The ARGONAUTS OF FAITH THE ADVENTURESOFTHE "MAYFLOWER'' PILGRIMS BASIL MATHEWS The England of the CrctnthcLik^ \ \ Stam^xtrd J^ttntina Class J^ ( Gopight}J!'_^ h COFifRiGKT DEPOSIT. and Holland Pilgrims lliil THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH THE ADVENTURES OF THE "MAYFLOWER" PILGRIMS BASIL MATHEWS "THE BOAT WAS PUTTING OFF AGAIN, WHEN SUDDENLY THE SHIPMASTER . . . ORDERED HER TO STOP" [Frontispiece THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH THE ADVENTURES OF THE "MAYFLOWER" PILGRIMS BY BASIL MATHEWS WITH A FOREWORD BY VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M. ILLUSTRATED BY ERNEST PRATER NEW ^^ifirYORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, I92I, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY' :xi^Si^^ THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA f BB 2b mi g)CI.A605887 fro I TO MY MOTHER IN WHOM THE PILGRIMS' LOVE OF GOD AND OF LIBERTY LIVES AGAIN HIS PILGEIMAGE Give me my scallop-shell of quiet. My staff of faith to walk iipon. My scrip of joy, immortal ciet. My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage; And thus Til take my pilgrimage. Sm Walter Kaleigh FOREWORD By lViscount Bbyce, O.M. Three centuries ago, in 1620, a little band of English people — ^men, women, and children — to the number of about one hundred, sailed from Plymouth in a ship called the Mayflower to settle on the bleak and then almost unknown coast of North America. There they landed at a spot where a huge stone, one of those ice-borne boulders that strew the low scores of Massachusetts Bay, is said to mark the place at which they stepped ashore, now become a place of pilgrimage to which many come from all over the United States, visiting it with reverence. There this storm-tossed and sea-weary company built their huts and a wooden block- house for defence against the native Indians, and pre- pared to cultivate the soil. E'ot long before an English settlement had been planted in Virginia, and other English colonists came a few years later to another part of the New England coast, where is now the town of Salem. But this Ply- mouth Settlement (for that was the name they gave it) was the most remarkable of the three, just because it was the smallest and weakest, carried out with the least official favour, least noticed by the world of its own day. The Pilgrims were humble men, none of them persons of any consequence or influence. But the historical significance and moral dignity of an event are not to be viii FOREWORD measured by the power or honour, or rank, or wealth of those who bear a part in it. This was one of the great events in the annals of the English race. It was the second migration of that race. The first was made in war-ships coming from the mouth of the Elbe, manned by fierce heathen war- riors, who came as plunderers and conquerors, and took nearly three centuries of fighting to complete their con- quest of South Britain (except Wales). This second migration from the Old England of Angles and Saxons, across a far wider sea, to the New England in America marked the beginning of a nation which was to increase and multiply till it overspread a vast continent. It was a peaceful migration. But the Plymouth Pilgrims had the qualities which belong to the English race. They had courage, constancy, loyalty to their convictions. They stamped these qualities upon the infant colony. They gave that distinctive quality to the men of those northeastern American colonies which has told upon and determined the character of the whole American people. It was by their faith in God's help and blessing and by the courage with which they bore hardships and faced dangers that the men who sailed in the Mayflower won undying fame. The memory of what they were and what they did is today one of the strongest links that bind America and England together. They set a noble example for the youth of England as well as for the youth of America to remember and to imitate. It is an example in which the present generation, now called upon, as it reaches manhood, to make good the losses of the war, may find stimulus and cheer. A time has now come again, as it came three cen- FOREWORD ix turies ago, in which faith and courage and constancy, and the hopefulness which trust in God and courage give, must have their perfect work. /^n7 e4 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Foreword, by Viscount Bryce, O.M. . vii Prologue 17 I On the Great North Road .... 25 II The Stormy Passage 39 III The Land of Threatening Waters . . 55 IV The House with the Green Door . . 65 V The Ship of Adventure 83 VI The Adventures of Scouting . . . . 99 VII A Clearing in the Waste .... 119 VIII Builders in the Waste 137 IX Greatheart, Mr. Standfast, and Valiant- for-Truth 151 Epilogue: The Building of the New ''Argo" 171 Chronology 179 Index, Compiled by Miss Edith Ivesson 181 XI ILLUSTRATIONS "The Boat Was Putting Off Again, When Sud- denly THE Shipmaster . . . Ordered Her TO Stop'' Frontispiece • PAGE "He Snatched at This Cordage . . . Caught it and Held on" 88" "Soon They Were All at Work with a Will" 128 "" "Would They Scalp Him? Would They Tor- ture Him by Fire?" ... ... 144- MAPS The England and Holland of the Pilgrims See End papers Cape Cod : Early Explorations by the Pilgrims 93 The Plymouth Settlement 123 Plymouth Bay 131 xm PROLOGUE Once, when our coasts encompassed but wilderness. Savage and great with preyer and with prey, A band who loved Thee sought in their distress This far-away. And made it, Lord, Thy temple; and Thy rain And sunshine blessed and fructified their sod. Lord with us yet as in Thy ancient fane Be Thou our God. Chester Allen Holt. THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH PEOLOGUE Befoee the dawn of history, in the days of the long ago, when the adventures of heroes and heroines were handed down from father to son instead of being written up as we have them to-day, the boys and girls listened to many wonderful tales of adventure. Some of these were true; others were not. One of these stories which has been preserved to us is that of Jason and his companions who set out in quest of the Golden Eleece. As the story runs, the great pines of the forests crowning the summit of Mount Pelion were felled by Jason and his companions. Then under the direction of Argus, the most skillful builder of ships, these pines were fashioned into a vessel with fifty oars which should plough the waters of the Euxine Sea. The Euxine Sea, you will remember, is now known as the Black Sea. In honor of Argus, who designed the ship, the crew was called Argo-sailors, or as we say, the Argonauts. This old Greek legend has been called upon to furnish a suggestion for a title to this little book. But in place of the Golden Fleece and fame and fortune, our ad- ^ 17 18 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH venturers souglit a home for their children near to nature's heart, where the sweet music of her voice could he heard in hahhling hrook and murmuring pine ; where, with a world of strife shut out and a world of love shut in, they could he trained to live upright, honest, and helpful lives. In the story of the Golden Fleece, wise old Cheiron said to Jason, ^^Promise me two things hefore you go." ^'I will promise,'* said Jason. "Speak harshly to no soul whom you may meet, and stand hy the word which you shall speak." This counsel is as timely to-day as in the mists of hygone years. It is as much needed hy us as hy the Argonauts of faith, whose story is told in the follow- ing pages. • . • • • • • This tale of the Argonauts of ancient Greece speaks of heroes long ago in the dim dawn of history. But all through the story of man we find hrave Argonauts launching into strange seas: some are Vikings seeking battle and booty ; some, like Prince Henry the Naviga- tor, and Columbus, Cabot and Captain Cook, search for new lands across uncharted oceans: others, like Damien and John Williams and Livingstone, sail away and penetrate untrodden places, not to bring away treasure, but to carry the Treasure of Life to other men; — they go, I say, for differing reasons, but they all are ready to risk everything and to take what ad- venture may befall them. Three centuries ago a ship sailed out of England into the unknown, with a company of Argonauts — not meai only, but women also, with boys and girls. They went out across the Atlantic Ocean in a little ship of only PROLOGUE 1^ a Hundred and eighty tons, in the Quest — not of a Golden Fleece — hut of Liberty. What they sought in America, they — after adventures with Ked Indians and many hard knocks — found at last. And the freedom that they found they afterwards fought for in America, the land that had now become their own; they have now helped to win freedom for the world of our day, if that world will only share their heroic spirit and risk all else to keep that pearl of great price. In these chapters that follow boys and girls are going to listen to the story of those hero- Argonauts who lived in England when Elizabeth was Queen, and, having striven for freedom in their own land till after James I was on the throne, voyaged across strange waters to the lands of the Red Men and made a !N'ew England in the West. THE TANDING OF THE PILGEIM FATHERS The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the "woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed. And the heavy night hung dark The hills and waters o'er, ."When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore. IJTot as the conqueror comes They, the true-hearted, came, Not with the roll of stirring drums. And the trumpet that sings of fame; Not as the flying come. In silence and in fear, — They shook the depths of the desert's gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer. Amidst the storm they sang, And the stars heard and the sea! And the sounding aisles of the dim wood rang To the anthems of the free! The ocean-eagle soared From his nest by thu white waves' foam, And the rocking pines of the forest roared, — This was their welcome home! 20 A PROLOGUE aj} There were men with hoary hair Amidst that pilgrim-band; Why had they come to wither there. Away from their childhood's land! There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth; There was manhood's brow serenely high^ And the fiery heart of youth. What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war! They sought a faith's pure shrine! Ay, call it holy ground. The soil where first they trod! They have left unstained what there they found, — • Freedom to worship God! Felicia Dorothea Hemans. CHAPTEE I ON THE GKEAT ISTORTH ROAD THE DANGEROUS WAY OF THE PILGRIMS Yaliant-f or- Truth : The most dangerous way in the worW, said they, is that which the pilgrims go. Greatheart: Did they show you wherein this way is so dangerous ? Valiant : Yes, and that in many particulars. Greatheart: Name some of them. Valiant: They told me of the Slough of Despond, where 'Christian was well-nigh smothered. They told me that there were archers standing ready in Beelzebub Castle, to shoot them who should knock at the Wicket-gate for entrance. They told me also of the wood and dark mountains; of the Hill Difficulty; of the lions; and also of the three giants, Uioody-man, Maul, and Slaygood. They said, moreover, that there was a foul fiend haunted the Valley of Humiliation; and that Christian was by him almost bereft of life. Besides, said they, you must go over the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the hobgoblins are, where the light is dark- ness, where the way is full of snares, pits, traps, and gins. They told me also of Giant Despair, of Doubting Castle, and of the ruin that the pilgrims had met with here. Fur- ther, they said I must go over the Enchanted Ground, which was dangerous; and that after all this, I should find a river, over which there was no bridge; and that that river did lie betwixt me and the Celestial Country. Greatheart : And did none of these things discourage you ? Valiant: No; they seemed but as so many nothings to me. BuNYAN, The Pilgrim's Progress. CHAPTER I OlSr THE GEEAT ISTORTH ROAD The iron gate of a dungeon in London swung back on its creaking hinges in the last night of March in 1593, in the black hour before dawn. The flickering light of a candle-lanthorn fell on two men, who lay chained on the damp floor. Their names were Barrowe and Greenwood. The warders ordered the men to rise. They brought them out of their dungeon. Then with hammer and chisel they struck off the iron shackles that bound the captives. The gate of the Fleet Prison swung open. Barrowe and Greenwood were led out. The uneasy waters of the Thames tide, running in the narrow channels of the Fleet River between Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, lapped against the prison walls. ^ The breeze of a chill spring morning caught the men as they mounted a cart that stood in the nar- row road that led up from the river to Holbom. As the cart lurched up to Holborn the first grey light of dawn showed against the eastern sky the soaring spire of old St. Paul's Cathedral. ^The water of the Fleet stream runs now in a culvert under Farringdon Street, and enters the Thames under the first arch on the north side of Blackfriars Bridge. The opening can be seen at low tide. The Fleet Prison site is now covered by the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. 25 26 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Barrowe and Greenwood knew what was happening. They were going out, not to freedom, but to die. They had, only eight days earlier, been tried in the Old Bailey; and they had been convicted and sentenced to death. Some strayed reveller, as he saw the well-known prisoner's cart rolling along Holbom westward to the place of execution might wonder what crime these felons had committed to bring them to the scaffold. Their crime was that they had written and published books, arguing that a man ought to be free to worship God in the way that seemed right to him. They held .that the Army of Jesus Christ (that is, His Church) was made up of men and women who had enlisted freely to serve Him ; and that the Church was not and could not be an Army of Conscripts of all kinds of folk ordered to go to worship. For such a Church included thieves and murderers, and every sort of evil man and woman. They said that Jesus Christ alone was the true Head of the Church, and not Queen Elizabeth or any governor, and that the people who really did worship Jesus Christ and desired to live pure lives should separate themselves into a Church. For thus ^^devising seditious books," as the judge called it, and for actually meeting for worship in private houses with other men who believed the same things, they were solemnly tried and condemned to death. Barrowe and Greenwood, as they went to the gallows and looked back at the spire of old St. Paul's, may well have remembered for their comfort that St. Paul him- self, in his day, had been thrown into prison and chained and beaten, and had at last been executed at ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 27 Rome, because he preached that Jesus Christ was high above all principalities and powers. At last the lumbering cart brought them to the place of execution called Tyburn.^ The gallows on the scaffold stood up gaunt and horrible. A crowd had gathered about the foot of the scaffold — some out of curiosity; others because they sympathised with Bar- rowe and Greenwood. A noose of rope was placed about the neck of each of the prisoners. They spoke a few words of cheer and farewell to their friends about them. The order for execution was about to be given. Suddenly came a shout and the sound of horses' hoofs on the road. The crowd divided. "A messenger from the Queen/' the cry went up. Then "A reprieve ! A reprieve !" The crowd cheered and rejoiced as they saw Bar- rowe and Greenwood brought from the scaffold. The news spread like wildfire. As they were taken back in the cart to the prison, people leaned out from the windows of the houses and cheered, and the crowds hurried from the roadway. Queen Elizabeth's messenger, however, had only brought a reprieve, and not a pardon. Barrowe and Greenwood were not set free; they were simply sent back to prison in the dark cell. Within a week ^ they were again taken out from the dungeon and put on the cart and carried to Tyburn once more — and for the last time. 'No messenger came bringing reprieve to the foot of the gallows. They died as true martyrs to win freedom for all of us who have come after them. * Where the Marble Arch now stands at the north-east corner of Hyde Park. 'April 6th, 1593. THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH II In those times Hoyal Messengers rode every day up tlie Great l^orth Eoad from London to Scotland, bear- ing the King's orders in their saddle-bags, and carrying on their lips the news of the doings in London town. The Messengers rode on horseback from London northward from one post-house to another. In the summer they must travel at seven miles an hour; in the winter they were not expected to do more than five because of the snow and mud. Post-houses were fixed at intervals of a number of miles apart all along four great roads from London — one by the Great iTorth Road to Scotland, one to Ireland by Beaumaris, one to Europe by Dover, and one to Plymouth, i.e. to the Royal Dockyard. There were two horses kept at every post-house for the Messengers. A man would ride a horse from one post-house to another (say Doncaster to Scrooby) and then take a fresh horse from Scrooby towards London. The next Messenger going northward would ride the Doncaster horse back from Scrooby to his stable at Doncaster. From his saddle swung two leather saddle- bags lined with baize to carry his letters dry and safe, and over his shoulder hung a horn which he blew three or four times a mile, and as often as he met any other traveller on the road. ^ So the Messenger going north up the Great North Road early in April 1593, would be full of the story of how two brave men, Barrowe and Greenwood, had been executed on the gallows at Tyburn that very morn- ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 29 ing. As he rode out of London up the northern heights he would tell his story at post-house after post-house as the ostlers changed the horses and he took his flagon of ale. The road all the way was rough, as all roads were in England in those days. They were covered with deep mud in that early spring weather. No coaches or wagons could go on the road without the wheels sink- ing into the mire almost to the axle-trees. A man on horsehack had to pick his way carefully. At last, however, after travelling for days, the Mes- senger would be glad to see ahead of him one of the best post-houses in all England. Splashing through the ford of the stream below the water-mill, with the clump of fir-trees showing against the evening sky, and the fresh yellow of the early gorse-blossoms reflecting the after- glow, the messenger would trot his horse into the village of Scrooby. He would pass the Church among its dark trees, the cottages with the blue smoke of wood- fires curling from the chimneys, the cows lurching along the lanes to the milking, the plentiful rabbits scuttling back to the warren as the messenger sounded his horn and startled them at their evening feeding, the shout- ing group of boys playing "touch" on the green. All these he would pass without taking much notice of them. But his eyes would lighten with pleasure as he saw the great comfortable roof and massive timbers of the Manor House of Scrooby standing alone within the circle of its dark moat filled with water; yet with its windows gleaming at him, and the heavy old door thrown open on its sturdy hinges to welcome him as he crossed the drawbridge. 30 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH III In the doorway at the top of the stone steps of Scrooby Manor ^ stood a young man of between twenty- six and twenty-seven years of age. The Messenger would know him well. For William Brewster was the King's Master of the Post at Scrooby Manor, as his father and grandfather had been before him. He was responsible for taking care of the horses that carried the Post-Messengers on their backs. The Messenger, as he went up the steps, would pull from his bag the book in which were written down the times when he had reached the post-houses all along the road. William Brewster would then get his quill and ink-horn and write down in the Post Book the time at which the messenger had arrived. William loved the old Manor House, for he had grovTn up under its great timbered roof. He had played on its lawns and by its moat. He had fished as a boy in the river Idle near by. He had seen great knights and fair ladies from the Court of the Queen ride over the bridge to sleep in the Manor House; and anxious Secretaries of State, battered soldiers and travel- stained pedlars — for people of all degrees stopped at the post-house as they journeyed north or south on the Great 'North Eoad. William Brewster, indeed, thirteen years earlier, * "Scrooby Manor House," said Leland the Antiquary, who waa there in 1541, "is builded in two courts, whereof the first is very ample and all builded of timber, saving the front of the hous© that is of brick, to the whidi ascenditur pe?- gradus lapideos. The inner court buikling . . . was of timber and was not ic compass past the fourth part of the outer court." ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 31 when he was a boy, had left the old Manor House, and had gone south-eastward across the fen-land — perhaps by barge on the river, perhaps by pony on road and path — probably by both — till his eyes saw the pinnacles and towers of the wonderful University of Cambridge. He had lived there as a student in the oldest of all the colleges at Cambridge — Peterhouse. He had matricu- lated there as a student — though he was only a fourteen- year-old boy — on December 3rd, 1580. The brave John Greenwood (who was hanged at Tyburn with Barrowe) was, when William Brewster entered Peterhouse, still a student at Corpus Christi. And William Brewster at Cambridge drank in those same ideas of liberty that John Greenwood had. There was another young stu- dent at Cambridge at the very same time named John Robinson, who, we may be sure, knew John Greenwood and William Brewster. We shall hear more about John Robinson later on. Stranger things than this experience at Cambridge, however, had happened to William. For when he was only about seventeen years old (probably when he was home from Cambridge at the Manor House at Scrooby for the vacation) a great Secretary of State, who was in the service of Queen Elizabeth, came to stay at the Manor. His name was William Davison. He took a liking to the young Cambridge student, William Brewster, and asked him if he would like to enter his service. So William Brewster, without waiting to take his degree at Cambridge, agreed to be Davison's helper, and rode with his new master all up the Great North Road to London to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Then they sailed across the N^orth Sea to busy Antwerp in the 32 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH N'etherlands, where Davison was the Queen's am- bassador; and young William saw ships and strange sailors from all the countries of the wide world, and would meet men from far lands like Spain and Italy, and even from Constantinople and India. In Antwerp, William Davison and William Brewster went together to the Puritan English Church. It was in that Church and in talk with Davison that William Brewster grew to follow the great Quest of Liberty that he had first seen at Cambridge when he was about sixteen years old. Young Brewster found great favour in his master's eyes. Davison thought William ^^so discreete and faith- full as he trusted him above all others that were aboute him, and only employed him in all matters of greatest trust and secrecie; he esteemed him rather as a sonne than a servante; and for his wisdom and godliness he would converse with him, more like a friend and familier, than a maister.'' He even gave William Brewster a gold chain of honour that he was to wear when they came home all the time as they rode through England. William Davison, however (like poor Sir Walter Raleigh, who had risked his life a hundred times for England, but was cast into prison by Elizabeth), fell imder the great Queen's displeasure, and was thrown out of office. So William Brewster lost his master and went riding back along the Great N'orth Road to Scrooby Manor, where at last in 1590 he was made Postmaster when he was still only twenty-three. He had been Master of the Posts at Scrooby for three years when the Messenger came that evening trotting on horseback over the bridge to the gates of the Manor ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 33 House with the news of the execution of brave Barrowe and that Greatheart Greenwood. As the Messenger sat eating his supper in Scrooby Manor that night in April 1593, by the flickering candle-light, he would be able to tell William Brewster, the Postmaster, all the news of London. We can well believe that William would be stirred to anger and to sorrow when he heard that young John Greenwood (who had only left Cambridge two years be- fore he himself did) had been foully hanged as though he were a criminal, simply because he had wished to worship God freely in the company of like-minded men. It may be, too, that William's young face looked stern and almost grim as he wondered whether he himself would some day have to face the scaffold. For his mind was beginning strongly to have thoughts like those that had brought Barrowe and Greenwood to their deaths at Tyburn. The Messenger went to his bed; and in the morn- ing William Brewster wrote in the Post Book the hour of his starting. The horse came round, and the post- rider trotted away. William Brewster was left with his thoughts. lY The years went on; and news came continually by traveller and Post-Messenger to the Manor House on the Great N'orth Road. A baby who was bom in a village called Austerfield — only three miles from William Brewster's home at the Manor — ^began to grow into a boy who loved to be with William Brewster. This Austerfield boy's name was William Bradford. Together on a Sunday morning the two Williams, 34 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH boy and man, would walk twelve miles past Scraftworth, Everton, and Gringley-on-the-Hill down to the ferry- boat tbat took them across the Trent towards Gains- borough. They walked all that way to hear the preaching of a good man named John Smyth — a man who was so kind-hearted that he would give up his cloak to be cut up and made into clothes for some man who was too poor to buy any for himself to keep out the cold. John Smyth in Gainsborough was doing just what Barrowe and Greenwood had been killed for: he wrote books to defend liberty to worship God in separate gatherings, and he himself was minister to such a separate Church in Gainsborough. At last there were so many people going from the villages round Scrooby to Gainsborough on Sundays that they felt it was unnecessary to walk every week so far across the country to Gainsborough. They could form a little Church themselves. They believed that if two or three were gathered together in Christ's name to worship Him there was the Church. So William Brewster, about the year 1600, asked the friends to come and meet under his roof at the Manor House at Scrooby. This was very brave of Brewster; for Archbishop Whitgift was driving to prison men who dared to wor- ship in this way. At any hour he might find himself robbed of his home and his living, and carried away to a dungeon and even a scaffold. But that did not stop him. Their leader was a fine old white-bearded prophet- preacher named Eichard Clyfton. He was helped by the young Cambridge man — who (you remember) was ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 35 about William Brewster's age — named John Robinson. As a young clerg}^man in Norwich, Robinson bad al- ready been thrown into prison for gathering people in worship and for declaring their freedom to meet as they desired. So on a Sunday morning the men and women came with their boys and girls from the farmsteads and the vilMges round about to the Manor House. We do not know whether they held their service in the big hall of the Manor, with its heavy timbered roof, great open fireplace, and cavernous chimney. It is more likely that they worshipped in the cosy barn, with its warm, thatched roof, its dim, cobwebby great beams and its piles of straw and hay and sacks of com. Sometimes, maybe, they worshipped in the stable, where the words of the prayers would mix with the sound of the post- horses eating their com. Sometimes they had warning that the Queen's officers would arrest them if they worshipped there. That week they would arrange secretly to meet in some other place close by in another village. But in one place or an- other they did meet, in spite of everything. It was strange to know, while you were singing a Psalm or hearing a lesson read, that before it was ended, you might be made a prisoner ; or that, when you lifted your head from prayer, you might see the muskets of soldiers at the open door, pointed at you, and hear the clank of the shackles that were to be rivetted on your wrists and ankles. CHAPTER II THE STORMY PASSAGE OFTWARP BOUXD Dear Earth, near Earth, the clay that made us m.'^n, The hiud we sowed. The hearth that glowed — O mother, must we bid farewell to thee? East dawns the last dawn, and what shall comfort then The lonely hearts that roam the outer sea ^ Gray wakes the daybreak, the shivering sails are set. To misty deeps The channel sweeps — O mother, think on ns who think on thee! Earth-home, birth-home, with love remember yet The sons in exile on the eternal sea. Sir Henry Xewbolt. Bp permission of the author. CHAPTER II THE STOEMY PASSAGE William Beewstee and John Robinson and their friends in Scrooby and the country round about were at last forced to see very clearly that they could not stay in England any longer. If they did remain, they knew that they would be hunted from pillar to post, and, at the worst, die of fever in some dark dungeon in those foul gaols, like the Fleet or Brideswell or in the foetid colls of Boston Prison. The boy, William Bradford, who was now seventeen years old, in a book that he wrote later, told how they were ^'hunted and persecuted on every side; so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken and clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett and watcht night and day, and hardly escaped their hands, and ye most were faine to flie and leave their houses and habitations and the means of their livelehood." They were driven at last in 1607 to leave the home- steads where they had been born; the old meadow by the river Idle, where they had played and fished; the smithy where their fathers' and grandfathers' and great- grandfathers' horses had been shod. They must sail 39 40 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH into a strange land ; and they would never see the wild- duck fly over their native meadows again. As William Bradford said : "To goe into a countrie they knew not (hut by hear- say), wher they must learne a new language, and get their livings they knew not how, it being a dear place and subjecte to ye misseries of warr, it was by many thought an adventure almost desperate, a case in- tolerable, and a misserie worse than death." They hated to go; for they loved England, though they felt that her government treated them harshly. Indeed the boys who lived then loved England as peo- ple had never done in all her history. For at last she had become really one land and one people. She had passed through terrible perils. A boy — like William Bradford — ^would listen at night by the fire in the Manor House at Scrooby, with his chin in his hands, while he was told the story of how, only two years before he himself was born, the Great Armada of Spain had sailed to destroy England, and how Drake had "drummed them down the Channel.'^ Fancy hearing the story of the great victory over the Armada from the very lips of a sailor who had fought in the greatest naval battle! The boy might even possibly have read Sir Walter Raleigh's book The Fight About the Azores and his Discoveries, and perhaps Hakluyt's wonderful Voyages and Discoveries^ of which the last volume had only been published seven years earlier in 1600. And only a few years before that there had come into print for the first time those words of the love of England written by a man William THE STORMY PASSAGE 41 Shakespeare, who in those very days walked the streets of London Town — words that have set the blood of three centuries of boyhood in a tingle. . . . This little world. This precious stone set in the silver sea. Which serves it in the office of a wall. Or as a moat defensive to a house. Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed spot, this earth, this realm, this England.^ These men did love their own land which had so narrowly escaped with its life from the Armada of Spain. Yet England tried their love sorely and wore out their patience. They were men who knew that "patriotism is not enough''; — they had gone to prison for disobeying the law of their country in obedience to what was — they were sure in their own minds — a still higher law. They could say to England what the sol- dier-poet said to his lady-love: "I could not love thee. Dear, so much. Loved I not Honour more." ^ So they sat by the chimney-comer in the Manor at Scrooby talking of how they must leave England. They thought of only one land where they might find freedom, the land that we call Holland, which was then usually named the ISTetherlands, or the Low Country. Many of the Dutchmen from Holland in those days came across the seas to England on business. Some of them actually lived not far off in Norwich, where ^King Richard II, Act II, Sc. I, published 1597, nine years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. ^Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, on going to the Wars. 42 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH you could hear the "'click-clump, clickety-clump'' of the looms at which they worked at the worsted-making. Other of the Dutch countrymen would come from time to time to the Post-house at the Manor of Scroohy on the Great North Koad. They told of the freedom of their native land of Holland, where — they said — in spite of the threats of the Spanish king, they held freely opinions like those for which their friends in England were thrown into prison and persecuted in other ways. William Brewster the young Postmaster, who (as we know) had lived in Holland himself for years, would nod his head in agreement with what they said. In such talks as these the Pilgrims began to think of sailing over the seas to the freedom of Holland to escape from the tyranny of the rule of England. How could they escape? The King's officers locked them up in prison in England for disobeying the law; yet they would not let them leave the land. No one could sail away from England without a licence from old Lord Treasurer Burghley. And he refused to give licences to the Pilgrims. So, if they went at all, they must by hook or crook go in stealth by secret ways, like smugglers. If they decided to run the gauntlet and try to escape, how were they even to reach the coast ? There were no good roads ; indeed only a few rough tracks crossed the land, and even the tracks were sloughs of mud in wet weather. And, of all places in England in that day, the flat land of the undrained fens of Norfolk and Lincoln- shire was the most desperately hard to cross. There were shaky paths across bottomless morasses and over quaking bogs. THE STORMY PASSAGE 43 To be caught in the darkness of night on one of the narrower paths across that land was to have little chance of seeing the morning alive, save by remaining quite still through the cold and wet of the long black hours. For a single footstep might throw a man into the horrible, dragging, choking slime against which not even a Hercules could fight. So evil were the paths that, in those days, on the old tower of the church at Boston every night a great lantern was lighted so that its beams across the fens might by chance lead the feet of some lost travellers from the bogs to the firm streets of the town. In spite of perils of King's officers and of bogs and fens, however, they decided to go to Holland — pilgrims in search of freedom. II We do not know by what ways many of them ever reached the coast, or, having reached it, were able to sail to Holland. Here are two stories, however, of the perilous journeys of the parties of Pilgrims, told by young William Bradford, who was in the adventures. Some of the Pilgrims went by stealth down to the coast. They secretly arranged with the British captain of a ship to take them aboard under cover of the dark- ness, and to sail with them across the ISTorth Sea to Holland. All went well till they reached the sea. Then they rowed out in boats and climbed aboard the ship. They soon stowed themselves away below deck, and waited, expecting to hear the anchor weighed and the sails hoisted. But no such thing happened. They heard instead the ^'clunk" of oars ; men climbed 44 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH aboard. There were the voices of these men on deck. "Who are they?" questioned the Pilgrims. They were not to stay long in doubt. The dastardly captain, having taken their money to convey them to Holland, had betrayed them to the King's officers, who were now on board. The officers ordered the Pilgrims on deck, drove them — men, women, and children — into open boats, rowed them back to the coast and cast them into prison in Boston, where they were brought before the magistrates, and finally sent back to their homes in the depth of one of the most dreadful winters of snow and ice that England has ever known. Their desperate attempt had failed; but they were not daunted. There's no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim.^ !N'ear by Scrooby ran (you remember) the sluggish river Idle, a shallow and slow stream. Down the river went flat-bottomed boats, half-punt, half-barge. The women and the children were put aboard some^f these boats, and with them were the packages holding their clothes and the clothes of the men, together with the things they valued. They steered slowly down the lazy stream till the Idle ran smoothly irto the broader waters of the Trent. This bit of country is where King Canute used to live, and they say that it was on the bank of this tidal river that the King's courtiers urged him to com- mand the tide to stop. King James in these very days * John Bimyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, THE STORMY PASSAGE 45 was trying to stop the tide of freedom from flowing in the world. We shall see how his attempt fared. On the Trent there waited for them a little sailing harque. In secret and quietly men carried the baskets of food, casks of water, and other goods and stowed them into this little ship. Then the women and the children came and walked timidly across the plank into the boat. Some of the boys and girls went aboard with eyes sparkling at this strange new adventure of travel- ling across the seas. But some of the younger ones were rather frightened, and stared about them with eyes wide open. One or two babies lay happily asleep on their mothers' breasts. The mothers were brave, but very sad. For they were leaving their little homes be- hind them and the land that they loved, and were going out over the sea into a strange world among people of quite other ways than theirs. Two or three sailors came aboard. There was the creaking of the pulleys as they hauled on the ropes and hoisted the sail, which filled to the wind. The little barque slowly gathered way, tacking down the river Trent till she at last went dipping and bobbing out into the sea. The Pilgrims had planned that this barque should sail with the women and children and with the goods to ; i rendezvous off a lonely bit of coast between Grimsby and Hull, where a Dutch shipmaster from Hull had promised to meet them with his large sea-going ship. The men, meanwhile, did not go in this little barque to meet the big ship, but walked all across the land from Scrooby and the other places out to a wild heath between Grimsby and Hull, overlooking the sea. They knew that if they had all gone aboard the little barges 46 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH and travelled down the Idle to the barque on the Trent, they wonld have been suspected of flight, and would have been captured and thrown into prison. It was arranged that when the Dutch ship hove in sight and took the women and children aboard, the men would come down to the beach, and put off in boats to join the women and children on the ship. The little barque with its cargo of women and chil- dren sailed bravely to the place of meeting. The Dutch ship was not there. The wind rose and began to moan through the rigging of the barque. The sea grew rough, and the rolling waves pitched the boat up and down and tossed her about till the boys and girls who had looked forward to the adventure were very sea-sick indeed. The women could not endure the agonies of sickness in the boat. "Can you not run her back into that creek?" they asked the seamen. "We should be quiet there and hidden, and could get over our sickness." So the good-hearted sailors turned her about and ran for the creek, where the barque lay aground at low water. There they stayed through the hours of the night, some sleeping, some waking, but all cold in the sharp night-air of the early spring-time. At last the first touches of cold, grey, morning light across the sea began to break the power of the darkness. The sharp wind from the eastern seas drove wisps of cloud over the high common on that spring morn- ing. On the moorland the cold breeze caught the group of men who were waiting there looking anxiously out to sea. Under their frowning brows they looked out to the grey dawn that came cheerlessly over the ocean. THE STORMY PASSAGE 47 '^When will the ship come ? Will the Dutchman be- tray us as the English captain did? Will the King's officers come and find us and take us to prison before we can get away V' These were the questions the men would ask one an- other as they stood there waiting, waiting. "The Dutch captain said we were not to fear," one might reply. "He said that he would do for us what we wished." "Yes," another would answer, "but that is what the English captain said; yet he betrayed our people, and they were made a sight and a shame in the eyes of all Boston, and were brought before the magistrates. The Dutch ship was to be here yesterday ; and now the night has gone and here is another dawn, but still she is not here." "Sail ho !" cried a third, and, sure enough, from the Hull direction came the sight of the square-rigged Dutch ship that they expected. They signalled to her and a boat was let down to fetch off the men. But to their dismay the women in the barque could not move. She was stuck fast in the mud at low tide. The water would not be full enough in the creek to get them off till noon. They knew that every minute lost was full of danger that they could be caught ; yet they were help- less. The Dutch ship-master sent off his boat to the shore, and as many of the men as the boat would hold crowded into her, and with all speed pulled for the ship. They reached her and climbed aboard. The boat was putting off again, when suddenly the ship-master swore a round oath, and ordered her to stop. He pointed ashore. The men, looking, saw horses 48 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH galloping toward the shore. A whole cx)mpaiiy of armed men, horse and foot, were hurrying up. The country- side was roused. It was the old story all over again. The Govern- ment of England would not let the people stay in peace in their own land to worship God as they desired, and yet would not let them leave their land to worship ac- cording to their own conscience in other lands. The ship-master — as William Bradford, who was on board, tells us — ^^swore his countries oath 'SacramenteP — and having ye wind faire, waighed his ancor, hoysed sayles and away !" ^ III We must leave them for a while and ask what hap- pened to the women who could not be rescued and were left behind in the barque stranded on the mud. "Pitifull it was [wrote William Bradford] to see ye heavie case of these poore women in this distress; what weeping and crying on every side, some for their husbands, that were carried away in ye ship as is be- fore related: others not knowing what should become of them, and their little ones; others again melted in teares, seeing their poore little ones hanging aboute them, crying for feare, and quaking with could." ^ The children cried as the rough soldiers came riding and running on foot down to the creek, to take them prisoners. Some of the men who had been left on the shore when the boatload escaped dashed off in flight * All the quotations from William Bradford are from his His- tory of Plymouth Plantation. THE STORMY PASSAGE 49 across the moor and escaped. The prisoners were hurried to Hull and Grimsby and other places. Nobody knew what to do with the prisoners, even now that they had captured them. They had sold their homes; they had given up their trades. The cost of keeping the people in a prison was charged on the rates of the town where they were. So nobody wished to have them in their jails. The constables got dead tired of moving the prisoners about from place to place; the captives, too, were quite worn out. At last it was de- cided to let them go out of England across the seas to Holland — not through any feeling of mercy for them, but simply because the magistrates found themselves in a position where- they simply could do nothing else. So the Pilgrim-exiles went aboard ship, — the men who had been captured, the mothers and their boys and girls. They sailed away out of sight of the shores of England. Eor two hundred miles the slow sailing-ship butted her way across the E^orth Sea day and night in sun and under cloud; in rain and gale till at last she came in sight of the long, flat, low Dutch coast. Then she turned and sailed along that coast for fifty miles till she came to the opening into the lagoons and winding narrow channels of the Zuyder Zee. Entering these channels, she crept along, tacking hither and thither by tedious ways, till she found the mouth of the Eiver Y. Entering that river she went up on the tide till at last the roofs and spires and towers of the great city of Amsterdam came in sight, and with many shout- ings of the sailors the ship was moored safely by the wharf and the Pilgrims trooped across the gangway to dry land again. In Amsterdam they found the men who had escaped 50 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH in tlie Dutch ship off the coast between Grimsby and Hull, and they heard the story of the voyage. William Bradford (you remember) was among these, and he would tell them of the horrors and adventures of that journey, much as he wrote them down in later years in his story of their adventures. "Ye poore men which were gott abord [he said] were in great distress for their wives and children, which they saw thus to be taken, and were left destitute of their helps ; and themselves also, not having a cloath to shifte them with, more then they had on their baks, and some scarce a peney aboute them, all they had being abord ye barke. It drew tears from their eyes, and anything they had they would have given to have been a shore againe; but all in vaine, ther was no remedy, they must thus sadly part." "The ship [he would tell them] sailed into the ocean. But a great storm came and smote us. Day and night the sky was covered with thick clouds. We did not see the sun, or the moon, or the stars for seven long days and nights. The storm raised a great sea, and we were tossed about terribly. At last we were driven right out of our course and found in front of us the cliffs and fiords of the coast of ^Norway. Even the hardy sailors on board were terrified at the greatness of the waves that swept over the ship. "But even then we did not lose faith. For when the waters of the waves that broke over the ship were run- ning into our mouths and ears, and the mariners cried out in their terror, ^We sink, we sink,' we cried out, THE STORMY PASSAGE 51 'Yet, Lord, Thou canst save! Yet, Lord, Thou canst save.' "And even as we cried the gale abated, the waves grew less terrible, the storm at last ceased, and we came into port all battered, with spars broken, sails torn, yet safe, to the astonishment of all who beheld us." CHAPTEK III THE LAI^D OP THKEATEIsriNG WATEES WHO WOULD TRUE VALOUR SEE? Who would true valour see Let him come hither; One here will constant be. Come wind, come t\ rather; •There's no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim. Whoso beset him round With dismal stories. Do but themselves confound; His strength the more is. No lion can him fright, He'll with a giant fight, But he will have a right To be a pilgrim. Hobgoblin nor foul fiend Can daunt his spirit; He knows he at the end Shall life inherit. Then fancies fly away; He'll not fear what men say; He'll labour night and day To be a pilgrim. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress. CHAPTER III THE LAND OF THEEATE:^rii;rG WATERS As the ship came to rest at the wharves of Amsterdam, the boys and girls, leaning against the bulwarks, gazed with wide-open eyes on such sights as they had never dreamed to exist. And their fathers and mothers were as full of wonder as the children. For nearly all the Pilgrims had lived in England in farm-houses or villages with wide lands stretching all around, where white sheep and red cows grazed and the corn yellowed in the sunshine. We can imagine, then, how full of wonder they were as they saw the busy docks of Amsterdam, with the sailors from England and France, from Italy, even Turkey and Africa, and from the fiords of Scandinavia, shouting and pulling at ropes and thumping great bales of wool and baulks of timber down on the wharves. Chattering in half the languages of Europe they bore on their backs jars of wine, bales of silk, and cases of spices, coffee, and tobacco. Still stranger, and more like a fairy-story to them, were the thick and high walls of the city with the sturdy towers pierced with narrow slit-openings through which the Dutch soldiers could shoot when their city was at- tacked; and on the walls were the men-at-arms on "sentry go" with hauberk and corselet, pike and musket. 55 56 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH When the ship was warped in to the dock the Pil- grims crossed the gangway and went in search of their friends who had gone before them. Going in under the shadows of the grim gateways through the thick walls, they came into streets more busy than any they had ever seen. Porters were carrying heavy sacks on their broad shoulders. Sturdy Dutch merchants in thick coats, knee-breecheSj woollen stockings, and clumped shoes were bartering and bargaining with one another ; while their brisk, clean, buxom wives, whose comely, rosy faces looked shrewdly out from under the spotless linen caps that framed them so neatly, were sitting at their stalls in the market-place selling cool slabs of fresh butter. They found their friends who had gone to Amster- dam before them ; and on Sunday they all met together for worship in the English Church of the Separatists there. Among the people in the Church at Amsterdam there was one dear old widow who used to nurse any children who were ill. But when they were well again they used to take care how near to her they sat in church, for — William Bradford tells us — "She usually sat in a convenient place in the congregation with a little birchen rod in her hand, and kept little children in great awe from disturbing the congregation." The best and most wonderful thing of all, in the eyes of the Pilgrims, about Amsterdam and the other cities of Holland was not so much the strange sights that could be seen in the streets or on the city walls or on the wharves, but the spirit that was in the people. Most of all, the Pilgrims felt it as strange as it was good that the people there were ready to let them worship God in the way that they themselves believed to be best. THE LAND OF THREATENING WATERS 57 II We may ask why there was this desire to have and to give freedom. There were many causes, but of these two were the greatest. These two causes of the love of liberty a boy or girl can well understand — they were the Sea and the Spaniard. The Sea has always looked as though it were going to swallow up the land of the Dutch people and drown it altogether. For Holland lies low, without protecting cliffs or any mountains. Many, many miles of it are indeed lower than the level of high tide. Only by build- ing and keeping strong, great dykes and making massive sea-gates toehold back the tides could she keep much of her land from being swallowed up in the sea, and re- claim still more that was once sea-marsh and fen. On that land, kept from the sea by the strong, protecting dykes and drained by the many canals that cut across it, were many sheep and cows and horses, with nice little farms and big windmills. If once the sea broke through those dykes, it would have rushed over all that land, drowned the cows, horses, and sheep, flowed over the clean, white, sanded floors of the farms, and ruined all the crops. The story that we learn about the boy — *^the Hero of Haarlem" — ^who saved his country by holding his finger in the little hole in the dyke so that the water should not make a big hole and then break through, is a Dutch story of an ad- venture that happened to a boy between Amsterdam and Leyden. This very sea, however, held back by the dykes, brought into the harbours of the N'etherlands (like 68 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Amsterdam) many ships from all places in the known world. The sea also led the Dutch to build more ships than indeed perhaps any country in the world of that day. You could see in Amsterdam, not only men of all the peoples of Europe, but of other races like African negroes. The great Rembrandt, when he lived there, painted an African in a picture. The Dutch sailors and merchants and their wives travelled in all the oceans in their ships. They knew the ways of other peoples away in the Indies of the East, on the coasts of Africa, in the ports of the Mediterranean Sea, on the cold shores of the Baltic, in Britain, in France, in Portugal and Spain and even on the wild shores of America. This made them broad- minded. Just as the harbours of Holland lay open to the flow of the sea, so her mind was open to the flow of new thoughts. The sturdy sailors of the Low Countries therefore knew and desired the freedom that they learned on the Seven Seas. But they hardly knew how much they loved this liberty till the Spanish galleons and armies tried to rob them of it. Not many years before the Pilgrims sailed to Amsterdam the arrogant galleons of the Spanish Armada had — as we know — come swooping up the Channel to destroy the strength and freedom of England. In the same way, but in a far worse de- gree, the ships and the armies of Spain had tried to hold the Dutch people in slavery. They had ruled them, indeed, with a rod of iron. When the Dutch desired to worship as they would, the power of Spain had tor- tured them with horrible thumbscrews, with the vile rack that dragged a living man's joints apart, with the iron boot, having nails in it that were driven right into THE LAND OF THREATENING WATERS 59 a man's foot till lie fainted in agony. There is no more horrible story in the world than Alva's persecu* tion of the Dutch people for their religious inde- pendence. At last, however, the Dutch, by their courage and grim determination, had, for the time being, beaten off the rule of Spain. But they were still in dread of what the Spaniards would do. In that very spring when the English Pilgrims reached Amsterdam the States- General (as the Dutch Republic called itself) signed a Truce with the King of Spain (on April 9th, 1609) thus ending the Twenty-five Years' War. But it was only a truce — not a lasting peace. The very fact that they still might lose their freedom made them love it all the more; and it meant, too, that they would not deny that same freedom to any of the guests inside the walls of their cities. So the Sea and the Spaniard had together taught the men of the Netherlands the great lesson of freedom; and into the fresh air of that liberty our brave Pilgrims sailed. Ill In Amsterdam the Pilgrims had to face what young William Bradford called the ^ 'grime and grisly face of povertie coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must bukle and encounter.'' For many reasons they thought that a better town in which to live would be the neighbouring curious and beautiful city of quiet streams called Leyden. One great reason why they decided to go to Leyden was that the people who had gone from England to Amsterdam before them, and had formed what they 60 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH called the Ancient Separatist Churcli there, used to argue and even quarrel over trifling things that did not matter at all. For instance, they divided into two quarrelling parties over the question whether the ephod that Aaron wore was green or sky blue ! The new Pil- grims wanted to be more peaceful than that, and more sensible. Their young pastor, John Robinson, was a man who hated quarrelling, though he would rather die than be a coward and surrender to what he knew was wrong. So he encouraged his Pilgrims to go away to Leyden. E^evertheless, we ought not to laugh at the Ancient Separatist Church at Amsterdam. If they did squabble about Aaron's ephod, and if they were dreadfully upset because the pastor's wife wore a ^^schowish hat topishly set," and a velvet hood, still they were brave men and women. As William Bradford said — and he knew them at Amsterdam — ^They had few friends to comfort them, nor any arm of flesh to support them; and if in some things they were too rigid, they are rather to be pitied, considering their times and sufferings, than to be blasted with reproach to posterity." Having decided to go from Amsterdam to Leyden, how did the new Pilgrims travel? Boats went to and from Amsterdam and Leyden every day. So the Pil- grims would take places on some of those boats in the May of 1609. They would go along between the banks of the Haarlem Canal. The boys and girls in the boat could look across the flat fields, where the plump black- and-white Dutch cows grazed, to the farm-houses where their rich milk was made into the loveliest butter in the world. The boats came to a dam, where they were obliged THE LAND OF THREATENING WATERS 61 to stop. All the people got out on to the bank and walked over the dam, while the boat was lifted right out and carried across. As the boys and girls stood there, they could see stretching out in front of them a great lake of shining water called Haarlem Meer.^ The boat was floated on this lake, beyond which were the very dykes that the boy-hero of Haarlem saved by pushing his finger into the hole through which the sea was making its way. They clambered back into the boat, and for five miles no sound was heard, save the regular ^^chunk'' and thud of the oars or the cry of a wild-duck. At last the sun began to sink low in front of them. They saw against the evening glow the slowly revolv- ing arms of a giant windmill. They slid out of Haarlem Meer into the narrow waters of a canal, and from thi3 into another, until at last they found themselves in the sluggish stream of the Old Ehine. In front of them rose the walls of the dream-city of Leyden, which was kept sweet and wholesome by the fresh waters of Haarlem Meer. This city, they could see, was different from any in the world though it was something like Venice. All round the strong broad walls ran the lazy stream of the Old Rhine. No one could go into the city at all except on those waters by boat or across them by bridge. On the south side of the city, and on the east side, great stalwart stone bastions of the wall pushed out into the stream, and on the bastions were sturdy sentinels and grim iron cannon. At two comers of the walls rose high, strong, round towers from the tops of which men could see across the fields and windmills to the dykes *See end papers. 62 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH and to the open sea by Delftshaven to the north. Here and there the waters of the Old Ehine ran through low bridges in the walls into the city itself. The barges with the Pilgrims in them passed through the water-gate under the walls into the city. They found that canals ran along between the houses some- what as they do in Venice. On the narrow roads be- tween the canals and the houses were tall, graceful poplar-trees with their leaves shivering in the cool breeze, strong limes giving shade on hot days, and wil- lows that leaned over to trail their slender fingers in the water of the streams. The Pilgrims, tired with their travel, were come to their journey's end. The barges were moored, and they stretched their cramped legs as they walked on the streets that were on the canal banks. So they went to the houses where they were to live, and were soon asleep. CHAPTEE IV; THE HOUSE WITH THE GEEEN DOOR THE HOUSE BY THE WAY They drew near to a house which stood in the Way, which house was built for the relief of Pilgrims. . . . Christiana knocked, as she had done at the Gate before. Now when she had knocked, there came to the door a young damsel, and opened the door. . . . Then said the damsel to them, With whom would you speak in this place ? Christiana answered, We understand that this is a privileged place for those that are become Pilgrims, and we now at this door are such; wherefore we pray that we may be partakers of that for which we at this time have come; for the day, as thou seest, is very far spent, and we are loth toviight to go any further. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress. CHAPTER IVi THE HOUSE WITH THE GREElSr DOOE The Pilgrims found much that was strange in the houses in Leyden. They were mostly strong and fair to look at, with clean windows and their doors and shutters nicely painted. Arched brick passages led into bright courtyards and into gardens where tulips and daffodils and other flowers grew. In the kitchens the tables were scrubbed as clean as sand and water and brushes could make them; the floors were sprinkled with dry, white sand. The kitchen walls were covered with cool, clean, white tiles, having blue patterns on them. The tile-patterns were pictures of windmills, ships, countrymen and women and plump Dutch boys and g-irls. In the gardens they could see the young Dutch mothers in their gowns of black with lovely neckruffs of spotless muslin and over their heads a coif of fine white linen. The little children ran about and played ; and the girls had on their heads little linen caps some- thing like their mothers. Most of them looked plump, and this was partly because, for two of their meals in the day, they ate simply butter and cheese. The Pil- grim children soon got to know some of these Dutch 65 66 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH boys and girls ; but, to a large extent, they kept to them- selves. On the top of some of the chimneys the Pilgrim boys and girls would be sure to see the heavy nests of the storks. As the Pilgrims came to Leyden in the early spring, they would see the long-legged storks come flying to the city from far countries. The mother stork laid her eggs in the old nest, while the father stork stood on one leg on ^^sentry go" on the roof or stalked stiffly up the street, looking as proud as though no mother stork had ever laid an egg before. The people thought one was very lucky if a stork made a nest on one's house. The Pilgrim boys and girls soon learned that no one must ever throw a stone at a stork or touch a stick of his nest. Very funny was it, some weeks later, to see the quaint, long-legged baby storks trying to fly. And the father stork would be very busy then hunting on the banks of the canal for frogs with which to feed his family. When the Pilgrims were in Leyden a little boy with a mop of curly hair lived in the big mill-house on the Western Rampart of the city on the river-bank by the White Gate. There two strange Gothic towers stood up for all the citizens to see, dark and silent against the setting sun. The boy's name was Rembrandt of the Rhine. ^ His mother, who loved the little boy, used to tell him stories out of the big Dutch Bible that rested on her knees. He listened on his little stool with elbows on knees and chin in hands, with his wonderful clear eyes looking right up at her soft cheeks, and her round, smiling face. *Born in Leyden, 1605. s THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR 67 This boy is very important for us because be can do for us to-day what no one else in the world can per- form. He can show us Leyden as it was when the Pil- grims were there. For when he became a young man Kembrandt painted as no man has painted before or since. He was to the picture what Shakespeare was to the drama, and it is a wonderful thing that both of these great men were living at the very same time, and that our Pilgrims lived in both their lands. Rembrandt painted again and again the face of his old mother. We can see her to-day in his pictures with the lovely wrinkles on her cheeks like the wrinkles on a pippin at Christmas; and her face breaking into a quiet smile, or looking patiently sad. He painted the stories that she told him out of the Bible. She must have told them wonderfully, for he painted them so really that you seem to see the very stories come alive again. But he painted, too, the very things that the Pilgrim boys and girls saw as they went about the streets — the beggars whining on crutches from door to door, the cosy housewives in the market-place buying food; the meandering Old Rhine River creeping along between its strong banks; the steeples where the bells clanged on festival day; the network of canals up and down which the barges slowly nosed their way ; the low, far- stretching land covered with thin grass; the waving arms of the windmills turning in the misty, amber- coloured air; the ^ gale blowing the storks about the cloud-strewn sky, driving too the ships that scudded wildly by the shore in search of harbourage. 6S THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH II If any of tlie Pilgrims waked in the night when the great clocks struck the hours, they would hear the sound of a trumpet clamouring across the house-tops of Ley- den. There was a watchman or sentry on top of one of the towers on the walls, and each hour he sounded his trumpet to say ^^AU's Well/' and to tell any of the citizens who might be awake that they might sleep se- curely, for no enemy was in sight. The children would wonder at the sound of the trumpet, and still more at the great noise that was made on October 3rd through all the city. The bells pealed as though they had gone mad with joy, till the very towers seemed to rock with laughter. The guard of the city went marching proudly down the streets, armed with pike and gun and wearing their most bril- liant gala uniforms. The women and men and boys and girls all put on their finest clothes and went in boats up and down the canals waving their hands to their friends and having a lively time all during the fair, which lasted for ten whole days. The trumpet at night and the joyful fair were caused by the same adventure which had made Leyden famous for ever — the great siege which had made Leyden a better home of freedom and light for the Pilgrims than any other city in the world of those days. That siege, which is one of the greatest events in the history of the world, had happened some thirty-five years earlier when the fierce Spanish General Valdez had come with his armies against the city. His soldiers camped all round Leyden. ISTo one could come in to help them or THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR 69 bring them food, and they had not enough soldiers in , the city to sally out and fight the Spanish army. At the fair the people acted scenes from this siege in the open-air. The PilgTim boys and girls, who were able to get to the fair, would in that way learn the things that had happened. Some of the scenes from the siege are as follows: The food had become less and less, and a plague broke out, killing many people. Some of the men of Leyden were so down-hearted that they wanted to give up the fight. So they went to the head man of the Town, Burgomaster Van der Werf, and said to him, "You, must surrender to the enemy." They even threatened to kill him if he did not. "]^o," said he, "I will not give in. I can but die once, whether by your hands, the enemy^s, or by the hand of God. . . . Your menaces do not move me ; my life 'is in your hands. Here is my sword, plunge it into my breast and divide my flesh among you. Take my body and appease your hunger. But expect no surrender so long as I remain alive." So the Leyden men plucked up courage. "You call us rat-eaters," they shouted at the Span- iards from the walls, "and it is true. So long, then, as ye hear a dog bark or a cat mew within the walls, ye may know that the city holds out. When all has perished but ourselves, be sure that we will eat our left arms, keep our right to defend our women, our liberty, and our religion against the foreign Spanish tyrant." At last one day some pigeons came flying across the country from the sea and over the Spanish army into Leyden. The pigeons settled on the city walls, and the soldiers took them and found a message written on very 70 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH tliin paper, and rolled up and put into little quills that were tied nnder tlie wings of the pigeons. The message said that Dutch ships were coming to their rescue with soldiers and with food. How could the ships come ? It was done in this way. The navy broke down the dykes, flooded the land on which the Spaniards were encamped with the waters of the sea. This swamped the Spanish army. Then the Dutch fleet came sailing in with food and all manner of good things. So the good ITetherlanders of Leyden showed how they could hold out bravely to defend their freedom to live and to worship as they desired, and set the world an immortal example of brave endurance for liberty. Learning of these brave deeds for freedom of the men of Leyden would make the Pilgrims more determined than ever that they too would put everything to the hazard for liberty. Ill The Pilgrims earned their living by doing many things while they were at Leyden. William Bradford was a vastijnwerJcer (i.e. a fustian-worker — fustian is a strong, coarse, cotton stuff). Others wove baize, made serge, carded wool, knitted stockings, engraved pictures, constructed trunks, cast metal into bells, or hammered gold into rings and brooches. They manufactured twine and string, chiselled stone and built it into houses, worked with chisel and saw and hammer and screw- driver at the carpenter's bench. William Brewster, being a scholar from Cambridge, taught the Dutchmen, Danes, and Germans to speak and write the English language, and was so clever at doing this that many THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR 71 men sent their boys to him. He taught the sons of the great men of the State. Then William Brewster did something that was of still greater importance. It made King James I of England stretch out his arms across the sea, and try to imprison him even though he lived in another land. Brewster bought a printing press and set it up in a house in the Choor-steeg — Choir-lane, as we should say. A friend named Thomas Brewer helped him in this. So they printed and sent home to England books de- fending their wish to worship God in freedom — books such as were not allowed to be printed in England. But the King of England failed to get William Brewster into his clutches, though he sent messengers over to Holland to take him prisoner. The Pilgrims lived mostly in houses near the l^ew University that had been founded by William of Orange. The University was chosen by the people as William's gift in commemoration of the siege. The most famous of the houses that the Pilgrims had in Ley den was called "The House with the Green Door." It stood in the Klooksteeg (that is, Bell Lane) near the Pieterskerk (St. Peter's Church). It was a big house with a garden and a large piece of ground by the side. In the upstairs rooms of the house lived John Robinson, the wise and good pastor of the Church of the Pilgrims. He knew that men who loved liberty as his people did were often ready to fight for it over trifling things. He was a very learned man, and knew the great books of ancient Greece and Rome, and Christian writers of all the centuries. Yet his heart was simple and kind. The boys and girls loved him, and they thought of him 72 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH ■with reverence. We can well believe that the reason why the people in the Church of which he was the minister quarrelled very little was dne more than any- thing else to the gentle, brave spirit of good John Robinson. Under his leadership they certainly were a "happy band of Pilgrims.'' A man who joined them when they were at Leyden (Edward Winslow of Droit- wich) said, "I persnade myself never people upon earth lived more lovingly together and parted more sweetly than we the Church of Leyden did." He was to these Pilgrims what the Interpreter in The Pilgrims Progress was to Christian, Christiana, Mercy, and the boys and girls. So his House with the Green Door could well be called "the Interpreter's House" of these new Pilgrims. Here are some words of John Robinson's which may — or may not — ^be too hard for us to understand while we are boys and girls; yet they ought to be set down in this book so that we may read them again and again, and be able to show them to people — if we meet such — who say that the Pilgrims were quarrelsome people. "I believe with my heart and profess with my tongue [wrote John Robinson] . . . that I have one and the same faith, hope, spirit, baptism and Lord which I had in the Church of England, and none other ; that I esteem so many in that Church ... as are truly partakers of that faith . . , for my Christian brethren and myself a fellow-member with them of that one mystical body of Christ scattered far and wide throughout the world ; that I have always, in spirit and affection, all Christian fellowship and communion with them." THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR 73 On Sunday morning the men and women of the Pilgrim Church at Leyden used to come to the House with the Green Door. They would walk to the door quietly, and, lifting the latch, enter the large room on the ground-floor which was their meeting-room for wor- ship. John Eobinson, as he sat in the minister's seat, would see the people he loved and whose lives he knew come in and take their places. Here was young William Bradford with his strong, serious face — only just twenty-one years old, a fustian- worker, yet a student and a good organiser. William would not for long be able to keep his eyes from straying over to the place where Dorothy May sat in her black gown with the neat collar of white lawn and the close- fitting cap just failing to keep in order her rebellious curls. John Eobinson married William Bradford and Dorothy May to one another in 1613. Then came the sturdy and clever William Brewster, who taught "great men's sons" in Leyden to speak Eng- lish and learned from them how their land was gov- erned. The strong, stalwart figure of Captain Miles Standish would fill the doorway, for he cast in his lot with the Pilgrims while they were in Leyden, though he did not join the Church; and Miles and his wife would take their places in the room. Standish was a great fighter ; a soldier of fortune who took part in many a tussle in the ISTetherlands, and whose sharp sword and strong arms were known far and wide, and were feared by the Spaniards. For he had a quick temper that flamed up into anger, yet a warm heart that made him a good friend. He was so brave that he did not know what fear was, and was always at his best in a tight 74. THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH corner and in a stiff fight, for lie could cut or contrive a way out when nine men out of ten would fail. Behind him (in the later years at Ley den) would come the very different face of Edward Winslow of Droitwich, the man of letters who had travelled much and had read many books and who even wrote some. These, with good Dr. Samuel Fuller, the physician, Eobert Cushman, the business man, Isaac Allerton, the merchant (who married Fear Brewster), and many others, filled the great room of the Interpreter's House with the Green Door. So happily did they live together in Leyden that many others were drawn to join them. People in Eng- land living in Kent and Essex, Lincolnshire and E'orth- amptonshire, went out to Leyden to escape persecution in their own land. After some years, the community had gTown from just over a hundred to as many as three hundred. And so honest and straight were they in their dealing that, after living in Leyden for twelve years, the magistrates of the city could actually say, "These English have lived among us these twelve years, and yet we never had any suit or accusation against any of them." IV The Pilgrims were thankful, in many ways, that they could live in Leyden in freedom. But Leyden was not and never could be really home. They desired strongly to be in England, which was their real home. That, however, could not be, for the Government there still persecuted men and women for wishing to be free in worship. So their thoughts roamed the world in search of some place where they could make a ^New THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR 75 England that would still be attached to the Old Coun- try and under its King, yet might be free, and might become a new home. John Robinson's thoughts often ran westward across the Atlantic Ocean to the West Indies — the islands off the coast of America — and to the other lands to which Ealeigh and Drake had sailed with the sea-dogs of Devon. Those, however, were hard lands to live in. There was dreadful fever in many of them; and fierce Red Indians in some; and in none was there any settled, ordered and secure life. If they sailed west it would certainly mean that the older people and the weaker ones could not go, but must stay at home. Their sons, however, were growing up, and the ad- venturous ones were joining the army of the Nether- lands, or were sailing the world in Dutch merchant- ships, or were seeking to marry Dutch wives. The mothers and fathers wished very strongly that their children should go to a land where they would not be drawn away into a foreign life, but would build up one of their own. They desired above all to make their life where their boys and girls might grow in body and soul, breathing the air of a generous and bracing freedom. Their eyes turned across the ocean to the west. They knew how Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh of Devon had "singed the Spaniard's beard" in the Western Ocean, and how that dauntless adventurer Captain John Smith faced perils among Indians and on the high seas to found in America a settlement that would be the beginning of a E'ew England across the waters. At last they determined that they too would go and seek in the wilds a place where, at whatever cost to themselves, they could build a home. They felt 76 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH the call that came to the Argonauts — to go out and take whatever adventure might fall to them, to capture the Golden Fleece of the free life of the soul. They were in spirit "Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste." John Robinson himself, their loved pastor, greatly wished to go. But he was not as strong in body as he was adventurous in his spirit. So it was determined that he must stay in Leyden and still lead the Pilgrims (and they were in the majority) who stayed on there. As he wrote to those who were leaving: "God knows how willingly ... I would have borne my part with you in this first brunt, were I not by strong necessitie held back for ye present." They decided to send to England to ask King James for a charter to allow those who could endure the hard- ships of the voyage and of the difficult and dangerous life to go across the Atlantic and settle on the east coast of America. To get that charter settled and then signed by the King was more difficult than winning any obstacle race. There were the hurdles of religious persecution to get over ; the slippery pole of jealousy to clamber along; the pond of greed to jump, and the gorse- bushes of prejudice to force. But at last, through a band of Merchant-adventurers — called the London Vir- ginia Company — they received their charter in June 1619. They had permission to settle in America close by the estuary of the river Hudson. It took another year to arrange to raise the needed money for getting ships and buying provisions. The old friends, William Brewster of Scrooby and William THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR 77 Bradford of Austerfield, were to be tlie captains of tlie expedition. At length, in 1620, they secured a sixty-ton pinnace with the promising name of Speedwell. She was bought in England. Then she sailed across the sea to be fitted in Holland, and was brought to harbour at Delfshaven, — the sea-port for Leyden. Early on a bright midsummer morning in July 1620, the Pilgrims all met together in the great room which was the meeting-place of the PilgTim Church in John Eobinson's House with the Green Door. There the Interpreter preached to them the last sermon that they ever heard from his lips. Then they passed out of the shadow of the room into the open street to the N'uns' Bridge, opposite to Eobinson's House. Barges were moored near the bridge by the street side. All who were sailing in the Speed- well — as well as some like John Robinson himself who were travelling as far as Delfshaven to see them off — went down into the barges ; mothers and fathers, young men and women, boys and girls, and one or two babies who would blink unconcernedly at the sunshine and not know at all that they were going out into a life that was as new as themselves. The barges were loosed and started. Those who were left behind waved farewell from the bank — though in- deed some of them could not see for the tears that blurred their eyesight. The barges crept quietly along into the Vliet, the canal that runs from Leyden to Delft. First they passed between the houses inside the city ; then they came to the water-gate that guarded Leyden 60 that no enemy might be able to enter. In front of 78 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH them rose tlie northern walls of the town. The barges passed under the shadow of the tunnel through the walls and out into the open country. Looking back, they could see the turrets standing above the Cow-gate and the glitter of the helmet of a sentry. It was their last look at Leyden. "They lefte/' says William Bradford, "the goodly and pleasante citie which had been ther resting-place near twelve years; but they knew that they were pil- grimes. . . ." Out across the low pasture lands they could see the quiet cows and sheep grazing and the windmills lazily turning in the breeze of the summer morning. For nine miles the barges butted their way through the waters of the canal, till they came to a bend to the left under the Hoorn Bridge by the Hague. Then for ^ve miles the canal-boats went on till they came to the city of Delft. Going in under the walls, they passed through the centre of the city. Over them, they saw the tall tower, leaning out of the straight, of the Old Kirk of Delft. Opposite to it was the red-tiled house in which the great soldier and statesman of freedom — William the Silent — had been assassinated by the dagger of Balthazar Gerard. Again the shadow of the city walls fell upon them and the barges passed through the western watergates of Delft, out of the Vliet into the Schie and at last — at the village of Overshie — into the Delfshaven Canal. For full ten miles from Delft to Delfshaven the rippling wake of the barges lapped against the canal banks. The fathers would have to explain to the boys and girls that, THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR 79 although the canal was hetween banks that stood above the level of the fields^ yet, all the time, they were them- selves really below the level of the sea, which was kept from rushing in by the great dykes and the sturdy sea- gates. They came, as evening was falling, to the end of the canal. Sluice-gates swung slowly open. The barges went into a great lock. The gates were closed again, and the sea-water was let into the lock. So they rose and rose as the lock filled, and then the second gates of the lock opened, and they moved onward. But still they were below sea-level, and had to enter another lock, where again the water poured in and lifted the barges still higher till at last, when the gates opened, the boys and girls saw a big pool where large vessels could float. From this pool the barges went into the outer harbour. Imagine the excitement of the boys and girls as they spelt on the bows of a little ship that lay moored by the wharves the word Speedwell. This was the ship that the Pilgrims had bought. On her decks they were to sail from Holland to England, and start on their great adventure across the ocean to the strange Western World of their dreams. CHAPTER Y THE SHIP OF ADVE:NrTUEE THE PILGEIM WHO TUENED BACK Tlien said Pliable, Ah, neighbour Christian, where are you now? Truly, said Christian, I do not know. At this Pliable began to be offended and angrily said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey's end? May I get out again with my life, you shall possess the brave country alone for me! And with that he gave a desperate struggle or two, and got out of the mire on that side of the Slough which was next to his own home; so away he went and Christian saw him no more. A LOFTIER ARGO CLEAVES THE MAIN The world's great age begins anew. The golden years return. The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn : Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A loftier Argo cleaves the main ; Fraught with a later prize. Shelley's Hellas, CHAPTER V; THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE Few of the Pilgrims went to sleep in that short July night. They talked of the adventure that lay before them, and gave their last messages to the men who were staying behind. Even the boys, if they slept under the stars by the harbour, must have dreamed of sailing on deep Waters, and of storm and shipwreck and perilous landing on strange shores. Dawn came up in a bright, clear sky on the wings of a favourable breeze across the harbour. The tide was rising; when it should come to the full they must sail. So they went aboard the Speedwell with their friends.^ They did not know how to part from one another. For they had lived for twelve years together. Fathers were saying ^'Good-bye'' to their sons and mothers to their daughters. William Bradford tells us: "Truly dolfull was the sight of that sadd and mourn- full parting ; to see what sighs and sobbs and praires did * Bradford describes the farewell as taking place on board. Edward Winslow says that the farewell occurred on the quay. I adopt Bradford's record. 83 84 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH sound amongst them, what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches peirst each harte; that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the key as specta- tors could not refraine from tears. . . . But the tide (which stays for no man) called them away that were thus loath to departe." John Robinson fell upon his knees and asked for God's blessing on all the Pilgrims. The friends went ashore. The sails were hoisted. The sailors cast loose the ship. The Speedwell swung away from the quay- side. There was a crack and a blaze, followed by a hol- low roar. The men on the ship fired a volley from their muskets into the air; three of the ship's five cannon then boomed a salute. Soon the fluttering of kerchiefs on the quay-side grew less and less. The little ship began to feel the heave and fall of the swell of the tide in the open sea. She ran south-west through the Channel between Dover and Calais, and, passing the harbour of Folkestone and the long flats of Eomney Marsh, was driven by the fair wind westward under the summer sky until, sighting the Isle of Wight, she ran in the narrow channel past Ports- mouth to Southampton. Ahead of the Speedwell, another vessel had sailed there from London. She came past the mouth of the Medway and down Channel to Southampton — a ship of one hundred and eighty tons. She was to become per- haps the best-known boat in all the story of the world — the May flower ^ Having reached Southampton ahead * But, curiously enough, no record i;rritten by any one who sailed in her gives her name. The first mention of her name as the Mayflower comes in Nathaniel Morton's Neio England's THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 85 of the Speedwell, she was riding easily at anchor off the West Quay when the Pilgrims arrived from Leyden. She had brought with her from London other folk — men who sympathised with the Leyden Pilgrims, and wished to share their adventure across the ocean. Through the last days of July they all stayed in Southampton. They were kept there into the beginning of August. The delay was partly due to the fact that a man whom they had trusted with their arrangements had made alterations in their agreement, of which they did not approve. So the contract with the Merchant Adventurers remained unsigned ; in consequence money was not advanced to them, and the Pilgrims were forced — ^before they could sail away — to pay their harbour dues out of the money they had with them. They sold sixty pounds' worth of their provisions on board ship to pay the dues before leaving. They were in difficult straits after reducing their provisions; but they were not daunted. *We have,'' they wrote on August 3, 1620, "scarce any butter, no oyle, not a sole to mend a shoe, nor every man a sword to his side, wanting many muskets, much armoure, etc. And yet we are willing to expose our- selves to shuch eminente dangers as are like to insue, and trust to the good providence of God rather than His name and truth should be evill spoken of for us." The delay of those days seemed of very little import- ance ; but, as we shall see, it came perilously near ruin- ing the expedition. Memorials, published in 1669, forty-nine years later on. And, as it is quite certain that a ship called the Mayflower sailed to bring more Pilgrims from Leyden in 1629-30, there may have been confusion. 86 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH II At length all arrangements were clear. The Speedwell took thirty of the Pilgrims ; ninety were placed aboard the larger ship, the Mayflower. On August 5th, 1620, the larger and smaller ship started together, and tacked down Southampton Water and through the Solent. Leaving the E"eedles of the Isle of Wight astern, they started westward. But the delay had cost them dear; for the fair breeze had dropped and the wind was now against them. They beat down the Channel for three or four days, making but little progress. The captain of the Speed- well ran up a startling message. He said that she had sprung a dangerous leak. ^'We mnst," he declared, "put into Dartmouth for re- pairs." So they sailed in between the lovely headlands of the river Dart. The tanned old Devonshire sailor-men on the harbour side gazed curiously at the Pilgrims as they came ashore. The beautiful steep hill-sides that towered above each bank of the river Dart, covered with the green thick woods that came down till the very leaves dipped in the waters of the river itself, must have seemed wonderful to the Pilgrim boys and girls. For in their homes in Eastern England and in Ley den all the canals and rivers that they had ever seen ran through flat lands that hardly had even tiny hills to re- lieve their endless levels. The grizzled shipwrights of Dartmouth set to work on the Speedivell and overhauled her from, stem to stem, till they declared that she was seaworthy, and could face THE SHI? OF ADVENTURE 87 the gales of tlie Atlantic Ocean itself. So the Pilgrims went aboard her again, and once more sails were hoisted and the two ships went careering out into the open sea. They sailed along past the coast of Devon and Corn- wall. The boys and girls, standing in the stern, strained their eyes to catch the last glimpse of the warm-brown rocks of Land's End. At last they were out in the full swing of the Atlantic. For day after day they sailed till they had put over three hundred sea-miles between themselves and Land's End. Then Captain Eeynolds of the Speedwell came to the Pilgrims with an announcement that frightened some of them and grieved them all. ^^The ship has sprung a serious leak again," he said. "I can only keep her afloat by having the men at the pumps day and night." They signalled the Mayflower to tell her what the captain said. We can never be quite sure whether there was a bad leak in the Speedwell or not ; for some of the Pilgrims felt sure that the ship was really sound enough, but that, as one of them said, '^a leak had sprung in the captain's courage," and that Eeynolds pretended that there was a leak because he was fright- ened to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and in so small a ship to sail to a strange and savage land. In any case, there was nothing for it but for both ships to turn in their tracks and beat their weary way back again. They sighted Land's End once more, and, running eastward, sailed in to Plymouth harbour again, where they landed at the Old Barbican. These delays took the heart out of all but the bravest and most de- termined of the Pilgrims. They were in the Slough of Despond. Eighteen of them — like Mr. Pliable in The 88 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Pilgrims Progress — ^were so discouraged that they de- cided not to go at all. They turned back. As William Bradford, who was among the valiant ones who would not turn back, said, '^Like Gedion's armie, this small number was devided, as if the Lord by this worke of His providence thought these few to many for the great worke He had to doe.'' So it was decided not to take the little Speedwell with them at all. The Pliables and their captain went aboard her, and she sailed back along the coast of Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent up the e^uary of the Thames, and so to inglorious safety at London Bridge. The Great- hearts and Valiants determined to sail in spite of all. The good, stout-hearted Devon folk of Plymouth were very kind to the brave Pilgrims who were going for- ward, and helped them to stock their ship for the voy- age. The Pilgrims, many years after, spoke of that kindness done to them in their dark time. So they walked for the last time on Plymouth Hoe where Drake had played his game of bowls. The twelve extra Pilgrims left over from the Speedwell went aboard the Mayfloiver. There were now one hundred and two men, women, boys, and girls on board the ship. Thirty- four of them were grown men. Eighteen were wives. There were twenty boys on board and eight girls. !Nine- teen of the travellers were men-servants, and three were maid-servants. Ill On September 6th all was ready. Sails were hoisted to a good breeze that was with them. They swung out to sea, and, with their bows toward the sunset, went bowling merrily and swiftly into the west. For day HE SNATCHED AT THIS CORDAGE IT AND HELD ON" . CAUGHT [88 THE SHIP or ADVENTURE 89 after day in fine weather and with a strong favouring wind they ran on their journey. They looked forward to reaching their journey's end without further adven- ture. But their delays had brought them to the time of the equinoctial gales. These are the storms that come each year at the time in September when in Britain and ]N"orth America the days and nights are equal in length. The wind began to whistle through the cordage. ^^White horses" crested the waves. The seamen went aloft to furl the sails. The waves were lashed into fury by the wind, which grew more and more violent till a gale was raging. The gale increased to a tempest. The great Atlantic rollers swept seething and hissing across the streaming decks of the little ship. She shiv- ered from stem to stern as the waves struck her. She climbed the giddy heights of one wave only to be slung dizzily down its slopes into dark chasms of water that threatened to swallow her up and sink her into the depths. The Pilgrims were crowded down in the stifling air between decks. The hatches of the deck were closed. The boys and girls were flung about as the ship rolled and tossed in the waves. The gun port-holes were screwed tight. The dim yellow light of a lantern that hung from a beam, shone fitfully on the Pilgrims. Many were ill. The close air and the stench were pois- onous. Yet the hatches could not be opened. The Pilgrims heard the Mayflower creak and groan in every timber as she reeled before the storm. The sea crept in through the straining planks, and washed sullenly across the. floor, soaking their clothes and their luggage. Then there was a silence among them all as 90 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH tliey heard a wrenching sound, as though the very ship herself were breaking up. The main beam of the ship had been bowed and cracked by the storm. The beam was amidships. The captain examined it. He and his seamen could see at once that there was serious danger of the ship brea]iing up if her beam were wrenched so that it could not hold out the sides of the ship and keep her taut, and help her to resist the battering of the waves. As the captain with serious face talked it over with his officers, Brewster and Bradford and some other Pil- grims joined the group. ''Would it not be better even now to turn back and sail for home ?'' suggested one of the Pilgrims. "JSTo," replied the captain, ''that would be of no use. We are half-way across the Atlantic now. It is as far to go back as it is to go on. We must get this beam in her place again.'' It was fortunate that one of the Pilgrims — who must have been a man of strong good sense — had brought with him a powerful jack-screw. They placed this under the beam and, pulling at the lever that turned the screw, they at length forced the bent main-beam straight again. Having thrust the great timber back into its place, in order to make it doubly secure, they got a strong post; this they stood upon the lower deck, and forced the top end in under the cracked beam and lashed it into place. They found, how^ever, that the severe wrenching of the ship had opened cracks in her timbers through which the sea was leaking into the hull. They soaked oakum in tar and caulked the timbers with it — that is, they rammed the tarred oakum firmly in between the edges THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 91 of the planks to keep the water from rushing into the ship. They felt safer now; but their troubles were not at an end. The wind sank for a little ; but it soon began to rage again. They dared not spread an inch of sail. 2^ight followed day and day night, yet still they scudded before the tempest under bare masts. The wind shrieked continuously through the rigging. Wave after wave came chasing across the ocean, like wolves hunt- ing the little ship, and then flung themselves greedily over her as though to swallow her up. But the daunt- less Mayfloiuer shook herself free again and again, and plunged away westward. In the midst of all this din and turmoil one day there mingled strangely with the roar of the seas the first cries of a little baby boy. He was born there between the upper and lower deck of the Mayflower. His mother was the wife of Stephen Hopkins. They bap- tized the baby, giving him the name Oceanus, because he was born on the Atlantic. One of the Pilgrims could not endure the closed-in life cramped between the decks where a man could hardly stand upright and no fresh air came. His name was John Howland. He climbed the steps and passed through the gratings on to the top deck. An enormous wave, sweeping over the ship at the very moment, caught him up as though he were a wisp of straw and flung him overboard. Half stunned by the blow, gasp- ing for breath and almost blinded by the spray, he gave himself up for lost. At that moment a cord lashed across him. The topsail-halyards had been torn by the storm and one end was trailing in the sea. He snatched at this cordage — like a drowning man clutching at a 92 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH straw. He eaTiglit it and held on — the waves swinging him into the height and then down into green, cavern- ous, horrible depths. The sailors, peering over the bulwarks, saw to their astonishment that he was alive and was hanging on to the rope. They themselves — though each succeeding wave threatened to sweep them overboard too — hauled at the halyards till inch by inch they drew John How- land up the slippery sides of the ship and he was once more, to his own and every one else's amazement, safely between decks. We can imagine the boys sitting round him with open eyes and ears afterwards as he told the story of his adventure. IV Eight weeks had now gone by since they had sailed for the second time out of Plymouth Harbour. For many days they had been battened below hatches crowded close together in a little wooden ship far too small either for their number or for the perils of a journey across the Atlantic. Then one of the men (William Button) a servant of Samuel Fuller, fell ill. He swiftly became worse and died. They buried him at sea, in the midst of the tossing waters. The Pil- grims felt as though everything was against them ; and some even of the bravest began to lose heart. ''Being pestered nine weeks in this leaking, unwholesome ship, lying wet in their cabins ; most of them grew very weak, and weary of the sea." ^ * Arber's edition of Captain John Smith, p. 260. 94 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Three more days passed by. They were now able to be on deck. Suddenly the cry came from one of the clearest-sighted sailors, ^'Lsmd ho !" Immediately the Pilgrims rushed to the bows and strained their eyes westward. There, sure enough, was land. It was flat, like the country to which they had been accustomed. But it was covered with trees. ^'What bit of coast is this ?" the Pilgrims asked Cap- tain Jones. "I think," said he, ^^that this is the eastern side of Cape Cod." The faces of some of the leaders among the Pilgrims would grow serious when they heard this, for they were hoping to land on a far better part of the coast called Manhattan, by the river Hudson. Cape Cod was some distance north of Manhattan.^ The captain headed the ship round. He said that he was going to turn her towards the Hudson River at the mouth of which Manhattan Island stands. But, after tacking and going about for hours and hours, the Mayflower was in the midst of dangerous shoals on which she might run aground at any nioment. Dan- gerous currents swept through narrow channels between the shoals through the night. The captain and the leader of the Pilgrims consulted together as to what they should do. This was the di- lemma. The narrow channel through the shoals southward to the Hudson was in the direction that they wished to take, for it led to Manhattan. But that channel was ^ The Dutch did establish a trading city at Manhattan, which they called New Amsterdam ; but later it became what it is now — New York. THE SHIP OF ADVENTURE 95 dangerous and was long; and darkness was coming on. The Hudson was to windward, and it was difficult to beat a way southward in shoal water against a stiff No- vember gale. What is more, some of the Pilgrims were falling ill with scurvy and other diseases, through being cramped so long in between decks, and through lack of fresh vegetables and other food and water. They must quickly get to land. They decided, therefore, to sail round the "crook- handle" head of Cape Cod.^ They could anchor there in shelter, and, with the help of their ship's boat, and a shallop that was stowed in the hold in sections, could explore that headland to see what kind of land it con- cealed, and whether they would be wise to settle there. The ship was turned about again ; with sails spread she ran safely round the headland. With a splash the an- chor was dropped. The Pilgrims fell on their knees and said their prayers of thanks to God who had brought them safely over the vast waste of waters through the tempest. They had been sixty-five days crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It was the evening of IsTovember 19th, 1620 — and the dawn of a new day for freedom in all the world. The great crossing was ended. But the end of the voyage was only the beginning of the adventure. *See map, page 93. CHAPTER VI THE ADVE:NrTUEES OF SCOUTraG FKESH AND STRONG THE WORLD WE SEIZE All the past we leave behind; We debouch upon a newer, mightier World, varied world; Fresh and strong the world we seize. World of labour and the march. Pioneers! O Pioneers! Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call — hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind; Swift! to the head of the army! — swift! Spring to your places. Pioneers! Pioneers! Walt Whitman. THE RED INDIAN'S VISION I have seen it in a vision. Seen the great canoe with pinions. Seen the people with white faces. Seen the coming of this bearded People of the wooden vessel From the regions of the morning, From the shining land of Wabun. ''Gitchi Manito," the Mighty, The Great Spirit, the Creator, Sends them hither on his errand. Sends them to us with his message. Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha. CHAPTER NT THE ADVEITTURES OF SCOUTma The Pilgrims, as they looked out from the deck of the Mayflower to the coast, were glad because the perils of the tempest were over, and the horrors of the long voy- age in the dark between decks had passed. The boys, gazing out over the bulwarks, saw that their ship was floating safely on the quiet waters of a splen- did natural harbour. There was room for all the navies of the world of that day to come to anchor in Cape Cod Harbour. Outside glittered the wider waters of Cape Cod Bay running away south and west as far as eye could see. Suddenly a boy saw a curious fountain of water rise from the sea in a white spray, and fall back into the water; then another and another went up. ^^The whales are spouting," said the sailors. The Pilgrims and the sailors were very sorry that they had no whaling harpoons with them, for they could have hunted and killed some of the giant whales and boiled down the blubber. Thus they could have made oil to send home to England — enough to pay over and over again for all the cost of the voyage in the May- fl^ower. They reckoned that the whales that they saw 99 100 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH then would have brought them over three thousand pounds^ worth of oil. As they talked of the future, one man said that they must do this thing, and one man another; some were for going off on their own account and dividing up. But, as the leaders heard this talk, they knew that in a wild land, in which savage Indians lived, it would be death to divide. They must stay together; and they must work together. Therefore, they said to one an- other, we must have a government. But what government could they have — just a hun- dred people, and only thirty-four of them grown men? King James and his Government were three thousand miles away across the trackless ocean. So they made up their minds that they would themselves form a gov- ernment in which all would freely join together. It was simple and easy to do this; yet the hour when, in the cabin of the Mayflower, the heroic thirty-four men signed the paper to say that they joined in one com- monwealth was a great birthday of what men call "de- mocracy" — "government of the people, by the people, for the people." These are the words to which they signed their names : *'In the name of God, 'Amen, We whose names are underwriten, the loyall subjects of our dread Soveraigne Lord King James hy the grace of God, of great Britaine, France, and Ireland Icing, defender of the faith, etc. Hauing undertaTcen, for the glorie of God, and aduance- menie of the christian faith and honour of our hing and countHe a voyage to plant the first colonic in the Northeme parts of Virginia, Doe hy these presents sol- THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 101 emnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another; couenant and combine ourselues togeather into a ciuill body politich; for our better ordering and pres- eruation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame shuch just and equall lawes, ordinances. Acts, constitutions, and offices, from thne to time, as shall be thought most meete and conuenient for the generall good of the Colonie, Unto which we promise all due submission and obedir ence. In witnes whereof we haue hereunder subscribed our names at Cap Codd the 11 of Nouember in the year of the raigne of our soueraigne Lord King James of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth and of Scotland the fiftie fourth Anno Domini 1620." thist as in a scout troop or a football or baseball team there must always be some one who is in authority, and can tell the others what to do — as the captain of a team can — so the Pilgrims knew that, having joined them- selves freely together by this solemn document, they also must have one man to be head of them all. So they elected John Carv^er their Governor for the first year. ^^But hear," as William Bradford says, ^^I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poore peoples presente condition. . . . Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles . . . they had now no friends to wellcome them, nor inns to en- tertaine or refresh their weather-beaten bodys, no houses or much less townes to repaire too, to seeke for succoure. It is recorded in scripture ^ as a mercie to the apostle and his shipwraked company, that the barbarians *Acts xxviii. 102 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH showed them no smale kindnes in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they mette with them (as after will appeare) were readier to fill their sides full of arrows then otherwise. And for the season it was winter." As they went up on to the deck and looked out again over the land, the most important question to decide was this: "Is this land, by the shore of which we are now anchored, a good land for us to live in, or must we sail on to find a better place ?" The boys looked at the shore, and wondered whether the Eed Indians, of whom they had heard, were lurk- ing, tomahawk in hand, in the woods. For the woods came right down to the water's edge. There were spreading oak-trees now dropping their acorns in the soil; tall, straight pines with dark green needles and brown pine-cones; there were also junipers and many shrubs that would make a scent when they burnt — like sassafras. The sound of the whizzing of many thousand wings filled the air. Great flocks of wild-duck and other wild- fowl flew round and round in the air ; more than could ever be counted, wheeling and forming and reforming like regiments in the sky. The boys and girls on the Mayflower looked at the birds with excitement and joy. But the leaders of the expedition looked serious; for the flying of these my- riads of wild-birds from the north toward the south meant that the winter was coming, and such winter as the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower had never known in all their lives. There was no time to be lost if they were to make a settlement and have some roof over their heads be- THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 103 fore the icy winter swooped down upon them from the north. If winter came, and they were unprepared, none of them would live till the coming of the spring. Captain Jones of the Mayflower said to them, "You must decide at once. I have only just enough provi- sions for the voyage back to England, without any more delay." There was the even more insistent power ordering them to make haste — the power of the grip of winter. Already, as we have seen, the wild-birds had flown south crying out that the ice and snow were hunting them ever southward. The leaders of the Pilgrims asked Captain Jones to cruise about along the shore in search of the best place for settling. "N"©," said Captain Jones, "I will not do that. You have your little sailing-boat on board. You must put her together and the men must explore the coast for themselves. Then I will sail to the place you choose, and put you all ashore." II It was a Saturday. So they decided to start on the Monday to put together the shallop — a small sailing- boat of from twelve to fifteen tons. Without waiting for that, however, sixteen of the men decided to go ashore on that very day for a few hours to explore. They did not know what Ked Indians there might be lurking among the trees on the shore ; so they all armed themselves well, with corselet and hau- berks and muskets. The boys would want to jump into the ship's boat and go with the men in this scouting party, but that 104 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH was not allowed. So they watched the boat-load of armed men as they rowed across the water. The scout- ing party beached the boat. Then they leapt out on to the sandy shore, walked up the beach and disappeared among the trees. Hours passed, and the afternoon wore on. l^o one on board the Mayfloiver knew what had come to the men who had gone into the woods to explore. At last, as the shadows were lengthening, they began to become anxious ; but soon they saw the party of explorers come out from the trees, all the sixteen of them safe. They jumped into the boat and rowed back to the Mayflower, to tell of their experiences. "The land is all hills of sand," they said, "like the dunes in the Low Country of Holland. The woods are not like the copses in England, full of bushes. They, are like a park or a grove, where you can walk easily with no undergrowth. We did not see any sign of men at all." So they all went to their rest, and on the next day — Sunday — they joined quietly in worship on the ship, thanking God for having brought them through the tempest and over the waste of waters to their desired haven. On Monday morning the carpenters and some others of the men began to fit together the shallop. "We shall have her ready for taking the water in a few days," they said. They were mistaken. The rolling and tossing in the tempest and the wrenching and grinding of the tim- bers of the Mayflower had strained the sections of the shallop, and had twisted many of the parts out of shape. With chisel and saw, hammer and screwdriver, they THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 105 went to work day after day. Yet still the shallop was far from being ready to sail. Some of the hotheaded among the men, of whom the fiery Captain Miles Standish was one, grew very im- patient. ^'We will go and explore the land without the shallop," they said. Some of the older men shook their heads and said that that was very dangerous. But all the Pilgrims thought that they were brave men to be ready to go off in a small party without the bigger boat. So it was de- cided to let them go. Captain Miles Standish, who had fought in many a tussle with the Spaniards in Holland, and was the finest soldier of them all, was made captain of the Pilgrim Scouts. There were sixteen of them. Each was armed with corselet, musket, and sword. The older men, however, with the governor, said that Miles Standish must have some wiser heads alongside his brave spirit. So they sent young William Bradford, Stephen Hopkins, and Edward Tilley with the scouting expedition. It was Wednesday, N"ovember 15th, when Miles Standish and his men tumbled from the deck of the Mayflower into the boat, and rowed to the shore. Leap- ing from the boat to the beach, they began to walk south- ward along the shore. Suddenly they all came to a halt. Ahead of them on the beach were other men. There were six of them. They had a dog with them. They were Red Indians. The Pilgrim Scouts pushed on, hoping to be able to find out from the Indians what kind of land they were in. But, as they went on, the Red Indians turned and ran. They disappeared among the trees and were 106 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH soon lost in tlie woods. Miles Standisli led his men in pursuit; not to hunt the Indians, but to find their set- tlement, and try to make friends with them. They pushed through the woods on the trail in In- dian file up hill and down dale for mile after mile ; but the Indians always kept well ahead of them. The sun came near the horizon. They had followed the trail for ten miles into the woods. Aroimd them was the silence of the mysterious forests in which the Indians were hidden. Their friends in the ship were now far from them. They could not return to the Mayflower that night : nor did they wish to do so, for they desired at all risks to discover swiftly the lie of the land, and whether they could live in it. Captain Miles Standish gave some orders. They un- slung the axes that they had carried and hewed some trees down. Then they built up a barricade of logs around them. This made a little fort. In the centre they lighted a fire of the branches. The leaping flames of the fire threw grotesque, jumping shadows on the background of trees. At the edge of the barricade Captain Standish placed some of the men as sentries. They had supper over the camp-fire, talking over the events of the day, and mak- ing plans for to-morrow. At last they lay down on the ground under the autumn sky, with the sough of the wind in the trees whispering in their ears and the stars glittering through the branches. They slept the sleep of tired men. The sentries kept the fire going, for it was cold in the E'ovember night. As the first pink flush of light came up in the sky from the Atlantic they woke. After THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 107 grilling their breakfast on the fire, they started out on another day's exploration. The "going" was very hard. Dense thickets of hushes grew between the trees. The bushes were so thick and close together that the tough branches actually caught their armour and wrenched it away from their bodies. Then the thickets grew less dense. They caught sight of greyish-brown moving forms among the trees, and then antlers. The frightened eyes of deer stared at them, and then the creatures scampered away along the deer-paths. Following these paths Miles Standish and William Bradford with the others, at about eleven in the morning, came to places where bright fresh springs of water bubbled out of the ground, and ran down in rivulets toward the sea. They knew now that there was some food and water in the land; but they wished to know what seed would grow in the soil. They turned west, and strode rapidly and easily down through coppices to the beach. They had made a great semicircle and were only four miles from the May- flower. It had been arranged that, if they were safe and within reach, they should signal by fire to ease the minds of their wives and boys and girls on the ship. So they gathered together sticks, branches, shrubs and bushes, and built up a heap. Then they lighted it, and the whole stack roared up into a splendid bonfire the flames of which could be seen right across the water by the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, Then they turned from the coast of the bay, and pene- trated the woods again. Soon they saw light through the trees. "It is an Indian clearing," said one as they came out 108 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH on to land that still had in it some of the stumps of the trees. They could see too that some of the land had been sown with corn. At one side, too, they saw some graves of Eed Indians. They pushed on farther : there they found in a clear- ing the stubble of that year's corn. This showed that the soil would grow corn, and that there were settled Indian tribes in the country. They pushed down toward the beach, and saw what looked like a ruin. It was, in fact, the ruin of a house, and by it they discovered, to their surprise, a great iron kettle. This showed quite plainly that some ship's crew from England or Europe had lightod on this spot. They passed along, and saw some heaps of sand piled up. They felt certain that under these heaps something must be hidden. So they dug in the sand. And, as William Bradford tells us, to their joy they discovered "divorce faire Indean baskets filled with come, and some in eares faire and good, of divorce collours, which seemed to them a very goodly sight." They took what they could carry, making up their minds that they would pay back the Indians when they could come upon them. The rest of the corn they buried again in the sand. So they took to the boat again, laden with corn, and rowed back to the Mayflower, So (as William Bradford said) they, "like the men from Eshcoll, carried with them of the fruits of the land, and showed their breethren; of which, and their returne, they were marvelusly glad, and their harts incouraged." All the Pilgi'ims were glad that they had found that com would grow in the land, and that there were deer that could be hunted in the woods for venison. THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 109 III At last the twelve-ton shallop was ready and in the water. She hoisted her sail, and, with the long boat of the ship for company and for getting to the beach when they wished "some thirty men'' of the PilgTims sailed down the coast. Autumn was now fast turning to winter. There was no time to waste. In fact, they were already in peril of cold. Miles Standisli was not captain of this second expe- dition. For, as it was a voyage by water. Captain Jones of the Mayfloiver was made commander. The wintry storms broke soon after they had started. Violent head- winds blew in the teeth of the shallop, and she had to tack hither and thither to try to beat up against the gale. Heavy seas broke over her and drenched the men, and the icy wind almost froze them as they stood drip- ping in the little vessel. They set out to land. The boat was tossed about in the boiling surf. On reaching the beach they could not get right up to the sand, and were forced to wade ashore. As thev started to wade a blindinc: blizzard of snow swept down upon them, blotting out land and sea. They suffered agonies in the freezing blasts of the wind, and under the drenching drive of snow and surf. Little did the Pilgrim Scouts on the expedition find to repay their dreadful sufferings. One day the gaunt ribs and broken planks of a French fishing ship jutted out of the water ahead of them. Then they saw above the beach a group of Indian wigwams. But the Indians had left. Worst of all, they nowhere found a good place in which to settle and build houses. 110 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH They went fartlier on into the Pamet region and there they found a good little protected harbour for small sailing-boats. There was cornland, too, above the shore. Fish teemed in the water and whales conld be seen spouting fountains that flashed in glittering spray. But there were no springs of fresh water, nor was there any harbour "in which large ships could come to anchor. They knew that, even if they were to settle there, and build houses, they would be forced very soon to dis- mantle their homes and leave their new houses to rot. So they decided that they would not establish them- selves in that bay. On the following Thursday they sailed back to the Mayflower. There was great excitement on board, for while they were away the very first baby to be born after they reached N'ew England had come to his parents on board the Mayflower. He was called Peregrine White. He was the first real native of the Pilgi'im colony, though another baby had been born on the way across. IV The case of the Pilgrims was becoming desperate. Winter was closing in upon them; yet they seemed to be as far as ever from finding a place in which to build homes for themselves and to spend their lives. So, on the following Wednesday, December 6th, ten men were chosen from a number who volunteered for active ex- ploration of the w^hole of the great bay. With the ten Pilgrims there went five of the crew of the Mayflower — three sailors, with the mate Clarke and the pilot Coppin. For hour after hour they coasted southward down the west coast of the Cape; that is, they explored thor- THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 111 OTiglily all that long, narrow neck of land which runs from Cape Cod. They sailed and walked for over twenty miles in this way. ^^The weather," says William Bradford, "was very could, and it frose so hard as the sprea of the sea light- ing on their coats, they were as if they had been glased ; yet that night betimes they gott downe into the botome of the bay ^ and as they drue nere the shore they saw some "lO- or •12- Indeans very busie aboute some thing." They landed that night about a league or more from the Indians. It was very difficult to get to the beach, as the sea by the shore was very shallow. It was now growing dark. As swiftly as possible in the twilight they hewed down some trees and arranged the logs in a barricade. One man was set as sentinel. The others lay down to rest. The sentinel as he looked along the beach "saw the smoake of the fire the savages made that night." On the next day they went on a different plan. Some of the Pilgrims went ashore and walked along by the shore or on the higher ground. The others stayed in the shallop. The little vessel sailed along hugging the coast ; those on land tried to keep in sight of her, while, at the same time, exploring as much as they possibly could of the country. The party on shore "came to the place wher they saw the Indeans the night before, and found they had been cutting up a great fish like a grampus, being some •2* inches thike of fate like a hogg." So they called this Grampus Bay. All day long they walked along in the woods. They *They passed to the soutli of Billingsgate Point and landed near the present Eastham, where they passed that night. 112 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH did not meet witli any Indians that day, though it is certain that the Indians were watching them. "When the sune grue low/' Bradford, who was with the party, tells ns, "they hasted out of the woods to meete with their shallop, to whom they made signes to come to them into a creeke hardby, the which they did at high-water; of which they were very glad, for they had not seen each other all that day, since the morning. "So they made them a barricado (as usually they did every night) with loggs, stakes, and thike pine bowes, the height of a man, leaving it open to leeward, partly to shelter them from the could and winde (making their fire in the midle, and lying round aboute it), and partly to defend them from any sudden assaults of the sav- ages, if they should surround them. So being very weary they betooke them to rest. "But aboute midnight they heard a hideous and great erie, and their sentinell caled ^Arme, arme' ; so they bestired them and stood to their annes, and shote a cup- pie of muskets, and then the noys seased. "They concluded it was a companie of wolves, or such like wild beasts ; for one of the sea men tould them he had often heard shuch a noyse in New-found land." They then lay down and went to sleep again. At five in the morning the sentinel woke them, for the seamen had to be aboard the shallop at high water to get her out of the creek. It was still dark. So they woke and had prayer. Then they began to prepare breakfast. Some carried their muskets down to put them aboard the shallop, but the water was not yet high enough to cover the mud. So they lay the muskets on the bank and came back to breakfast. THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 113 They were settling down to breakfast wlien "all on a sndan they heard a great and strange crie." At once they knew that these were the voices that they had heard overnight. One of the men who had wandered beyond the barri- cade came running back to them. "Men," he shouted, "Indians, Indians." Even as he shouted a shower of arrows came flying among them. The men snatched up their guns. Cap- tain Miles Standish fired the first musket. Then an- other raised his piece and shot at an Indian's head that appeared. "Do not fire," said Standish to the other two, "until you can take full aim." Meanwhile the first two charged their muskets again with all speed ; for there were only four had guns with them. The other men, with their coats of mail on and cutlasses in their hands, dashed off down to the creek to get the guns that they had left on the bank. In- stantly, the Indians wheeled round to shoot their ar- rows at them. Seizing their guns, the men turned on their assail- ants and began to fire at the Indians, who turned tail, except one "brave." Of him William Bradford writes : "Yet ther was a lustie man, and no less valiante, stood behind a tree within halfe a musket shot, and let his arrows flie at them. He was seen shoot d' ar- rowes, which were all avoyded. He stood -S* shot of a musket, till one taking full aime at him, and made the barke or splinters of the tree fly about his ears, after which he gave an extraordinary shrike, and away they wente all of them." 114 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Leaving a few men to guard the shallop, Miles Stand- ish and the rest ran shouting for a quarter of a mile, firing a few shots, and then returned. Quietly the Pilgrims stood while one of them spoke a prayer of thanks to God for delivering them. They gathered up a bundle of arrows to send home to England. They named that place ^'The First En- counter." Almost immediately afterward the wind stiffened from the south-east. As the wind rose to a gale the sea became rougher and wilder. The skies darkened to a leaden grey. The enemy that they were learning to fear far more than the Eed Indians swept down upon them — blizzards of driving snow that blinded their sight, and made the rigging stiff with frost and coated the bulwarks with snow. The rudder broke, and it was as much as two men could do to steer her with oars. The mast broke in three places ; the sail went overboard into the sea. The winter night began to come on. They would per- ish if they stayed out in the open. The man who was piloting them said, "Be of good cheer; I see the harbour," for he had been there on an earlier voyage as a seaman. Then suddenly he shouted, "Lord be merciful to us; my eyes never saw this place before." He lost his head, and was going to row into a cove full of great breakers, where they would have been smashed to bits. But a steadier sailor who had the oar in his hand steering shouted, "About with her if you are men, or you will be cast away." They pulled with a will, and were soon under the THE ADVENTURES OF SCOUTING 115 lea of a small island, although they did not know, till the morning light came, that it was an island.^ They were in a quandary. Drenched with the snow and with the spume of the sea, and half -frozen with the hiting wind that still drove round them from the south- west, they were in misery and in danger of freezing to death' on the defenceless shallop. Yet to land in the storm in the darkness of an unknown coast that might he infested with Indians seemed madly dangerous. Clarke, the mate, however, was hoth a skilful seaman and a daring fellow. He determined, with a few oth- ers, to risk the landing. So they tumbled into the long- boat and, tossing in the darkness on the waste of waters, rowed toward the dark mass of the island. Clarke, who was in the bows of the boat, leapt ashore. So the island was named after him, Clarke's Island. He and the others gathered sticks and branches together, and, strik- ing flint upon steel, they managed to get a fire glowing. The gleam of the fire cast fitful rays through the darkness of the storm. The men aboard the shallop were freezing. As the hours drew on toward midnight the cold grew more and more intense. At length, imable longer to endure the agonies of the wet and cold, the other men from the shallop put out over the midnight sea toward the fire that leapt invitingly on the shore. They landed safely. There, through that stormy night, with what shelter they could make from the cold, they shivered and slept fitfully till dawn. The storm had by this time gone down. They went out aboard the shallop and repaired * There were two islands. They had no name then ; but they are now called Clarke's Island and Saquisli Head (see map). 116 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH her where the raging seas and winds of the day before had roughly handled her. ^'Though this had been a day and night of much trouble and danger unto them," Bradford comments, ^^yet God gave them a morning of comf orte and refresh- ing (as usually he doth to his children), for the next day was a f aire sunshininge day, and they found them- sellves to be on an ilande secure from the Indeans, wher they might drie their stufe, ^xe their peeces, and rest them selves, and gave God thanks for his mercies, in their manifould deliverances." It was Saturday. They decided to rest there on Sun- day. So they spent the day in making such shelter as they could. And busy as they were, the Pilgrims took time to rest on Sunday in their crude home. On Monday morning they set to work in earnest. Some sailed about the harbour and took soundings of the depth of the water. They found that ('here was good harbourage for large ships. Others walked away from the shore inland. They came upon fields where they could still see the stubble of the year's corn harvest reaped by the Indians. They also discovered little running brooks of fresh water. They came to the great decision that they would recommend to the company of the Pilgrims on the May- flower to settle here, ^'which did much comforte their harts." This was the harbour that they called Ply- mouth Harbour, naming it after tlie great Devon port from which they had sailed. And, as they set foot upon the great boulder by the side of which the boat was beached, they called it Plymouth Rock. CHAPTER VII A CLEAEIJSTG IN THE WASTE' THE WOED OF MAOTTO, THE GREAT SPIRIT, TO THE RE13 INDIAN TRIBES 'T have given you lands to hunt in, I have given you streams to fish in. Why then are you not contented? Why then will you hurt each other? I am weary of your quarrels, Weary of your wars and bloodshed. Weary of your prayers for vengeance. Of your wranglings and dissensions; All your strength is in your union. All your danger is in discord ; Therefore be at peace henceforward And as brothers live together." Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha* CHAPTEE Vn A CLEAKIJSTG IN THE WASTE The Pilgrim-scouts joyfully turned tlie l)ows of tlie shallop northward to go back from the bay that they had discovered to the Mayflower. She lay at anchor twenty- five miles away. The Pilgrims on board her kept an anxious look-out for the return of their men. William Bradford, look- ing out from the shallop as she ran toward the mother- ship, would try to catch the wave of her kerchief in tb© hand of his wife — Dorothy May — whom he had mar- ried (you remember) at Leyden seveij^^^j^girs before. But he could see no wave of her hand. He and the oth- ers climbed aboard the Mayflower, Then one of the Pilgrims took him aside and told him how, during the storm while he had been away, she had fallen over- board. They had been unable to rescue her; an? sEe had drowned. William Bradford could say at that hour what Oliver Cromwell was later to say of the loss of his son. "It went to mj heart like a dagger ; indeed it did." But he took" strong grip of himself, and gave his whole, Jife to the great enterprise of clearing the waste for the Pil- grims and in that waste building the life of New Eng- land. 119 120 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH The tale of that clearing and building, and the ad- ventures that came in carrying it through, make up the rest of the story of the Pilgi'ims. The Mayfioiver weighed anchor and sailed for Ply- mouth Harbour. She had been smitten by gale and swept by the league-long rollers of the Atlantic. She was weather-beaten, and had but hardly escaped wreck. But she had at last reached her desired haven. She dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbour by Clarke's Island, and the boys and girls aboard her looked with excitement toward the shore where they were to live for the rest of their days. They had started in the Speedwell from Delfshaven (you remember) in July. They had hoped to have settled and built their new houses before winter. But the delays through the leaky Speedwell and the tem- pests had thrown them back. So that it was within a week of Christmas when they all set foot on the shore. ^ On Monday, December 18th, the men from the May- flower, guided by the scouting party, went into the woods and explored the country round about. Then, on the following day, they walked northward.^ The whole body of them gathered together when they re- turned, and it was decided to settle on the spot by the Bay now called Plymouth. That afternoon twenty of the men with axes started to build a barricade of logs and tree-trunks, so that the Pilgrims could stay on shore after their long months on the Mayflower. *It was actually December 18th, 1620, on the old reckoning, i.e. they landed on what we should call December 28th. 2 Toward where Kingston now stands. A CLEARING IN THE WASTE 121 Darkness fell before any covering could be built under which they could sleep. They lay down under the open sky to rest through the night-time. As they went to rest the wind rose. It swept down upon :he harbour in wild fury. The sea was lashed into great waves. One after another the three anchors of the Mayflower were dropped by the sailors who had stayed on board, but the tortured ship wrenched at her cables till they feared that even the three anchors would give. Icy rain that stung like a whip-lash swept along on the tempest. It beat down upon the men and women and boys and girls on the shore. For hour after hour they crouched there through the long December night, drenched to the skin with the rain, frozen with the cold ; unable to build a fire or get food. Dawn came, grey and without cheer. The storm raged on. The food that they had brought ashore was all eaten, and the shallop could not put out in the boil- ing waters to get more supplies. At last, however, as the day drew on, the tempest began to get less wild. The shallop put out to the Mayflower. Food was put into that smaller vessel, and every man or boy who could work tumbled into her to come ashore and hasten on with the building. Very quickly they set to work. Some of the strong- est made the shore ring with the sound of their axes, and the gi-inding crash of falling trees. Others in par- ties lopped and dragged the timber to the building place. Twenty men stayed ashore that night on guard. The others went back to the Mayflower. The next day was Sunday. They all rested. The men ashore stayed en guard. As they waited and watched they heard a hid- 122 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH eons yelling. Indians in the forest were raising a war- cry. They hoped to frighten the Pilgrims away from their land. But no attack followed the outcry. It was Christmas Eve. Christmas Day dawned; but no man thought of rest or holiday. The threat of the Indians and the horror of the cold and rain in the tempestuous night told them that — ^unless they wished to perish from the earth — they must at once have shelter from the winter, and pro- tection from the savage Eed Indians. On the top of the hill they levelled a space on Christ- mas Day — Monday. On it they built a timber gun- platform. They brought out in the shallop a cannon from the Mayflower, and with much toil dragged it up the hill and placed', it on the platform to awe the In- dians, who — they could feel though they could not see — ^were watching them closely from the covert of the forest. All this time the work of building went rapidly for- ward. They decided first to put up a common house that all could use as shelter till each had his own sepa- rate home. This common-house they decided to use afterwards as a meeting-place — such as the House with the Green Door had been at Leyden. A stream ran down to the harbour. They decided to make that stream determine the line of their one street.^ In order to keep the number of houses as low as possible all the Pilgrims were divided up into nine- teen families. The unmarried men were attached to *The stream is now called Townbrook; the street is called Leiden Street, and runs from the beach and Plymouth Eock to the hill of the gun-platform. 123 124 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH different households. Each family had to build its own house. The plots for the houses and gardens were arranged down each side of the street by the stream. Exactly which family should have which plot of land v/as de- termined by drawing lots. Soon they were all at work with a will. They hewed down trees with their axes; lopped the branches from the trunks with hatchets; sawed the trunks into logs of the right length, and split the logs into thick rough planks. They also brought down the withes for thatching the roofs. In four days from beginning to buil3, the timber-work of the com- mon-house was finished, and a half of the roof was thatched. II Then began the darkest of all the days of the Pil- grims. First one and then another fell ill with a strange and terrible sickness. For months they had lived on the very poorjPood that could be carried on ship. They could, in fact, get no fresh food, save the fish they might catch, until the next year's harvest. They had been crowded in the evil-smelling closeness of the under-deck of the Mayflower. The tempests had drained their remaining streng-th. Many of those who fell illjlied. Through January and February 1621 this dreadful pestilence swept them down. At one time, out of the hundred in the company, only six or seven could crawl about to take food to the others. The little heroic band in its Pilgrim's Progress was passing through the Val- ley of the Shadow of Death. A CLEARING IN THE WASTE 125 The strong, rough soldier, Captain Miles Standisli, in this time of plague became like the tenderest nurse. He and stalwart Brewster escaped the pestilence, and were great pillars of strength to all the others. Quietly and in the darkness they carried those who died up the hill ^ and buried them there. They raised no monument then over the graves. They were even obliged to flatten the earth, so that no eye could tell that any one lay there. For they knew that, if they left the mounds of the graves visible, the Indians would come by stealth, and, counting the graves, would thus discover how many of them had died. That would have shown the Red Indians that by March, out of the hun- dred who had reached that land, barely^fifty remained alive. The others had died, mostly from the pestilence and scurvy, and, of those who still lived, some were women and children. So there would be few indeed for an armed force of Indians to swoop down upon, over- come, and wipe out of existence. In the night the boys and girls were sometimes wak- ened by the howling of hungry wolves in the winter night. The sentinels on the hill-fort saw the skulking forms of the wolves in the moonlight prowling among the tree-trunks. The wolves even dared to show their fangs by day ; and no child dare go far beyond the bar- ricade for fear of these wild beasts. The wolves be- came so daring and dangerous that a reward was given to every man who killed one. He was to cut off its head, nail the head to the side of the meeting-house, and pro- claim aloud what he had done. 'Burying Hill (see plan, page 123). It is now called Colea Hill. 126 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Far more terrifying, however, than the wolves were the swift and silent Indians who slipped along the for- est trails like shadows. Captain Miles Standish went out one day hunting. As he crept through the forest he found, to his surprise, a deer lying dead with its antlers cut off. It had heen slain by the Indian hunters. In the very next week another of the Pilgrim Colony was out hunting, and had hidden himself to wait for the passing of the deer. As he stood there he saw dusky shapes stealing silently through the trees — not deer, but men — Eed Indian 'war- riors. They were prowling along in the direction of the plantation. One day Miles Standish and Cooke, when they had ended their work of cutting down trees in the wood, left their tools. In the morning the tools had been carried off. On the opposite side of Townbrook, on the crest of the hill, two Indians suddenly appeared. Miles Standish and Stephen Hopkins went forward making signs of peace and trying to signal that they wished to talk with them. The Indians raced off at once, like the flying shadows of cloudlets on a hill-side. The Pilgrim colonists could see that life or death for them might hang on the sureness of their power of de- fence. They, therefore, out of their small numbers, bound the able-bodied men together in a little corps of warriors to defend their women and children. The '^yb cannon from the Mayflower were dragged up the hill to the fort-platform. Captain Miles Standish, who was placed in command, set the Ryo cannon there facing in different directions, so that every line of approach from the woods or the shore to the houses was covered. A CLEARING IN THE WASTE 127 III The sunshine now began to be warm at noon, and the songs of the birds began to sound in the woods, William Bradford tells us in his story of these days. The Pilgrims saw light at the end of the steep path leading out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The winter had passed. The pestilence had o"one. Spring had come. As the month of March was on the point of giving way to the sun and showers of April, a lonely and strange figure came out of the woods over the hill and down by the side of the stream between the houses. He was an Indian brave. His black hair was cut short over his brows, but himg long over his shoulders. He had no beard. His only clothing was a broad leatheiT belt with a hanging fringe about his loins. His swarthy, copper-coloured skin shone in the morning sunshine. In one hand he gripped a bow; in the other two arrows. From one of the arrows the tip was broken. Miles Standish, John Carver, William Bradford and some others stood before the common-house waiting his coming. He strode forward without fear. He made as though he would go straight into the house. They, however, were suspicious that he might have come to spy upon them. So they kept him outside. Then he spoke to them, and to their astonishment his words were English. The pronunciation was strange, and the words sometimes curious ; but they understood him. This is what he told them in his broken English : "I am Samoset. I do not live in this part of the land. I am a chief of the tribe upon Monhegan. Mon- 128 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH hegan is an island between two rivers — the Kennebec and the Penobscot. English men come there in ships to fish in the seas. They have taught me your English language. ^^I have been in this country last year/' he went on. "I was with an English man named Captain Dermar. The name of this harbour where you live is, in the lan- guage of the Indians, Patii^aL That means ^the Little Bay.' Nearly fifty moons ago a plague came on this place. The men who lived here were slain by it. There was not one left of all who were there at that time. "The nearest people to you on the side of the setting sun is the tribe of Massasoit. His warriors are sixty. On the side of the rising sun are the INausets. These are the people who shot arrows at your men in the win- ter days." The Chief Samoset had come in peace. Darkness fell and he stayed in the little colony, and slept there that night. In the morning he spoke with them again. "I go," he said, "to the Wampanoags. I will bring men of their tribe to you. We will bring to you skins of the beaver." Samoset departed as silently and swiftly as he had come. On the next day, which was Sunday, he came again. The boys and girls were tingling with excite- ment as they saw him come down to them with five more Red Indians — ^braves of the Wampanoag tribe. They were tall men, but broad of shoulder too ; power- ful warriors with sinews like steel cable and eyes like hawks. Down the faces of some of them a band of black was painted from forehead to chin, the width of a man's hand. The faces of all were painted in differ- WORK WITH A WILL [128 A CLEARING IN THE WASTE 129 ent colours in stripes and curves. Their black hair, like Samoset's, was short over the forehead and long over the shoulders. Each wore over his shoulders a deer- skin, and on his legs were long mocassins of deer-skin reaching to the thighs. Over four hundred yards from the houses they put down their bows and arrows. They also carried in their hands the very tools that Miles Standish and Cooke had left in the woods in February. They brought the tools back to show that they wished to be friends. To show how friendly they were they said that they would sing and dance in the Indian way. But as it was Sunday the Pilgrims said that they did not wish it, for they gave that day to the worship of God. When the Red Indians offered to sell to them some beautiful silky beaver-skins, the Pilgrims gave the same reply. Then Samoset and his friends left the Pilgrims to the quiet of their Sunday worship in the common-house. Three days passed. On the fourtli the now familiar form of Samoset came swinging down the street. With him was Tisquantum, the only man alive of all the tribe that had lived in the Little Bay. He was alive because he had been far away across the seas when the pestilence wiped out his tribe. The eyes of the Pilgrims opened in amazement as they heard the story of Tisquantum. ''Seven years ago," he told them, "an Englishman J named Thomas Hunt captured me and twenty-three \ other Indians to sell us as jlaves in Spain. I escaped. I went on another ship to England. There in London I became a servant to Sir Ferdinand o Gorge s. I left him and went to serve a merchant. I know all the streets of London, for I lived there for years. Then 130 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Captain Derm^r took me on his ship and brouglit me back to the land of my tribe. When I came here, nine moons ago, they were_not. They had all been slain by the pestilence. I only am left of them all." Samoset and Tisquantum explained that they had come with a message from Massasoit, the great chief above all the chiefs of the tribes of Pohanoket. "Massasoit and his warriors are near at hand," they said. "He desir es^ sp eech with you." John Carver, William Bradford and the rest saw at once that all their future might hang upon the feelings toward them of the great chief Massasoit. "If he becomes a friend to us," they said to one an- other, "then all the tribes that are under him around the shores of this great bay will be our friends." Less than an hour later the Pilgrims saw Massasoit and his three-score braves on the crest of the hill that rises to the south of the Townbrook.^ Tisquantum came forward before the others. "Will you send a messenger over who shall speak with Chief^Massasoit ?" he said. Edward Winslow, the man of travel and the scholar, who had joined the Pilgrims in the later years at Ley- den, said that he would go. He knew that It might be a perilous journey; but he blithel y set out. He wore his cuirass and his sword and pistol. He also carried gifts for the chief. The boys and girls and all the other Pilgrims watched Edward Winslow with bated breath as he went down by the stream, walked across the ford, climbed the hill * This is now known as Watson's Hill. See plan of the Plymouth Settlement, p. 123; and map on opposite page. \mu. Iiiiiiuiu>^m .:i 1111,111111 I O j^ ^ ^ / 131 132 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH to its crest, and then disappeared^ engulfed by the crowd of Indian warriors. Winslow offered his gifts to the chief. Massasoit stretched out his hand and fingered Winslow's sword and his breastplate. He desired to buy it from him. ^^My sovereign Lord, King James of England/' said Winslow, "salutes you with peace and goodj^wijl. The governor of our colony desires to speak with you. He would join in a treaty of peace with you, and desires that he and you should hav e^ trad e with one another.'' "I will go and speak with your governor," said Chief Massasoit. The chief told Edward Winslow to stay behind on the lull with forty of his braves while he, accompanied by twenty of his warriors, all armed, went down to the village to meet with Governor^ Carver there. Winslow Vv^as to stand as hostage for Massasoit. Captain Miles Standish, with Alderton and six other Pikrims as musketeers, walked down to the stream, and, standinc: bv the ford, saluted the chief as he came down and crossed the brook. This '^guard of honour" then turned and marched up the street with Massasoit and his braves to the council-house. The boj^s and girls as they gazed at them saw which was the chief, because he had round his neck a big gleaming necklace of white bones. Round his neck also was a cord from which hung the chief's hunting and scalping-knife. Massasoit's dark face was painted red. He and his warriors were all tall^,^tr,a»^..men with grave faces. His braves had their faces painted also, all in curves and straight lines and crosses of white and black, red and yellow. Over the shoulders of some of them hung A CLEARING IN THE ^VASTE 133 skins of deer or wolves or beaver. But some of them wore notlimg, and the boys could see the splendid mus- cles of their arms and legs, strong as whipcord under the gleaming copper skin. So the Indians came to pow-wow with the White Men from across the sea. In the commo n-hous e the Pilgrims had spread such carets and cushions as they had with them. Governor John Carver welcomed Massasoit and his men. They entered and sat down^tgeat with Carver and his council. When the meal was done^they sat down together to talk of their relations with one another. These three things they agreed. First, they would not fight or hurt one another in any way ; secondly, if other people attacked either, then the other would come to his help ; thirdly, if they dif- fered from one another, they would come together in conference and comejinarmed. It was the first treaty of the new Commonwealth that had been founded in the cabin of the Mayflower. It was a treaty of peace. And it was a peace that was never^brgken in the life-time of the white and red brothers who sat down in the council house that day in the spring of 1621, by the shores of Plymouth Bay. CHAPTEK YIII BUILDEKS m THE WASTE YENTITRING THE UNKNOWN WAYS Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the un- known ways. Pioneers! O Pioneers! We primeval forests felling. We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within. We the surface broad surveying, and the virgin soil up- heaving. Pioneers! O Pioneers! Walt Whitman. CHAPTER YIII BUILDERS IN THE WASTE The frosty rime and the icicles had long ago melted from the rigging of the Mayflower. Her captain (you remember) had wished to sail her back to England in the winter. But he had been stopped from doing this ; for the tempests had battered the ship's hull and torn her rigging, so that she needed much repair to make her seaworthy. Then the dreadful pestilence had smitten his crew ; the bo'sun, the gunner, the cook, three quartermasters, and several seamen had died of it. It was now spring-time, however, and the tempests were past ; the ship was refitted ; the pestilence had disappeared; the Pilgrim had made a settlement and built themselves homes; the treaty of peace had been signed with the Indians. One day all preparations for starting were complete. The Pilgrims all came down to see the Mayflower heave anchor and set sail for England. They were, indeed, very sorry to watch her making ready to leave them. They had no ship of their own, beyond the little shal- lop. They were just a few white folk on a narrow plot of land in a vast waste of forest peopled with Red In- dians. To walk to their nearest white neighbours would take about a month. Eor there was no one save them- 137 138 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH selves between the French Settlement in 'Noysl Scotia and the English Settlement in Virginia — a thousand miles of coast-line on which they formed the only tiny ontpost of white men from across the seas. The captain gave his order; the sailors with a "Yo- heave-ho'' raised the anchor. The sails were hoisted. The Mayflower began to gather way. Kerchiefs flut- tered; last messages were shouted. The Pilgrims left the beach and climbed the little hill by the community-church. They gazed and gazed, with eyes half-blurred with reluctant tears, till the glim- mer of her sails had gone and their last link with the homeland was snapped. It was April 5th, 1621. In that same month, when all were busy in the fields, ploughing and harrowing the soil, and sowing the seed, John Carver, the Governor, came in one day from the corn-field. "I have a gTcat pain in my head," he said. His wife, Katherine, bade him lie down to rest. He lay down. He never rose from his bed or spoke again. He was buried a few days later on the high ground looking out over the sea. His wife loved him so dearly that she could not live on without him ; she died six weeks later. The little colony of Pilgrims must at once have an- other Governor to succeed John Carver. Who should it be? William Brewster, round whom they had gath- ered in the old days at Scrooby,^ was their elder and teacher; he could not take on his shoulders the burden of being Governor as well. His younger friend, William Bradford, who had stood by Brewster's side from the beginning, and who was a brave man of wis- dom, decision, and resource, was chosen by the vote of * See Chapters I and II. BUILDERS IN THE WASTE 139 all to be Governor. On his broad shoulders, for those great first years, lay the burden of building in the waste a strong colony. Isaac Allerton became his assistant. Meanwhile they were all as busy as bees in the fields. Tisquantum, their Red Indian friend, told them how to sow the seed and manure and tend the young plants. ^'When the young leaves of the oak-tree are just as big as the ears of a mouse,'' he said, ^'you should sow the Indian corn. When the plant begins to grow you go out into the bay and catch the little fish [the fish is called ^'ale-wives" ^] and put them in the ground by the roots of the maize. Then the plant will grow well." While most of the Pilgrims were sowing the seed, others with their axes were felling the trees in the woods and building houses of the logs. Every now and then a few went off into the woods with muskets and powder- horns to hunt deer for their food. Others went out with nets in the shallop, and in the great bay would catch fish for the housewives to cook for them. There were only twenty-one men and six sturdy boys remaining alive after the pestilence. But by working hard they were able to prepare and sow twenty-one acres with Indian corn; six acres were planted with wheat, barley, and rye. And each house had its own little garden for fiowers and vegetables. II William Bradford now between the planting and the harvest determined to carry further his understanding ^ The Indian word is really "aloof e." The fish is about a foot in length and is like a shad, common on the east coast of North America. 140 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH with the Eed Indian tribes round about the colony. He asked Edward Winslow, the scholar and traveller, and Stephen Hopkins, the man whose baby Oceanus was born in the Mayflower on the voyage, to be ambassadors. Tisquantnm was to be their interpreter. They started out one day in the direction of the villages of Chief Massasoit, with whom they had signed the treaty earlier in the year.^ They walked through the woods and over the hills, when they came by the rapids of a river. There they saw on the bank an Indian village called E^amasket. The Indians in this village treated them as friends and gave them food. Refreshed by this rest on the way, they started again up the river-bank and walked along by the rolling waters for a further five miles. There they saw more canoes on the water and wigwams on the shore belonging to the same tribe as the village of Namasket. It was now sunset; so they slept there that night. Starting out again in the morning, they walked on through the forenoon until in the early afternoon they came into the lands over which Massasoit ruled. This v/as the land of the Wampanoag tribe. By the time sunset had come again, Winslow and Hopkins had trudged many miles through Massasoit's territory. They came at last, as darkness fell, to his principal village, called Sowams.^ Chief Massasoit and his braves welcomed the white ambassadors among their wigwams. Winslow and Hopkins were placed by his side, and the three sat facing the circle of Indian faces, with the keen but ^See Chapter VII. ^JSTow Warren, on the shore of Narrangansett Bay. BUILDERS IN THE WASTE 141 inscrutable eyes of the braves lighted up by the camp- fire. The two white men brought out from their bundles a bright-coloured soldier^s coat from England, trimmed with lace. They also held in their hands a copper chain beautifully ornamented. A medal hung from the chain. "Dress yourself in this coat/' they said to Massasoit, "and put the chain about your neck." Massasoit at once put on the gay coat and gleaming copper chain. His braves stood round with their faces aglow with wonder and admiration. Chief Massasoit then made a long speech. The braves grunted their applause. Tisquantum translated the speech into English for Winslow and Hopkins. Then they all sat down together and the chief with his Eng- lish friends smoked the pipe of peace together through the evening. As they talked Winslow said to the chief: "When we landed on the shore last winter we found corn buried in the sand.^ We wish to find out who owned that com so that we may repay him for it." The chief nodded and said that he would find out for them. At last the time came for going to bed. To their astonishment and dismay Hopkins and Winslow found that they had to try to sleep on the ground on the same bed with the chief, his wife, and two of his principal braves. The bed was made of rough boards on which a mat was spread. Winslow, writing about this ex- perience, said: "I was more wearied with the bed than with the journey." * See Chapter VI. 142 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH They stayed with Massasoit through the next day and the following night. He asked them to stay longer still; but they decided that it was time for them to turn their faces toward Plymouth Bay. So they said their ^Tarewells" to the chief and his men, and, turning their backs on the wigwams of the Wampanoags, they plunged into the forests on the long trail homeward. In order to see the country thoroughly, they came back over a different route. They were filled with horror, as they passed under the broad-spreading branches of the forests of chestnut and oak, beech and walnut trees, and by the banks of the beautiful streams, to see the bones of thousands of In- dians whitening in the spring sunshine. The pestilence that had slain scores of the Pilgrims in the previous winter had carried off thousands of the Indians all across the land. At last, all weary with long travel on foot, Winslow and Hopkins came over the ridge of the hill at Ply- mouth and strode down to the stream by the banks of which their own log-houses were built. They were as glad to be home, where they could rest, as their friends were to welcome them back from the perils of wan- dering among strange tribes of red men. One day, about this same time, the cry went out that a boy was missing. The son of one of the settlers, he had wandered away from the little town and lost him- self in the forest. He tried to find his way home, but all round him stood the trunks of thousands of trees. He had not learned, like the Indians, to g-uide himself through the woods by watching the sun for his direc- tion. He did not know that the moss only grew on one side of the trees. So he went on and on. He cried out, BUILDERS IN THE WASTE 143 but no voice answered save tlie call of a bird in the woods. The sun set; the darkness came down; he was tired and hungry and frightened. He took some berries from a bush and ate them ; and then, in sheer weariness, he lay down on the ground and slept. In the morning he woke and ate some more berries. ^11 day he wandered trying to find his way home ; but he did not meet any man — red or white. He began to feel that he would never see home or friends again. It seemed as though the whole world was covered with trees. Darkness fell again, and again he slept through the lonely night, with only the sough of the wind in the trees to talk to him if he waked and all around him the silence and solitude of the trackless forests. For five days the boy wandered on; for four nights he slept under the boughs beneath the open sky. At last he saw a gleam of blue sea and yellow sand through the tree-trunks. In a few moments he was out on the beach, with the sea stretching away before him in the spring sunshine. But, even now, he did not know where he was, or how he could get back to his home; for all the beach was strange to him. He was — though he did not know it — twenty miles away from home, at the head of Buz- zard's Bay. He wandered on again. Then he saw moving forms. They were men. At last he saw that they were Eed Indians. Would they scalp him ; would they torture him by fire at the stake as a prisoner ? In any case, it was useless to run. They surrounded him and took him with them to their wigwams. The Indians were of the ^anset tribe. They had not signed any truce with the Pilgrims as Chief Massa- 144 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH soit had. But they were kind to the boy. They took him and fed him and he slept in one of their wigwams. The great chief of the ISTansets was called Aspinet. Word passed from him along the forest tracks to Massa- soit that the boy was in his tribe. Massasoit sent the news on to William Bradford at Plymouth. At once Bradford consulted with his friends, and they decided to send ten of the younger men of the Pilgrims to rescue the boy. They fitted out the shallop with pro- visions and armed themselves with muskets, corselets, and the rest. The shallop set sail for Buzzard's Bay. The little ship scudded across the water and anchored off the land near the home of Aspinet, the great-chief of the Nanset tribe. Landing, but leaving a guard on the boat, they plunged up the beach into the woods till the smoke and the wigwams of Aspinet came in sight through the trees. The chief had already, through his scouts, heard of their coming. He waited gravely for the white men. Around him were a full hundred warriors— his body- guard of braves. The boy was in the midst of them. Aspinet was friendly to them. His squaws had fed the boy. JSTow he hung round the boy's neck great necklaces of coloured beads. Then he led him to the white men. They were full of joy at having found the son who was lost. We can imagine how excited he himself was as he trudged back with them to the beach, answering their thousand questions about his adventures; and how hfs mother would be waiting by the shore at Plymouth for the shallop to come back. The other boys would envy him his adventures, as he told them the story of the days and nights in the woods and among the Indians. But we do not hear that any WOULD THEY SCALP HIM? WOULD THEY TORTURE HIM BY FIRE?" [144 BUILDERS IN THE WASTE 145 more of the boys went and lost themselves in the lonely, pathless forests. Ill The spring of 1621 passed on to summer, and the time of harvesting. In August strange and disturbing news came to William Bradford and his counsellors at Plymouth. "Corbitant," said the rumours, "who is the high- chief of the Poeasset Indians, is making himself an enemy to us. He has captured Massasoit. He is trying to win the tribes around to be the enemies of the white man." "We must send Tisquantum to Namasket," said Bradford, "in order to find out whether the stories are true." So Tisquantum set out with another Indian named Hobomok to discover what had really happened. The two dusky forms glided swiftly out of Plymouth and struck the trail for J^amasket. They had gone a good way on their journey when other Indians suddenly leapt out from ambush and took them prisoners. These were Corbitant^s braves. Tisquantum and Hobomok were led into the village of Corbitant. The chief knew that Tisquantum was the white men's interpreter. It was through him that the treaties were signed with Massasoit;. Chief Corbit- ant stood up and drew his hunting-knife. He walked towards Tisquantum. "This man is the tongue of the white men," he said. "When he dies they have lost their speech." He held the knife at Tisquantum's breast. Every eye was turned on the chief and the prisoner. It was 146 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Ilobomok's opportunity. He slipped silently as a shadow away from his guards, and, before an alarm could be sounded, leapt into the woods and fled back along the trail to the Plymouth Settlement. He told the story to Bradford, who sent messages hurrying to call a council of war. Bradford and Miles Standish knew at once what must be done. ^'If we stand by our ally Massasoit," they argued, ^'then the Indians will know that we mean what we say. If we desert him, no other tribe will ever ally itself with us.'' It was late: nothing could be done that night. Miles Standish called together ten of the Pilgrims. By morning they had provisioned and armed them- selves. They started. Their orders were that if Chief Corbitant had slain Tisquantum, he should be beheaded. Yet they were only eleven men going to face a tribe which numbered many hundred braves. Miles Standish and his men marched forward through the forest trails, led by Hobomok. At last they came to the outskirts of Corbitant's village. They boldly walked forward among the wigivams. The chief had fled. And Tis- quantum came out unharmed to greet them. This courage and the firm good faith of William Bradford and Miles Standish and the others had a won- derful and immediate effect. The news spread far and wide along the Indian trails from tribe to tribe. Aspinet (who had given back the white boy to his people), Canacum of Manomet, and six other chiefs at once sent in saying that they wished to be allies with the Pilgrims. They all signed treaties saying that they would be faith- ful subjects of King James. Even Chief Corbitant BUILDERS IN THE WASTE 147 asked tlie other Indians to make his peace with the white men. Bradford's wise and energetic mind looked farther afield still. Northward lay the rich land of the tribes of the Massachusett Indians. So he again sent men aboard the shallop to sail northward. They came to a lovely harbour with forty-seven islands in it. As the shallop tacked her way to and fro between these beauti- ful islands with their wooded shores/ the Pilgrims almost wished that they had settled here rather than in the smaller and less protected harbour of Plymouth. The men on the shallop had been warned that the In- dians in this region were enemies. So they were pre- pared for treachery or for war. But when they landed and met the Indians they were friendly. The Pilgrims bought soft dark-brown beaver-skins from them; these were to be sent home to Britain. So they put out once more in the shallop full of con- tent. Their wise Governor Bradford (they could tell one another) had led them to build the strongest defence in the world — friendship with the peoples round about. Nearly all the Indians for many, many miles were now the allies of the brave Pilgrims. So Governor Brad- ford was building in the waste places by his wise, strong, free government, the first rough beginnings of a new commonwealth. !Night fell on the little ship, but not darkness. For the full, round, yellow harvest moon rose above the water and the islands, and shone upon them as they went sailing over the enchanted seas back to the little settle- ment of log-houses that they called home. In the silence of the night, with only the whisper * Afterwards called Boston Harbour. 148 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH of the water lapping the moving bows of the shallop, thej would be sure to sing some of those chanted melodies of theirs to the quaint words that we find in the book they had from the days of Amsterdam ^ on- wards. Under the harvest moon, as they thought of how they had come, through tempest and want, to calm and harvest and the friendship of the Indians, they might well sing praise to God. The swelling seas thou doest asswage, and make their streames full still: Thou doest refrayne the peoples' rage, and rule them at thy will Thou deckst the earth of thy good grace, with f ayre and pleasaunt crop : Thy cloudes distill their dew apace, great plenty they do drop. Whereby the desert shall begyn, full great increase to bryng : The little hilles shall joy therein; much fruite in them shall spryng. In places playne the flocke shall feede, and cover all the earth; The vallyes with corne shall so exceede; that men shall sing for myrth. * Psalm 65 (Ixv.). The Booke of Psalmes; collected into Eng- lish mjeeter, by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, and others. CHAPTEK IX GKEATHEAKT, MR STAI^DFAST AlTD yALIA:^T-FOR-TEUTH GKEATHEAKT AND GIANT DESPAIK "So Mr. Greatheart, old Honest, and the four young men went to go up to Doubting Castle, to look for Giant Despair. "When they came at the castle gate they knocked for en- trance with an unusual noise. At that the old giant comes to the gate, and Diffidence his wife follows. Then said he, 'Who and what is he that is so hardy, as after this manner to molest the Giant Despair? Mr. Greatheart replied, 'It is I, Greatheart, one of the King of the Celestial Country's conductors of pilgrims to their place; and I demand of thee that thou open thy gates for my entrance. Prepare thyself also to fight, for I am come to take away thy head, and to demolish Doubting Castle.' "Now Giant Despair, because he was a giant, thought no man could overcome him ; and again thought he. Since here- tofore I have made a conquest of angels, shall Greatheart make me afraid? So he harnessed himself, and went out. He had a cap of steel upon his head, a breast-plate of fire girded to him, and he came out in iron shoes, with a great club in his hand. Then these six men made up to him, and beset him behind and before; also when Diffidence the giantess came up to help him, old Mr. Honest cut her down at one blow. Then they fought for their lives, and Giant Despair was brought down to the ground, but was very loath to die. He struggled hard, and had, as they say, as many lives as a cat ; but Greatheart was his death, for he left him not till he had severed his head from his shoulders. Then they fell to demolishing Doubting Castle, and that, you know, might with ease be done, since Giant Despair was dead." John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress. CHAPTER IX GREATHEART, MR. STA:tTDFAST, AISTD VALIANT-EOR-TRUTH The harvest moon, uncler which Miles Standish and his men sailed home, waned to a silver sickle of light in the sky, and late summer turned to early autumn. The Pilgrims brought in their sheaves to the bams, they sang their chants of harvest thanksgiving, they rested for a little after the long toil of sowing, tending, and reaping. They called in some of their Red Indian friends to share their gladness. Chief Massasoit came with ninety of his counsellors and braves, and rejoiced with the Pilgrims for three days. They danced some of their war-dances to amuse the boys and girls and men and women of the settlement. Captain Miles Standish paraded his men and fired his cannon to entertain — as well as to impress — ^their Indian guests. They hunted in the woods. The Indians and white men to- gether slew ^ye deer to help the provisioning of the people for the winter. The autumn glided on: it was now a year since the Mayflower had dropped anchor in Plymouth Bay. The Pilgrims were gradually being led past their difficulties and perils. Just as, in The Pilgrim's 151 152 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Progress, Greatheart, Mr. Standfast, and Valiant-for- Truth lead the Pilgrims over perilous paths, fight with Giant Despair, and break down Doubting Castle, so the Pilgrims of the Mayflower at Plymouth were led by their Greatheart, William Bradford, their Mr. Stand- fast, William Brewster, and their Valiant-for-Truth, Captain Miles Standish. They had already come, through their Valley of the Shadow of Death, the pestilence; they had also climbed the Hill Difficulty; yet dangers and adventures still lay before them. II One day in November an Indian of the iN'anset tribe came running through the woods into the street of Plymouth. He sought Governor Bradford, and said to him : "There is a ship from over the seas sailing in from the ocean round Cape Cod.'' In a moment all was excitement. They were not ex- pecting any ship from England till after the winter should have passed and the spring come again. They remembered that France was fighting in war against England. Was this a French ship — come, perhaps, as an enemy against them ? The hollow roar of a cannon broke the silence. Cap- tain Miles Standish had at once given the order to fire one of the guns of the battery as a signal to call the people in from the fields. Each man in the tiny force of the Pilgrims shouldered his musket and peered out to catch the first glimpse of the approaching ship. At last a cry went up that she flew the English flag. The muskets were put aside. The Pilgrims crowded GREATHEART 153 down the street to tlie shore to watch her come in. Soon the boys could see the word Fortune painted on her bows. William Brewster caught sight of the face of a boy who was very dear to him. His own eldest son was aboard. Edward Winslow saw his brother John stand- ing on deck. The Fortune had brought in all thirty-five new Pilgrims; so there was great rejoicing. The Pilgrims were very sorry, however, that the Fortune had not brought them supplies of seed and other stores. Edward Winslow wrote a long letter to go back in the ship to England. In it he asked his "loving and old friencl" George Morton to be sure that, when the next vessel came out, each settler should bring with him bedding, stout clothes to wear, a musket or a fowling-piece "long in the barrel,'' much gunpowder and shot, and stout paper and linseed-oil for making windows (for there was no glass to be got). The people in England seemed to forget, when sailing out to the new world, that the nearest shop to the Plymouth Settle- ment was five hundred miles away, and that every piece of cloth or thread or gun or book must come across the seas from England. 'Nor were all the men who had come aboard the Fortune of the sort that helped the colony. Some came just burning for adventure, hating all control over their rough wills, restless rovers ; as Bradford said, "most of them were lusty yong men, and many of them wild enough, who litle considered whither, or aboute what they wente." "So," Bradford goes on, "they were all landed; but there was not so much as bisket, cake or any other victialls for them, neither had they any beding, but some sory things they had in their cabins, nor pot, nor 154. THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH pan, to drese any meat in ; nor over many cloathes. . . ." Governor Bradford got his people together and they packed beaver and other skins, sassafras and seasoned boards "as full as she could stowe," in the hull of the Fortune to take back with her on her homeward journey. So she hove anchor and hoisted sail and, turning her bows Eastward, made her course for England. She sailed for many days, and at last the coast of England could be seen by a sailor from the mast-head. But just then a fast-sailing French ship came racing through the water. She soon overhauled the Fortune, " which had to heave to and let the French officers come aboard. > All the ship's company of the Fortune found them- selves prisoners of war. In a fortnight the ship and her crew and passengers were set free to go home to England. But the cargo — the beaver-skins and all the rest for which the Pilgrims had toiled and sailed and bargained — was taken by the French and never seen again. So the money that was to have come from the sale of the cargo in order to pay the debts of the Pil- grims to those who had equipped them at the first was lost. Ill The winter passed, and the spring of another year — 1622 — came with the song of birds and the bursting of the little buds of oak-leaf and the chestnut blossom and the sowing of new seed in the earth. One day, however, in April, an Indian brave came loping down the trail from the Narragansett tribes. In his hand was a sheaf of arrows. Pound the arrows was GREATHEART 155 the skin of a rattlesnake. The Indian brave was brought before the young Governor Bradford. "What does this mean ?" Bradford asked Tisquantum, his Indian interpreter. "The rattlesnake and the sheaf of arrows mean that Canonicus, the chief of the Narragansetts, threatens you with war/' said Tisquantum. Governor Bradford's face grew stern. He took the rattlesnake skin and stuffed it full with shot. As he tells us, he "sente the sneake skine back with bulits in it." "Take that to the chief," he said to another mes- senger, "and with it take this letter." The letter, Bradford tells us, was "a round answere, that if they had rather have warre than peace, they might begine when they would ; they had done them no wrong, neither did they fear them, nor should they find them unprovided." The letter warned Canonicus of the dire trouble that would come upon him if he dared to try to make war upon the Plymouth Settlement. The messenger carried the rattlesnake to his chief and the letter ; but Canonicus was terrified of the white man's message and his "bulits." He would not receive them. So the messenger went back with it at last to Bradford himself. While this was happening dreadful news came up from Virginia in the south, where English men had made a settlement when Queen Elizabeth was on the throne. It was called Virginia after her, for she was named "the Virgin Queen." The Indians there had come in stealthily with tomahawks, bows and arrows 156 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH and knives upon the unsuspecting British and had massacred all save one of the three hundred and forty- eight men and women, hoys and girls. Bradford was (as we have seen) a strong man of decisive action; alongside him was that courageous and wise warrior, Captain Miles Standish. Immediately they decided that — even if the sowing of the seed were delayed — they must have protection against the plots of the Indians. The men went out with axes and hewed down trees, cutting them up into thousands of logs and making spiked bars. For day after day they laboured till even their strong arms were weary with the hewing and sawing, and their broad backs ached with the labour of log-bearing and driving the stakes into the ground. But in five weeks there ran a strong, high, firm paUisade from the shore, all round by the north, past the crest of Fort Hill and down to Town Brook. Four bastions jutted out, from the points of which the PilgTims could direct a fire on the flanks of any Indians who might be trying to burn down or attack the pallisade. About this time Bradford and Miles Standish began to fear that Tisquantum was playing them false. This wily Indian, it appears, discovering that the tribes round about thought that he had great influence with Bradford, would tell the chiefs like Aspinet or Corbit- ant, that Bradford and Standish were going to make war upon them. The chiefs would then offer to give him presents if he would persuade the Governor of Ply- mouth and his Captain not to attack them. Tisquantum would promise to do this, and — as Bradford had never intended to attack them at ail — the Indian interpreter GREATHEART 157 would soon be able to say that be bad made peace and would ask fo^ tbe present to be given to bim. Anotber wicked work tHat Tisquantum did was to make trade out of tbe ignorance of tbe Indians by de- claring tbat tbe wbite men could send plagues upon tbem. "Tbese pale-faces," be would say to a village of In- dians, ^'bave magic. Tbey bave buried tbe plague under tbeir store-bouse. Witbout moving a step from tbeir bome tbey can bring fortb tbe plague and send it upon people and sweep tbem all away to deatb." ^'Ugb! Ugb!" tbe listening braves would grunt and give to Tisquantum presents of beaver or wolf skin so tbat be sbould stay tbe plague of tbe palefaces. One day Tisquantum told tbe otber Indian named Hobomok wbo lived in tbe Plymoutb Settlement tbat a bole in tbe ground in tbe Governor's bouse was tbe place wbere tbe plague was buried. Hobomok went to one of tbe settlers to ask if tbis were true. ^'INTo," said tbe trutbful Pilgrim, "we bave not tbe plague at our command." Hobomok was very angry to know bow Tisquantum bad lied, and so were tbe settlers. Massasoit and Hobomok wisbed to bave Tisquantum put to deatb : but William Bradford did not wisb tbem to be so bard upon bim. Bradford witb difficulty kept bim from being slain by Massasoit. Massasoit came to Bradford "mad witb rage," says Winslow, asking for Tisquantum to be killed. He of- fered Bradford many beaver-skins if be would kill Tisquantum. Bradford said tbat it was not tbe man- ner of Englisb people to sell people's lives. 158 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH Massasoit went away very angry. He sent his knife by a messenger saying that it was to be used for cutting off Tisquantum's head and his hands, which were to be sent to the chief. Tisquantum learnt his lesson: he became faithful, and started to ^'walk more squarely, and cleave unto the English till he died," which he did in the next year in the autumn of 1622, after an illness in which Gov- ernor Bradford nursed him tenderly. Tisquantum asked Bradford to pray for him that his soul might go to the God in heaven, whom the pale-faces worshipped. IV The alarms about the Indians and the busy hours of building the pallisade and of training a troop of de- fenders of the Pilgrim Settlement crowded the spring- time of sowing and planting with more work than the colonists could well compass. In the next five months creeping calamity came re- lentlessly upon them. In the winter (you remember) the thirty-five new colonists had come on the Fortime without bringing provisions from England. This made thirty-five new mouths to feed from the all too scanty stores locked up in the common storehouse of the com- munity. As though this were not enough, a man named Weston in England, who had grumbled terribly at the Pilgrims in a letter that he sent on the Fortune, now despatched seven more men in a shallop that belonged to a fishing vessel that he owned, with another grumbling letter. This brought still lower their meagre pro-> visions. "All this," said Governor Bradford, "was but could GREATHEART 159 comfort to fill their himgrie bellies." And he added, with humorous anger, "Put not your trust in princes (much less in marchants) !'' The young com was springing in the fields, but it would be months before it could be reaped. The log- houses where the corn of the last harvest was stored were nearly empty. So they could not make bread. They had no meat. The wild-fowl ha'd gone north. They had no strong nets for the deeper fishing that would have caught the cod in the bay or the bass that swam in the outer harbour. There were no vegetables. Practically their only food that summer was shell- fish. Even with this dreadful shortage there came a further scourge in the form of a gang of sixty men whom Weston sent from England on two emigrant ships. Some of them were wild desperadoes. I^one of them were of the type of men who would brook control. They were hungTy; they saw in the fields the green ears of the corn that was to feed the Pilgrims through the coming winter. So they went into the fields and robbed them right and left, roasting the green ears of corn and eating them greedily. Governor Bradford had some of the men soundly whipped publicly for this ; but still the thieving went on. The Pilgrim-colony would have been starved to death had not the two emigrant-ships by good fortune come back and taken away most of these sixty wretches. They left behind some of their men who were ill, the de- vastated fields, and the memory of a scapegrace crew. Still deeper suffering was to come through these wastrels. They sailed away from the Plymouth Settle- 160 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH ment to Wessagusset, on Boston Bay, farther nortli on the same coast, to make a colony there. They had a Governor, but they did not obey him. They had no Greatheart or Standfast or Valiant to lead them. Each man lived for himself. They did not know that the only true liberty is the ordered freedom of men who agree together to obey just laws. They did not fear or love God, or obey man, or work together. So, as we shall see, they would surely have perished under the tomahawks of the Indians, had not the Pil- grims' Greatheart and Valiant-for-Truth come to their rescue. They not only ate up all their stores, they even fed on their seed-corn, so that there was none to sow in the ground for the next harvest. So these wild settlers grew more and more hungry till at last some of them even went and hired themselves as servants to the Kea Indians. You would see a white man with ragged clothes hanging about his gaunt, half-starved body, carrying water and chopping wood for the Eedskins. An Indian would put into the white man's cap a few handfuls of corn as wages for this work. "They are squaws," one Indian brave would say to another. "Ugh!" would come the grunt of agreement. Then some of the wild settlers crept out secretly and raided the Indians' corn. The Indians werei very angTy and refused to let them have corn, even if they worked for it. One night, when the settlers had promised that no more robbing of the Indian fields should take place, a white settler went quietly out into the fields and began to steal the corn. Unseen by him, shadowy forms crept GREATHEART l6l up and suddenly leapt upon him. The Indians had captured the thief. Mad with rage, they dragged him hack to their vil- lage, and in the morning took him to the white settle- ment at Wessagusset. The Indians were so angry that the white men had to take their own companion — the thief — and hang him. "They became,'' says William Bradford, "con- temned and scorned of the Indians, and they begane greatly to insulte over them in a most insolente maner ; insomuch, many times as they lay thus scatered abrod, and had set on a pot with ground-nuts or shell-fish, when it was ready the Indeans would come and eate it up; and when night came, whereas some of them had a sorie blanket, or shuch like, to lappe themselves in, the Indeans would take it and let the other lye all night in the could, so as their condition was very lamentable." These desperate men were at last at the extremity; they must, it seemed, either fight the Indians for corn or starve to death. Giant Despair had them in his grip. They turned to Greatheart to know what he would do. They sent a messenger to Governor Bradford for advice and for help. "A small pack" of Indians went after him to try to slay him on the way, so that the message should never reach Bradford. "Though he knew not a foote of the way, yet," Bradford tells us, "he got safe hither; but lost his way, which was well for him, for he was pursued, and so was mist." Bradford called all the Pilgrims together for counsel in the log-house on the hill, which was their tiny Senate- 162 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH house. Bradford himself had very little corn left, for those Wessagusset settlers — you rememher — had eaten much of it. They were living to a large extent on nuts and shell-fish. The Pilgrim Council meeting sent a message back to Wessagusset to say that if the settlers robbed the In- dians they would surely suffer, for the corn that they stole would last a very little time, and when it was eaten they would simply starve, surrounded by enemies. The settlers by this time had sold most of their clothes to the Indians. Half-naked, half-starved, a pitiful picture of misery and contempt — they crept wearily along the beach looking for shell-fish among the rocks. While they were in this strait, secret plots were being woven among the Indian tribes. ^'The pale-faces are weak,'^ said one chief to an- other. ^Tet us slay them all and keep the land for the red man — we will kill the men here at Wessagusset and also the Pilgrims at Plymouth." They decided that they must kill the Pilgrims as well, because they felt sure that the "pale-faces" would stand by one another in any case. Seven tribes leagued with the Neponset Indians to slay the white men. They then sent a messenger to Chief Massasoit, the friend of Bradford, to ask him to join in the plot. ]!^ow it so happened that at this very time Massasoit was ill. Bradford had heard of his sickness and sent Edward Winslow again to visit him. Winslow went with Hobomok, the Indian interpreter, along the Indian trail through the woods till he came to Massasoit's village. As he came near the great chief's wigwam Winslow heard (as he says) "such hellish noise GREATHEART 163 as distempered us that were well, and therefore imlike to ease him that was sick." Massasoit lay on the floor in his wigwam on his mat- bed. The powahs (or witch-doctors) pranced round yelling fiendish incantations and charms to ward off or frighten away the evil spirits. The noise itself was al- ,most enough to kill the sick chief. For two days Massa- soit had not^slept. All the sight had gone from his eyes. It seemed certain that he would die. Massasoit, however, weak as he was, could under- stand that Winslow had come. He asked for him to be brought into the wigwam. Winslow came in; he drove out the wild, shrieking crowd and commanded quiet. He gave the Indian chief a dose of one of the simple medicines that he had brought with him. Gradually Massasoit dropped off into a quiet sleep. Tor hours he lay in slumber, while Winslow made the people remain quiet in the village. At last he woke; his sigjit re- turned; he was better. In a short time Massasoit rose from the bed which he had never expected to leave till he died. "ISTow I see," said he, "the English are my friends and loveme. While I live I will never forget this kind- ness that they have shown to me." The sun had only set once before Massasoit repaid in full all the kindness that he owed. Winslow and Hobomok were just leaving the wigwams of the tribe to go back to Plymouth when Massasoit took Hobomok aside. "I tell you now," said he, "something that you must tell the pale-face English friend as he walks with you." Hobomok grunted his assent. "The tribe of the ISTeponsets," went on Massasoit, 164 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH ^'have joined with seven other tribes to massacre all the pale-faces both at Plymouth and at Wessagnsset. They have asked me to join with them. This is my word to the men of Plymouth — that they go to Wessa- gnsset to the IN'eponset tribe — for they are the men who have made this plot — and seize and sla^ the braves there. If they do not do this all the sixty pale-fax3es at Wessagnsset will be scalped, and then the Indians will come against you also." As Hobomok and Winslow walked back along the forest-trail homeward the Indian told his friend the story. They quickened their steps to hurry with the warning to Plymouth. They told Governor Bradford of the Indian plot. He called together the men of all the town. "You remember," he said, "how the Indians massacred the English at Virginia last year. It is cer- tain, from the words of Massasoit, that they wish to do the same to us. My judgment is that Captain Standish must go with our men armed in the shallop^o Wessa- gTisset. They must go as traders. But they must go prepared to strike at the chief Indian conspirators." To this all agreed. Captain Standish chose his men, and in the morn- ing the shallop hove anchor ; sail was run up, and soon she was nosing her way again among the many islands of the great harbour. They sighted the white settlers' ship. The Swan, swinging idly at anchor, with not a soul on board. They landed. The careless wild settlers were scattered in the woods. Indians came in and out of the village, and even entered their houses. ISTo^pne sus;^cted anything. \ ...Standish at once told them how they stood in instant GREATHEART 165 peril of their lives. The white men were called in. Standish ordered them to stay within the village and held the fear of death over them. An Indian spy came into the village. He carried furs for sale, hvit only as a pretence. His real aim was to see how the land lay. At once he saw that the secret was out, so he went back and told the other conspirators. These Indians came into the village. They drew their newl;5[^hetted knives; then they stood round Standish and began to threaten his life. He went with some of his men into a log-house; he wished to be where the other Indians from the woods could not shoot their arrows at them. In the house were Indian braves, knife in hand, thirsting for his blood. The Red Indian conspirators knew well enough that here was the really dangerous enemy of their plot. If they could slay him they could overwhelm the rest by sheer numbers. Standish's eye never left their faces, nor quenched its fir e^of cour age. Suddenly he uttered a sharp word of command, and sprang at the nearest Indian. The log-house was a whirl of knives and swords. The sounds of the heavy breathing of men in desperate hand-to- hand fighting, of the sickening thud of falling bodies, and of the clash of steel on steel filled the place. Then the white men stood back. On the ground lay the In- dians. Standish, Winslow tells us,^ "gave the word to his men, and the door being fast shut, began himself with Peksuot, and, snatching his knife from his neck, though with much struggling, killed him therewith, the point whereof he [i.e, Peksuot the Indian] had made sharp * Winslow, Good Neives, pp. 37-45. 166 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH as a needle and ground the back also to an edge. . . . But it is incredible bow many wounds these pineses [braves] received before they died, not making any fearful noise, but catching at their weapons and striving to the last." Night fell; guards were set; but no Indian came within sight or sound of the sentries. When dawn came up the Indians tried to secure the crest of a hill, from which either the settlement or the edge of the woods could be commanded. Standish and his men, however, were too strong for them. The Indians hid behind trees, and, thus protected, shot flight after flight of arrows at the. pale-faces. Then Hobomok did an act of gTcat^ daring. He knew that the Red Indians believed him to be a wizard who could call up evil spirits against his enemies. Suddenly he stood forward, flung his coat from him, and ran naked toward _them. Smitten with the horror of_evil spiaits, the Indians turned and fled for their lives through the trees. ISTor were they seen any more. The white settlers, who had drawn all this trouble on themselves by their wild^awless ways, were sick and tired of the labour and the famine""3[Iet. They carried all their goods down to the beach, rowed it out in the boat to the Swan that lay at anchor in the bay, and sailed^Xlfl„ never to return again. ^'This was the end," Bradford sums it up for us, "of these that some time hosted of their strength (being all able, lustie men) and what they would doe and bring to pass, in comparison of the people hear [i.e. at Ply- mouth], who had many women and children and weak^ ones amongst them; and said at their first arivall, when they saw the wants hear, that they would take another GREATHEART 167 course, and not fall into ^uch a condition, as this simple people were come too. But a mans way is not in his owne power ; God can make the weake to stand ; let him also that standeth, take heed least he fall." Standish, with his men and with Hobomok, went aboard the shallop and sailed back to Plymouth Har- bour. He set to work there to strengthen and finish the fort-church on the hill which — Bradford declared — ^was "stronge and comelie.'' On the fiat roof cannon were placed and sentinels watched there day and night. Within the fort was the meeting-place for worship and the place where they held their town^meetings. Captain Standish — their Valiant-for-Truth — was the Commander of the fort. William Bradford — their Greatheart — was the wise and courageous Governor of the Council-meetings. William Brewster — their Mr. Standfast — was the leader of their worship. In the just and pure leadership of those three men, and in the quiet worship, the wise counsel, and the sure defence that centred in that log-building on the hill lay the strength of the Pilgrims — these "builders in the waste" — as they laid the foundations of new life in the wild new world. EPILOGUE THE BUILDIITG OF THE NEW "AEGO'' THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP Day by day the vessel grew, With timbers fashioned strong and true, Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee. Till, framed with perfect symmetry, A skeleton ship rose up to view! And around the bow and along the side The heavy hammers and mallets plied. Till after many a week, at length. Wonderful for form and strength. Sublime in its enormous bulk, Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk! And around it columns of smoke up-wreathing, Eose from the boiling, bubbling, seething Caldron, that glowed. And overflowed With the black tar, heated for sheathing. And amid the clamours Of clattering hammers. He who listened heard now and then The song of Master and his men: ^'Build me straight, O worthy Master, Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel That shall laugh at all disaster. And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!" Longfellow. EPILOGUE THE BUILDING OF THE NEW "AEGO" After these adventures many strange and stirring hap- penings came upon the Pilgrims. But these are the beginning of a new story. For there came sailing to the harbour at the Ply- mouth Settlement, away there in the west, other men and women from England as colonists. The Little James, a pinnace of forty-four tons, the ship Anne, and then the ship Charity brought new faces to the colony. Gradually the Pilgrims of the Mayflower grew older and some died, while more and more new settlers came to the little town. Yet for thirty years William Bradford was every year re-elected as their Governor, for none was so wise and firm and kind as he. Brave Captain Standish, while he grew less fierce as he got older, was still the bead of the defence of the settlement in face of enemies. At last the call came for Captain Miles Standish, the Pilgrims' Mr. Valiant-for-Truth. And we can say of him what John Bunyan wrote in The Pilgrim's Progress: "Then Mr. Valiant-for-Truth said, I am going to my Father's; and though with great difficult^" I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me cf all the troubles 171 172 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder." The colonists greatly missed Miles Standish after his death. JSTor has he ever been forgotten. To boys and girls to-day the name of Miles Standish stands for one who fearlessly championed the cause of the Pilgrims in their new home. Many years after his death, the sword with which he had fought with the Indians was placed in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Massachusetts. The cheerful, strong face of William Brewster was with the Pilgrims for over twenty years, till in 1643, with his white hairs and his mellow face, honoured and loved by all the people, he died. Old William Brewster was indeed a Mr. Standfast; he had been the first to call the Pilgrims together to worship in the Manor at Scrooby. He took the brunt of the persecution in England. He led them across to Amsterdam and Leyden. He was their chief at the sailing of the Mayflower. For more than thirty-six years he faced with them exile and tempest, the arrows of the Indian and famine and pestilence on the soil of America. He led the Pilgrims, old and young, sinner and saint, into the presence of God. When William Brewster had come to be a white- haired old man four colonies of Englishmen had grown up on that coast of America ; they were Massachusetts, ISTew Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. Within ten days of William Brewster's death, these four colonies joined themselves together into one body. EPILOGUE 173 They declared in their Articles of Confederation that all four colonies were founded with the same end, "to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liherties of the Gospel in purity with peace," the confederacy to be called the United Colonies of i^ew England — "a league of friendship." That day saw the beginning of the union of states which was to become, in the dim distance of the years that were still hidden behind the mists of the future, the great republic — the United States of America, that noble Argo of which Longfellow wrote : "Sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel." That keel was laid when the Pilgrims (you remem- ber) "in the presence of God and one of another," in the dim light between the decks on the Mayflower as she swung at anchor off Cape Cod, took up, one by one, the quill-pen from the captain's table and signed the covenant that made them one united body of free men.^ They laid, I say, in that hour, the keel of a new Argo, a more glorious ship of adventure for freedom in all the world. The Pilgrims, the Argonauts of Faith, had dared the rage of the gales of the Atlantic in their little ship, the Mayflower, in order to seek and to take the Golden Fleece. To them the quest was for liberty to worship » Chapter VI. 174 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH in the way that seemed most fitting the God whose thej were and whom they served. Eor that sacred prize they faced the fury of tempests, the hitter cold of freezing gales on a shelterless coast, the tomahawks and arrows of Eed Indians, the dreadful scythe of plague, and exile for life from the home of their fathers. On the shores of America, then, they laid the keel of the new Argo of freedom — the ship of the ISTew Com- monwealth. Gradually as colony after colony grew up on that shore and spread from north to south, the first rough timbers of the hull of the ship were shaped and fixed. So, for year after year through three long centuries, the grandsons of the Pilgrims and multitudes of others have built America. The Mother-land in Britain across the Atlantic loved her child across the seas; but a King of England — a foreigner, who hardly knew even the language of his own subjects, together with some of his heavy-handed Ministers of State, tried to spoil the free lines of liberty on which the ship of America was being shaped. So the American builders, for love of liberty, defied the King — George III. America rebelled. The War of Independence began. That the heart of England was not truly with its King is shown by many things, among them the astonishing fact that great British generals — trained in the life of obedience — did a thing almost un- heard of in military history: they refused to obey the desire of their own King to go out and fight against the freedom of their brothers in America. The noblest sons of the Pilgrim settlers in the ^ew World gave their lives in the fight for freedom. That daring and wise soldier-statesman, George Washington, EPILOGUE 175 led his people on from triumpli in the battle-field to victory in the rebuilding of the world of America after the War of Independence. The new ship was being built. Her ribs were shaped on the great word : ^'All men are born free and equal.'' On the planlvs of her decks was written the decree that Government "derives its just powers from the consent of the governed"; and that the people who have made the Government have the right to abolish it and to cre- ate a new Government. The sons of the Pilgrims who left England for love of Liberty had thus through two centuries and a half wrought their will ; but in the Southern States of Amer- ica men of other minds had built up a great order of life, founded on the slavery of the negro. Then there rose the greatest leader that America has ever seen — a tall, gaunt backwoodsman, over six feet three in his moccasins, a man having a strong, seamed face, with a nose like a snow-plough, and a chin of granite — Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, with his face livid with anger, came out from the slave-auction room where he had seen girls sold like pigs in a market — came out grinding his teeth with wrath and declaring, "When I get the chance to hit slavery, I'll hit it hard." "This nation," he said later, "cannot go on half slave and half free." The Civil War began. So the banner of freedom was again fluttering at the head of the armies of liberty ; and after long and dreadful agony the battle of freedom was again won. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," did not perish from the earth. The battle was won and the Ship of Union was finally launched upon the waters of time, though, even as she 176 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH was launclied, lier Captain, Abe Lincoln, was shot and his hand dropped from the tiller of the mighty vessel. In that day Walt Whitman sung, above the prostrate body of that man who stands with the few greatest of the heroes of men in all history : Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won. The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting. While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red! Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. The Captain had fallen, but the ship survived. It was of her that Longfellow sung : . . . Sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity, with all its fears. With all its hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! We know what Master laid thy keel. What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel. Who made each mast, and sail, and rope. What anvils rang, what hammers beat. In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock ; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail. And not a rent made by the gale ! In spite of rock and tempest's roar. In spite of false lights on the shore. Sail on, nor fail to breast the sea ! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, EPILOGUE 177 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee — are all with thee ! ^ II The years went by, and at last there broke on the world the greatest of all its battles for freedom — the War in which the nations and the races of the earth were locked in one tremendous conflict. In that war, the old land from which the Pilgrims were exiled and the !New World to which they sailed were brothers. The war was won, but the old order of the world was shattered. As with the Mayfloiver on her tempestuous journey, so with the new ship of the life of the English- speaking peoples in the war : the timbers were strained, the sea leaked in — yes — even the mainbeam was wrenched from its place. !N"ow on the shores of this new world of ours, after the war, all who have that spirit of adventure and of freedom and faith which were in the old Pilgrims are called to build a ship of a greater Union even than that of the United States of America — a greater Union than even that of all the English-speaking peoples in the earth — a Union of all men of all races everywhere joined in a common life of ordered freedom. They are called to build and to launch an Argo of Brotherhood sailing adventurously the waters of time under the spreading skies of the world-wide Fatherhood of God. That Argo will only be built and sail the seas to win * Longfellow, The Building of the Ship. 178 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH the Golden Fleece of Freedom for all humanitj if we wlio are her shipwrights and sailors are prepared to endure hardness, to live simply, and to act with courage as did the Argonauts of Faith, the story of whose deeds in England, Holland, and America has now heen told. As we look back over that story, especially we of the English-speaking peoples, whether of America or of the British Commonwealth of ISTations, it is good to call to mind the brave words of William Bradford: Our faithers luere English men wJiich came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes, hut they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voyce, aiid loohed on their adversitie. Let them therfore praise the Lord, because he is good, and Ms mercies endure for ever. Yea, let them which have heen redeemed of the Lord, shew how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressour. When they wandered in the desert e [an J] willdemes out of the way, and found no citie to divell in, hoth hungrie, and thirstie, their sowle was overivhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord his loving hindnes, and his wonderfull worhs before the sons of men. THE END CHRONOLOGY 1558. Elizabeth. 1559. Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. 1572. Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 1583. Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1584. William of Orange assassinated. 1585. Raleigh plants Colony of Virginia. 1588. Defeat of Spanish Armada. 1590. William Bradford made Post Master of Scrooby Manor. 1590-1610. Shakespeare writing continuously. 1593. Barrowe and Greenwood executed. 1600. Separatists begin to meet in Scrooby Manor, 1603. James I. 1605. Rembrandt bom in Leyden. Gunpowder Plot. 1608. First permanent English Settlement in America by the Virginia Company. Milton born. 1609. Pilgrims cross to Amsterdam and thence travel to Leyden. Truce ending Twenty-five years' war of Spain and Netherlands. 1616. Shakespeare died. 1618. Raleigh died. 1620. Midsummer, Speedwell sails from Delf shaven to Soiithampton with Pilgrims en route to America. September 6th, Mayflower sails for America. November 9th, Mayflower sighted Cape Cod. November 11th, anchored and signed declaration. December 18th, Pilgrims settle at New Plymouth. 1621. Treaty with Red Indians (Chief Massasoit). April 5th, Mayflower sails for England. 179 180 THE ARGONAUTS OF FAITH 1621. November, Fortune arrives from England. 1622. Canonicus threatens war. Massacre of English by Indians at Virginia. 1625. Charles I. 1643. Death of William Brewster. Confederation of four American Colonies. 1655, 1656 and 1657. Deaths of Edward Winslow, Miles Standish and William Bradford. INDEX INDEX Alderton, one of the Pilgrims, 132. Allerton, Isaac, one of the Pil- grims, 74, 139. Alva, Duke of, 59. Amsterdam, 49, 56, 57. Antwerp, 31, 32. Argo, Argus, 18, 19, 173, 174, 177. Argonauts, 19, 20, 76, 173, 177. Armada, stories of Spanish, 40, 41, 58. Articles of Confederation, 173. Aspinet, chief of Nanset tribe, 144, 146, 156. B Barrowe, 26, 27, 33, 34. Boston, town, 43, 44. Bradford, William, Birth, 33; Boyhood, 40; Passage to Hol- land, 44-51; Life in Leyden, 70; Marriage, 73; Captain of Expedition, 76; Fareioell to Leyden, 78; Voyage in '*May- flower," 90; Landing at Cape Cod, 102, 106-107; Death of his wife, 119; Story of spring 1621, 127; Chosem Governor of Settlement, 138; Gover- norship^ Story of, 144-152, 158; Indian plot, 164, 165; Quotations from "History of Plymouth Plantation," 40. 47, 48, 50, 56, 59, 60, 78, 83, 84, 88, 101, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 153, 155, 158, 161, 162, 166, 178. Brewer, Thomas, 71. Brewster, William, 30-35, 39, 42, 71, 73, 76, 90, 125, 128, 152, 153, 172. Bunyan, John, 24, 44, 54, 64, 72, 82, 88, 124, 150, 152, 172. Butten, William, 92. Canonicus, chief of Narragan- sett tribe, 155. Cape Cod, 95, 99, 111, 152. Carver, John, first Governor of Plymouth Settlement, 101, 127, 130, 133, 138. Civil War (American), 175. Clarke, mate of Mayflower. 110, 115. Clyfton, Richard, 34. Coles Hill (Burying Hill), 125. Confederation, Articles of, 181. Cooke, 126, 129, 132. Coppin, pilot of Mayflower, 110. Corbitant, Chief of Pocasset In- dians, 145, 146, 156. Covenant of Freedom, 101, 173. Cushman, Robert, 74. Davison, William, 31, 32. Delfshaven, 77, 120. Democracv — Form of Declara- tion, 101, 173. Compiled by Miss Edith Iverson. 183 184 INDEX Elizabeth, Queen, 26, 27, 31, 32, 155. Fens, description of, 43. Fortune, Pilgrim ship, 153, 154, 158, 159. Fuller, Dr. Samuel, 74. G Golden Fleece, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 76, 173, 177. Grampus Bay, 111. Great North Road, 28, 30, 31. Green door (House with), 72, 74, 77, 122. Greenwood, 25, 27, 34, 35. Haarlem, 60, 61. Hero of Haarlem, 57, 61. "Hiawatha," song of, 98, 118. Hobomok, 145, 157, 162, 163, 166, 167. Holland (Netherlands or Low Country), talk of, 42, 58; love of freedom, 57, 59; free- dom to worship, 42, 60. Hopkins, Stephen, 91, 105, 126, 140. Howland, John, 90, 92. Hudson, River, 94. Leyden, 59, 60, 65, 69, 74; siege of, 69. Lincoln, Abraham, 176. London Virginia Company, 76. Longfellow, 98, 118, 170, 173, 176. M Manhattan, 94. Maps, England and Holland, 36; Cape Cod, 93; Plymouth Settlement, 131, 134. Massasoit, chief of Pohanoket tribes, 130-133, 140-143, 145, 151, 157, 162-163. May (Dorothy), wife of Wil- liam Bradford, 73, 119. Mayflower, 84-90, 94, 99, 100, 102, 103, 107-110, 119-121, 137, 138, 172, 173, 177. Mercbant adventurers, 76, 85. Morton, George, 153. IVIbrton, Nathaniel, quotation, 84, 116. N Neponsets, tribe of, 163, 165. Newbolt, Sir Henry, 38. New Commonwealth, 174. Oceanus Hopkins, 91, 140. ihidians, See Red Indians, Mas- sasoit, Neponsets, Peksuot, Samoset, Tisquantum and Wampanoags. James I, 44, 71, 76, 100, 132. Jason, 17, 20. Jones, captain of Mayflower, 94, 103, 109. Peksuot, the Indian, 165. Pilgrims, 41-44, 49, 55-62, 75, 86-95, 99-108, 111, 114-116, 120, 124, 125, 127, 130; church of, 72, 73; Council, 161-162; scouts, 105, 109-118, 119. Pilgrim's Progress. See Bun- yan. INDEX 185 Plymouth, 88; Bay, 120, 133, 142; Harbour, 114, 120; Rock, 116; Settlement, 146, 153, 157, 159, 171. Psalm Ixv, 148. R Red Indians, 102, 104-108, 111, 113, 122-124, 125, 126, 154- 166. Rembrandt, 58, 66, 68. Reynolds, captain of Speedwell, 87. Robinson, John, 31, 35, 39, 60; pastor of Church in Leyden, 71-73, 75, 76; farewell to Pil- grims, 77, 84. S Samoset, chief of Monhegan, 127. Scrooby, 29, 30, 32, 44, 138; Manor House, 29, 32, 33, 34, 40, 42, 172. Separatists, Church of, 56, 60. Shakespeare, 41, 67. Shelley's Hellas, 82. Smith, Captain John, 75, 92. Smyth, John, of Gainsborough, 34. Speedwell, 77, 78, 79, 83, 84, 120. Squant. See Tisquantum. Standish, Captain Miles, 73, 74, 105-107, 109, 113, 114, 126, 132, 146, 147, 151, 152, 156, 164-167, 171, 173. Storks, 66. Swan, the, 164, 166. Tilley, Edward, -105. Tisquantum, the Interpreter, 129, 130, 139, 140, 145-147, 155-158. Treaty of New Commonwealth, 133. Trent, 44. United Colonies of New Eng- land, 173. Virginia, 138, 155. Voyages and Discoveries, Hakv luyt's, 40. W Wampanoags, tribe of, 128, 140, 142. War of Independence, 175. Washington, George, 174. Wessagusset, 160, 162, 164. Weston, 158, 159. White, Peregrine, 110. Whitgift, Archbishop, 34. Whitman, Walt, 98, 136, 176. William of Orange, 71, 78. Winslow, Edward, of Droit- wich, 72, 74, 130-132, 140^ 152, 153, 157, 162, 163, 165. and Holland Pilgrims liil