Standish of Standish | Page 3

"Yes, stay thou aboard and mind thy babe, and I'll take thy clothes
along with my own, so thou 'lt let Constance come to help me,"
suggested the somewhat coarse voice of a woman standing by.
"Thank you kindly, goodwife Billington," replied Elizabeth Hopkins
coldly. "But Alice Rigdale hath already promised to do what is needed,
and Constance must stay with me to mind Damaris and Oceanus."
"Oh, if goodwife Rigdale has taken it in hand, I will step back," replied
Mistress Billington sharply; and as she descended the companion-way,
Hopkins muttered in his wife's ear,--

"Now thou showest some sense, wench. The least thou hast to do with
the Billington brood the better I'll be pleased."
"That's worth working for, surely," retorted his wife, tossing her head
pettishly.
"I tell you there's no boat to be spared, and no man to row it, and I'll
have naught to say to it," exclaimed a surly voice from the
companion-way, and Captain Thomas Jones, master of the Mayflower,
but not of the Pilgrims, appeared on deck.
Captain Jones was not an amiable man, his training as buccaneer and
slaver having possibly blunted his finer feelings, and his consciousness
of present treachery probably increasing the irritability often
succeeding to a murdered conscience.
Such as he was, however, this man was the Inventor of Plymouth Rock,
since by his collusion with the Dutch who wished to keep the profits of
their Manhattan Colony to themselves, the Mayflower had found it
impossible to make her way southward around Cape Cod, and after
nearly going to wreck upon the shoals off Malabar, or Tucker's Terror
had been driven within the embrace of the curving arm thrown out by
the New World to welcome and shelter the homeless children of the
Old. There she lay now, the weather-beaten, clumsy, strained, and
groaning old bark whose name is glorious in the annals of our country
while Time shall endure, and whose merest splinter would to-day be
enshrined in gold; there she lay swinging gently to the send of the great
Atlantic whose waves broke sonorously upon the beach outside, and
came racing around the point a flood of shattered and harmless
monsters, moaning and hissing, to find their prey escaped and safely
landlocked.
"There's no boat, I say, and there's an end on 't," repeated Master Jones
truculently as he stepped on deck, and two men who had been earnestly
conversing at the stern of the brig turned round and came toward him.
They were John Carver, already governor of the colony, and William
Bradford, his lieutenant and successor. The governor was the first to
speak, and the somewhat measured accents of his voice, with its

inflections at once kindly and haughty, told of gentle breeding, of a
calm and dignified temper, and of an aptness at command.
"And why no boat, Master Jones?" asked he quietly. "Methought by the
terms of our agreement you were to aid us in every way in making our
settlement."
"And I'm not going back of my word, am I, master?" demanded Jones
peevishly. "A pack of wenches going ashore with tubs and kettles and
bales and such gear is not a settlement, is it?"
"Nay, but a means thereto if haply they find the place convenient,"
replied Carver pleasantly. "At any rate, we will send them, since it has
been promised, and the same boat will serve to transport them with
their gear that is already fitted to help us ashore with the pinnace."
"And our own men will do all that is required in lading and rowing the
boat," added Bradford in his mild, persuasive voice. Jones, overborne
by a calm authority against which he could not bluster, turned on his
heel muttering some surly assent. Carver slightly smiled as he watched
the square and clumsy form expressing in every line of its back the
futile rage of an overborne coward, and, turning toward the companion
way, he called,--
"Howland, John Howland, a word with thee!"
"Ay, sir," replied a blithe young voice; and presently a handsome head
of pure Saxon type, as indeed were both Bradford's and Carver's,
appeared above the hatchway, and a strong young fellow swinging
himself upon deck approached the governor, saying apologetically,--
"I was helping to get out the pinnace, and there is a mort of dust and
dirt about her."
"I'll give thee a pleasanter task, John," replied Carver, smiling
affectionately upon his young retainer. "Thou and John Alden and
Gilbert Winslow shall take charge of the women who fain would go
ashore to wash their clothes. They will use the boat already lying

alongside, and thou hadst better advise with Mistress Brewster for the
rest. I leave it all with you twain."
"I will do my best, sir," replied Howland with a smile that showed