's message.
"Squanto know that in himself. Every Pokanoket know that," repliedSquanto, while Janno muttered gloomily in his own tongue,--
"All red men know The-White-Fool's curse. All feel it." So Squanto inhis broken yet picturesque phrases told how "many snows ago" a largeFrench ship was wrecked farther down the Cape and nearly everythingaboard was lost. Several of her crew, however, came safely ashore andmade a sort of camp with some earthwork defenses on the mouth of thePamet River.
"Why men, we saw it, and mused upon the marks of European skill andtraining," exclaimed Standish.
"Ay, and the house hard by, and the marvelous grave with the fair-hairedman and infant so curiously embalmed," added Fuller.
"Truly, this is passing strange!" murmured Bradford. "But get on withthy story, Tisquantum."
The Frenchmen were quiet and peaceable enough, Tisquantum could not butallow, and yet his people would not permit them to dwell unmolested,perhaps from some vague fear of ancient prophecy that a pale-faced raceshould come from the rising sun and drive the red men into the westernseas; perhaps from some race-hatred lying below the savage's power ofexpression; at any rate, as Tisquantum finally declared with asignificant gesture,--
"Sagamore, powahs, pnieses, braves, all men say, It is not good for palemen with hair like the sunrise to live among the red men whose hair islike the night. Let them be gone!"
"And what did the red men do about it, Squanto?" asked Standish sternly,while in his eyes kindled the danger light before which Squanto quailed,yet sullenly replied,--
"Red man find what you call wolf around his wigwam, red man send arrowthrough his head."
"Do you mean, you heathen, that you murdered these helpless, shipwreckedwhite men? Murdered them in cold blood?" demanded Standish, seizingGideon's hilt and half drawing him from his scabbard.
"Tisquantum not here. Tisquantum not Mattakee, not Nauset; TisquantumPatuxet, where white men live," hastily replied Squanto; while Bradfordsuggested in a rapid aside, "Best leave go thy sword and restrain thywrath, Captain, or we be but dead men. Look at the faces of those menbehind the sachem. Already they finger their tomahawks."
"More like, thy timidity will give the savages courage to fall upon us,and we shall share the fate of these, who though naught but Frenchmenwere at least white, and wore breeches," retorted Standish angrily. Thecolor flashed into Bradford's cheek, but after an instant's silence hequietly replied,--
"Thou knowest well enow, Standish, that my timidity is not for myselfbut for these, and yet more for the helpless ones we have left behind. Itrust when it comes to blows, the Governor of Plymouth will be foundwhere he belongs, next to her fiery Captain."
"Be content, Will, be content. Once more thou 'rt right and I all wrong.'T is not the first time nor the last, but let us ask in all patiencewhat these fellows mean with their White-Fool. Sure they have not mademe out so suddenly as this, have they?"
"Nay, Myles, I trow no man but thyself will ever call thee fool, nay,nor overly white, either!" and glancing at the Captain's bronzed facelighted once more by its smile of grim humor, Bradford turned to Squantoand bade him explain in the hearing of both savages and white men themeaning of this reference, and also the fate of the French mariners castashore at Eastham.
Squanto nothing loth to display his oratory struck an attitude, and withnative eloquence and much gesticulation described, first, the stormwhich four years ago had driven the French brig upon the sands; then theefforts of the mariners to launch their boats, their defeat, and thebreaking up both of boats and brig; then the arrival upon shore ofthirteen men, two of whom died of wounds and exhaustion. The elevensurvivors finding some wreckage upon the beach proceeded the nextmorning to build themselves a shelter, and finally erected the cabin andthrew up the earthwork discovered by the Pilgrims in their secondexploration.
Up to this point the Indians had been content to curiously watch theproceedings of these interlopers, but finding that they wereestablishing themselves permanently, they held a council and resolvedthat they should die, partly in atonement for the outrage done to thered men some two years before by Hunt the kidnapper, and partly fromsome vague fear lest the strangers with their superior knowledge andappliances should conquer and injure the proper owners of the soil.
Not choosing to assault them openly, for the men were brave, alert, andwell armed, the Indians laid in wait around the spring where they mustdaily go for water, watched them as they went afield in pursuit of game,in fact harassed them at every turn, until of the eleven but three wereleft alive, and they, so broken in strength, courage, and hope, thatthey were easily captured and reduced to slavery. One remained here atNauset, and the other two were sent, one to the Massachusetts, the otherto the Namasket tribes, where they were kept as the mock and victims ofthe brutal sport of the savages. The one who remained at Nauset was thebest looking, and evidently the most attractive of the three, and fromSquanto's description seemed to have been an officer, and a veryattractive young man. The-White-Birch, sister of Aspinet, chief of theNausets, having fixed her regards upon the prisoner, discovered thesepeculiarities, and one day when the boys of the village were amusingthemselves with seeing how near they could shoot their blunted arrows tothe prisoner's eyes without putting them out, she stepped forward, and,Pocahontas-like, announced that she took this man for her husband, andas such claimed his release from torture. Her demand was complied with,and the half dead victim unbound and informed of his new honors; but itwas too late--want, misery, and cruelty had done their work, and thepoor fellow's wits had fled. He accepted the tender care and affectionof The-White-Birch as a child might have done, but the joyous gallantryof the debonair young French officer was a thing of the past, and thebridegroom had become as completely the child of nature as his bride. Hewas adopted into the tribe, and the Indian name given him, in no spiritof taunt or contempt, but simply as a descriptive appellation, meantThe-White-Fool.
They were married, these two strange lovers, and lived in the cabinbuilt of ship's planks by The-White-Fool's dead comrades. In due time ason was born to them, the idol of his mother's heart, and the constantcompanion of the father, who seemed to find in the child some link withhis own stray wits; but when the boy was about three years old the poorexile was seized with a fever, and in his delirium escaping from histender nurse stalked naked through the village proclaiming in the nativetongue that the wrath of God hung over this people and this land,because of the cruel wrong they had done to him and to his comrades; andhe foretold that before seven snows had covered his grave, white menfrom over the sea should come like the wildfowl in the spring and settledown upon the creeks and ponds, and fill the forest with their cry, andthe red men should melt away as the snow melts and their place be nomore seen.
It was really worth something to hear Squanto declaim this wild prophecywith the shrill voice and fevered gestures of the delirious captive; andas they caught his meaning the pnieses around Janno stirred in theirplaces, laid hand upon the tomahawk at each man's girdle, and castmenacing looks upon the strangers.
"Have a care, Squanto! Say no more on that head, or thou 'lt stir upstrife afresh," muttered Bradford in the interpreter's ear, whileStandish fixed his eyes upon Janno ready to sacrifice him at the firsthostile movement. But the young chief casting a meaning glance aroundthe circle said quietly,--
"The-White-Birch was of the blood of Aspinet my brother, andThe-White-Fool was her husband."
> "Well said, Chief!" exclaimed Standish who had already mastered much ofthe Indian language, and in accordance with his late resolve soon becamethe most expert interpreter in the colony, while Bradford nodding said,"Go on, Squanto!"
Little however remained to tell. The ill-starred Frenchman died within afew hours of his prophecy, and hardly had The-White-Birch laid him inhis honored grave when she was called to bury her little boy, whom thefather had named Louis, along with him. Then she set off alone to findthe comrades of her lost love at Namasket, and Shawmut, that they mightwith her lament his death; but whether illness came upon her and shecrept aside to die, or haply some wild creature slew and devoured her,or in her maze of grief she strayed away and starved in the limitlesswoods, none ever knew; she never was heard of again.
"And the other two captives?" inquired Standish.
"The Feast-of-Green-Corn before the last one, Captain Dermer carriedthem away in his ship," replied Squanto proud of his English and hisinformation.
"Ay, ay, and now we understand why these Nauset Indians attacked us atthe First Encounter," said Standish.
"Especially as they had probably watched us stealing their corn," addedFuller dryly.
"Borrowing, not stealing, Surgeon," retorted Bradford briskly. "And apart of our errand to the First Encounter is to satisfy our creditor forthe debt. Let us be going."
An hour later the shallop, now riding gayly upon the flood tide, putforth from Barnstable Harbor, carrying not only its own crew, but Jannowith several of his followers, he having volunteered as guide andnegotiator with Aspinet for the restoration of little Billington.
The voyage prospered, and before night the boy, decked with strings ofbeads and various savage ornaments, was restored to his guardians byAspinet himself; while the first red man allowed to come on board theshallop was the owner of the corn "borrowed" by the Pilgrims, who nowrepaid its value twofold by an order for goods to be delivered atPlymouth. But more important than boy or corn, at any rate to the earsof Standish, was a report here received that the Narragansetts, theirfriend Massasoit's neighbors and deadly foes, had made a raid upon hisdomains and carried him away prisoner. Also that one of Massasoit'spnieses called Corbitant had become an ally of the Narragansetts, andwas now at Namasket, only fourteen miles from Plymouth, trying to raisea revolt against both his chief and the white men their allies. He wasalso fiercely denouncing Squanto, Hobomok, and Tockamahamon as renegadesand traitors to their own people, who should be at once put to death.
This news was so alarming that without waiting for trade, or for thefeast offered to them, the Pilgrims at once set sail, and after stormyweather and sundry adventures arrived safely at home toward night of thethird day from their departure. John Billington was received withvociferous joy by his mother, treated to a lithe bundle of birch rods byhis father, and assaulted by his brother, who at once fought him for thepossession of the bead necklaces and other gauds he had brought home.The men of the colony were meantime hearing the report brought in byNepeof, a sachem just from Namasket, of the treacherous proceedingsthere, and before they had been three hours at home Squanto and Hobomokwere dispatched to discover the truth of the matter, while Nepeof washeld as a hostage.
Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pilgrims Page 25
