Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish by Beulah Marie Dix
CHAPTER IV
HEWERS OF WOOD AND DRAWERS OF WATER
"TO-MORROW I am going ashore." Thus Miles Rigdale proclaimed, from hisperch on the bunk in his father's cabin, to all who might choose tohear.
"'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 hisdoublet; 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?" Dollyspoke up.
"Because 'tis too much labor to fetch it, Puss," Ned answered, whereatMiles laughed, and the Goodwife's brows puckered; another might havesaid it was because the sewing gave her trouble, but Miles, who feltuncomfortably 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: "Doesit still rain upon deck, Edward?"
"Rain and naught else; the third day of it now, yet by the look itmight pour on for a week."
"And my daddy's yonder in the wet on shore," murmured Dolly, pressingclose 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 meashore. Since we came into Plymouth Harbor they've explored andexplored, and never suffered me to come, but they took Giles Hopkinswith them. And now the randevous is built on shore, and some of the menare staying there, it has rained and rained so I cannot go to them. ButI'm going to-morrow, the very next time the shallop sails."
"To be sure you shall," Lister answered, as he scrambled into hismended doublet. "I'll take you along with me."
Then he swaggered away jauntily, as if he had promised ample servicein 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 safeashore, but when you are there, remember, you are to stay with yourfather, 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 thesun was rising clear and the shallop would go shoreward. At once heclattered 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 chillsunlight, the men were laboring briskly to load the shallop. Mileswatched them while they put in the felling-axes and handsaws andhammers, 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 settledcomfortably in the stern, grumbled at burdening the shallop withchildren and curs, so Miles put his arms about Trug, and, cuddling downin the bottom of the boat, made himself as still and small as possiblelest, after all, the company, thinking better of it, bid him scrambleup the gangway ladder again.
But the time for that was past, for the shallop, with her sail hangingsluggish, had crept surely out from the lee of the _Mayflower_, andnow, catching the light breeze, actually stood in to the shore. Milesforgot the discomfort of his seat among the tools while he gazedtoward the approaching coast line, where was to be his home. Behind himthe sun was up, and the hills that rose away inland from the harborwere bright in the cold, yellow radiance, and the water and the skythat spread about him were both very blue. He glanced back over hisshoulder 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 crunchingon the shingle, made him look forward again. Under the shelter of ahigh bluff, where a great boulder ran out into the water, he saw thosestanding who had kept the randevous, and the randevous itself, a rudehut of boughs. In his eagerness Miles jumped up, and Trug, springing uptoo, began to bark, but no one took note or scolded, for the men werebusied in running the shallop in alongside the rock, and some, leapingover the gunwale, were already splashing through the shallow water tothe 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 hisfeet, and, in the delight of the long unused sensation, he forgot hewas wet and chilled, forgot his father awaited him, and there was workto do. He knew only that far and near the shore stretched widely, wherea boy could run, so, for choice, he set his face to the bluff thattowered above the landing.
Up and up, through the keen, dry bushes, that whipped his hands andface so he laughed in the mere delight of struggling with them, hefought his way till he came breathless to the bare summit. All abouthim dazzled the blue of the harbor and of the unclouded sky, andyonder on his right, through its fringe of bushes, shone the blue ofwhat seemed a cove. Down the hill rushed Miles, with Trug leaping andbarking 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 theyounger boy. He now bade Miles come upstream to the spring the men hadfound on their last exploration, and Miles very readily followed himthrough the scrubby undergrowth, where the cove narrowed on the lefthand, and on the right a high bluff kept pace with the boys. "It's onthat bluff they mean to set the houses," Giles explained, over hisshoulder.
"Then we'll have this big stream in our dooryards," cried Miles. "Won'tthat be brave? I shall build me a raft, and sail to those wooded hillson the other side whenever I choose. Though, maybe, Indians dwellthere," he added, with a dubious glance at Giles; he did not wishto seem afraid, but, though he intended to be a soldier, he did notpurpose to fight without a musket and a long sword, and he wondered howmuch farther from the shore his leader would venture.
But speedily his wonder had an end, for, breaking through a thicket ofleafless alders, Giles halted at a little cavity within the sand of theriverbank, where the spring of sweet water bubbled up. Down lay Mileson the turf, and, using his hand for a cup, swallowed his first draughtof New England water. "'Tis better than the brackish stuff we have onshipboard," 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 aline of stepping-stones across the brook."
Miles glanced about him, half nervously, lest along the path or acrossthe stones he see one of their former savage passengers approaching. Hewas at heart relieved when, as Giles led the way up the bluff, he heardin the distance the sound of an axe crashing on a tree trunk. Giles didnot turn toward the sound, however, but went plodding on uphill, forabove the bluff a second summit reared itself steeply. Miles panted inhis trail, endlessly upward, it seemed, till at last he stood exhaustedon a lofty hilltop, whence, far as the sea spread out before him, hebeheld the wooded uplands roll away to westward.
Giles was explaining wisely what a proper place this hill was for afort, and how Captain Standish had advised the company mount uponit guns, which should command to southward the spring, and towardthe harbor the landing place and the houses, which were to be builtalong the river bluff, when Master Hopkins and John Rigdale, trampingthither, 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, butit was work on land, in the free air, where a boy could shout as muchas he wished, so he never realized he was
Next day, being Sunday, no work was done, and the next day, beingChristmas, Miles, who remembered what a time of merrymaking that was athome, thought he must idle again. But here on Christmas, from sunriseto sunset, it was all stern work. "We stain this virgin soil with noPopish holydays," Master Hopkins said grimly, and, though the rest didnot exult in words, they labored with double fervor to show they did nohonor to the day.
Miles had his part to do on shore that Christmas and in the days thatfollowed, though it was a different part from that he had hoped tohave. 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 aridgepole and drive nails. He knew he would enjoy doing that, but inpractice he was set less pleasant tasks: he ran errands, not only forhis father, but for every man who chose to send him; he fetched waterup the steep bluff from the spring to the workers; and he carriedfirewood from where the choppers labored upon the bluff to where thefirst house was building.
On occasion he even tended the fire and saw that the porridge did notburn, and more than once was sent to carry a portion of the food tothe men who, unable to rise and get their rations, lay ill in thehalf-built log cabins. The numbers of these sick ever multiplied, forthe close quarters and bad food aboard the _Mayflower_ had caused afever to break out among her passengers, and the exposure to which themen and boys often recklessly subjected themselves increased the rollof the ailing, and, at last, of the dying.
Miles was sorry, of course, for the men and women who sickened anddied, but it was a sorrow that did not go deep enough to prevent hisenjoying the open-air life, and the moments of play that he snatchedfrom his work. For death had not come near any that he loved; Dolly andJack Cooke had been ill, but they were getting better, and none of hisother near acquaintances had been touched. To be sure, he himself wentsneezing with a great cold, but it meant nothing, any more than did hisfather's cough; he did not worry for it the half as much as he frettedat the dull routine labors to which he was set.
One day in January he had a hand in more exciting work, for Ned Listerand Giles Hopkins, who were going to cut swamp grass for thatch,invited him to come with them, and Ned even let him carry his sharpsickle. Ned himself turned all his effort to bearing a fowling piece,with the use of which, after the grass was cut, he had been bribedto the afternoon's labor, for he was afflicted with a hard cough thatracked 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 hollowbehind the first range of hills, where grew the grass they sought, oneof 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 foundenergy to direct the boy's clumsy attempts with the sickle.
Two bundles of grass the workers were expected to bring home, and Gilescut his, slowly and soberly, while Ned dallied with Miles, till he sawhis companion had nearly gathered his share. Then Lister snatched thesickle from Miles, and, finishing the work in a surprisingly short timefor a sick man, caught up his piece with the exclamation, "_Now_ we'llgo fowling."
Leaving the sickles and the bundles of grass where they lay, the threepicked a path round the verge of the marsh and climbed westward overthe hills. Last of all Miles trotted along bravely, very proud that hewas 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: "Lookyonder. 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 anticipatedit: "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 boyscame stoutly after. They scrambled down a rough hillslope and throughanother level piece, all open and stubbly, westward still, where thesmoke 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 thehills ahead, where the bare branches of oak trees stood out clearlyagainst 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 signof the harbor or of the _Mayflower_. Ned and Giles were looking at eachother with a something so dubious in their faces that Miles felt agriping sensation in his throat. He wondered if he could find his wayback as he had come, and, doubting it, drew close to Ned, who had thefowling piece.
Ned was fiddling with the lock of the piece and he spoke rathersheepishly: "I'm not afraid. But I'm not going to run into Heaven knowswhat with two younkers like you on my shoulders."
"Say we march home, then?" Giles suggested, and straightway, facinground, they retraced their steps pretty smartly.
Miles was still in the rear, and, as he went, he studied the long legsof his companions and thought how much more swiftly they could run forit, if anything came up behind them. Thinking so, he forgot to look tohis feet, and, as they descended a gully, fell headlong with a greatclattering of stones. "Wait for me!" he cried, in a sharp, high voicethat did not sound natural.
Ned glanced back, with his face tenser than its wont. "Here, take thefowling piece, Giles," he said curtly; then, returning to Miles, helifted him to his feet, and, keeping one hand beneath his arm, helpedhim to hurry along.
Thus they scurried down the hillside to the swamp, and, catching uptheir sickles and the thatch, pressed on toward the settlement. Nottill they were panting up the landward side of the great hill andcaught 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 oneday, Miley," he said then, and began laughing. "Though I take it no oneof us was afraid; eh, boys?"
They all agreed they were not in the least frightened, and some suchversion Ned must have reported to Captain Standish, when he told howthey had seen Indian fires. For next day Miles found himself quite ahero in the sight of the other lads, because he had gone far into thewoods and walked boldly right into an encampment of the savages. ButGoodman 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, thefather of his playmate Jack, were now engaged in a delightful work inwhich he liked to help. Lately the whole company of the _Mayflower_had been divided into nineteen families, and these two men, who hadbeen placed in one household, were building together a cottage, high upon the hillside. His father's house, Miles insisted upon calling it,though Goodman Rigdale was at pains to explain to him that the cottagebelonged not to any one man, but to the whole company; the Pilgrims atPlymouth and the merchants at London, who had advanced the money forthe voyage, were to hold everything in common till seven years were upand then divide all equally, and till then no man could call a househis own.
Still, Miles knew that by and by his mother and Dolly and Jack Cookewould come ashore, as other families were coming, and they would livetogether in that house, so it seemed the same as if it belonged to hisfather. He looked forward to the time when they would all be under oneroof, and he would be suffered to sleep ashore, for, though his fatherpassed his nights at the Common House, there was no room for Miles,who at twilight had to journey off to the ship. But that arrangementdrew speedily to an end, for the walls of the house, built of squaredlogs, soon rose to a good height; the chimney of sticks and clay wasfinished; 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 swampgrass for the t
"That, or whatever house shall fall to us at the division, will lastyou all your lifetime," Goodman Rigdale answered shortly. "And you willlease it of no man. You'll hold a house and a farm of your own here oneday, Miles."
They tramped on a time in silence, and Miles was making himself sportby crushing in the scum of ice on the pools along their path, when hisfather spoke suddenly: "You're in a fair way to lead an easier lifethan your father or your grandfather before you, Miles. And if you bethe happier, you should be so much the better man."
"Ay, sir," Miles answered vaguely, and tipped back his head to watch agreat bird that went flapping across the sky; he wished his father hadbrought along a fowling piece.
When they came to the swamp, Goodman Rigdale cut down the grassswiftly, and Miles bundled it, though he found it hard to keep pacewith his father. Goodman Rigdale, being in haste, must at the last dothe work himself, and, while he bundled the grass, Miles, rememberingthe stolen pleasures of his last thatching trip, picked up the sickleand tried a slash or two on his own account. He managed to cut hishand, 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 gavehim some good advice on the need of care with edged tools, which Milesdid not think quite called for just then. He tried, however, not toshow 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: "Getyou to the shallop now, Miles, and bide on board the _Mayflower_ tillI send for you. You'll be of no service with your hand cut. Mayhapyou'll be better off with your mother, too. After all, you are but ayoung lad."
"As you bid, sir," Miles said, respectfully, but very stiffly, andwalked away down the path to the landing.
Once he stopped to kick a stone out of his way, and once, before herounded the base of the bluff, something made him face about and lookback to the Common House. His father was standing by the door, watchinghim, and Miles, feeling much rebuked, walked on rapidly. But the imageof his father remained in his mind very clear.