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| MEANWHILE the stalwart Miles Standish was marching steadily northward, | |
| Winding through forest and swamp, and along the trend of the sea-shore, | |
| All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his anger | |
| Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous odor of powder | |
| Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the scents of the forest. | 5 |
| Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved his discomfort; | |
| He who was used to success, and to easy victories always, | |
| Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn by a maiden, | |
| Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend whom most he had trusted! | |
| Ah! ’t was too much to be borne, and he fretted and chafed in his armor! | 10 |
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| “I alone am to blame,” he muttered, “for mine was the folly. | |
| What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray in the harness, | |
| Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the wooing of maidens? | |
| ’T was but a dream,—let it pass,—let it vanish like so many others! | |
| What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is worthless; | 15 |
| Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, and henceforward | |
| Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of dangers!” | |
| Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and discomfort, | |
| While he was marching by day or lying at night in the forest, | |
| Looking up at the trees, and the constellations beyond them. | 20 |
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| After a three days’ march he came to an Indian encampment | |
| Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and the forest; | |
| Women at work by the tents, and warriors, horrid with war-paint, | |
| Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking together; | |
| Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men, | 25 |
| Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre and musket, | |
| Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from among them advancing, | |
| Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present; | |
| Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred. | |
| Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers, gigantic in stature, | 30 |
| Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king of Bashan; | |
| One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called Wattawamat. | |
| Round their necks were suspended their knives in scabbards of wampum, | |
| Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp as a needle. | |
| Other arms had they none, for they were cunning and crafty. | 35 |
| “Welcome, English!” they said,—these words they had learned from the traders | |
| Touching at times on the coast, to barter and chaffer for peltries. | |
| Then in their native tongue they began to parley with Standish, | |
| Through his guide and interpreter, Hobomok, friend of the white man, | |
| Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets and powder, | 40 |
| Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with the plague, in his cellars, | |
| Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the red man! | |
| But when Standish refused, and said he would give them the Bible, | |
| Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast and to bluster. | |
| Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other, | 45 |
| And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain: | |
| “Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain, | |
| Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave Wattawamat | |
| Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a woman, | |
| But on a mountain at night, from an oak-tree riven by lightning, | 50 |
| Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons about him, | |
| Shouting, ‘Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?’” | |
| Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left hand, | |
| Held it aloft and displayed a woman’s face on the handle; | |
| Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning: | 55 |
| “I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle; | |
| By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children!” | |
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| Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, insulting Miles Standish: | |
| While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung at his bosom, | |
| Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it back, as he muttered, | 60 |
| “By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but shall speak not! | |
| This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent to destroy us! | |
| He is a little man; let him go and work with the women!” | |
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| Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians | |
| Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest, | 65 |
| Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bow-strings, | |
| Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of their ambush. | |
| But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them smoothly; | |
| So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers. | |
| But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt, and the insult, | 70 |
| All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish, | |
| Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. | |
| Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard, | |
| Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage | |
| Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiend-like fierceness upon it. | 75 |
| Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop. | |
| And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December, | |
| Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows. | |
| Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning, | |
| Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it. | 80 |
| Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket, | |
| Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattawamat, | |
| Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had a bullet | |
| Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching the greensward, | |
| Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers. | 85 |
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| There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors lay, and above them, | |
| Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man. | |
| Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart Captain of Plymouth:— | |
| “Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his strength, and his stature,— | |
| Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little man; but I see now | 90 |
| Big enough have you been to lay him speechless before you!” | |
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| Thus the first battle was fought and won by the stalwart Miles Standish. | |
| When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth, | |
| And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat | |
| Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress, | 95 |
| All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage. | |
| Only Priscilla averted her face from this spectre of terror, | |
| Thanking God in her heart that she had not married Miles Standish; | |
| Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from his battles, | |
| He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and reward of his valor. | 100 |
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