Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish

by Beulah Marie Dix

So soon as the broth was done, near half the village squatted round the pot, the men in an inner circle, while on the outskirts, eager for any morsel their masters might fling to them, waited the poor squaws. But Dolly, because she was a little white squaw, was suffered to sit down with her brother beside the old Chief, who scooped up pieces of the fish and hot broth in a wooden bowl and gave it to Miles.

Dolly looked askance at the food, but Miles and Trug ate ravenously; neither his queer table mates nor their queer table manners troubled the boy, since he himself was licking his fingers and wiping them on Trug's fur contentedly. "I like to eat with my fingers," he chattered to his venerable host. "At home they make me to eat tidily with a napkin, but I like it better thus."

But, even at his hungriest, he could not match the Indians in trencher work; for, long after Miles had done eating and lain back against Trug, the savages still champed on, till nothing but scattered bones was left of the fare. By then the sun was quite down, so the lodge was black, save for the flashes of the sinking fire. Out-of-doors an owl hooted, and speedily the Indian guests withdrew to their own lodges, and the Chief's household went to their common bed. Little comfort did Miles and his two companions find there, for the singing Indians and the mosquitoes pestered them as on the preceding night.

"I'll not endure this a third time," Miles fretted, when he awoke in the chilly morning. "Look you, Dolly, why should I not build us a little wigwam? I make no doubt they'll suffer us go sleep there by ourselves."

Full of this new plan, he bustled forth from the wigwam, but outside the doorway halted in surprise. He could see no river nor more than the tips of the pines for a thick white fog that drifted through the village and struck rawly to his very marrow. For a moment he had a mind to slip back to Dolly in the close wigwam, but, spying his Indian allies, he kept to his first manly resolve and began chatting to them of his intentions. Though they could understand nothing of his talk, they came with him readily, through the clammy fog, out beyond the camp, where the sand, sloping up to the pine ridge, offered, as Miles remembered, a good location for a wigwam.

The Indian houses, so far as he could judge, were built by bending over young saplings and securing both ends in the ground, then covering the frame with mats or great pieces of bark. Miles decided that poles, bound together at the top, would serve him as well, so he went to cut them in a growth of young oaks at some distance from the camp. The trees, all laden with fog moisture, drenched him as he worked, and the task took him a long time with his small whittle,—would have taken him longer, had not the Indian boys helped him to break the poles.

They were all intent on his proceedings, and, when he returned to the site he had chosen, settled themselves in the sand to watch him, an action which pleased him little. For, when he stuck his poles into the sand, at the circumference of a rough circle, and bent them all together at the top, the ends that were thrust into the sand would fly up, and 'twas annoying to have other people see his failure. It took him some minutes to make all secure, and by then he was so breathless and tired that he was glad to run tell Dolly of his progress, and, at the same time, rest a bit.

Spite of the fog, he found his sister had come out from the choking atmosphere of the wigwam. She was sitting a little up the pine ridge, behind the lodges, on a fallen tree trunk that was all a-drip; the sand, too, Miles noted, when he lay down at her feet, was damp and sticky to the touch.

"They have left us alone, haven't they, Dolly?" he said in some surprise, as he glanced about him and saw no Indians near. "But Trug, he has not followed; very like they think we'll not run away and leave him behind." Then he perceived that his sister's arms were empty. "Where's the old red poppet?" he cried.

"My poppet Priscilla," Dolly replied seriously. "I did put her away carefully. For 'tis the Sabbath to-day, Miles."