"I've been in woods before now," cried the boy, indignantly. "But—but if I go, what will you do?"
"Sit here and take tobacco," Ned answered, in his swaggering tone, and, with his hand a little unsteady, drew his pipe from his pocket. "Give me the fowling piece near to me, and now run your briskest, d'ye hear? Off with you, heavy-heels, unless you be afraid!"
The taunt more than all else sent Miles plunging headlong down the hill. The needles slipped beneath his shoes, and his knees jarred with the steepness of the descent. Once he tripped, and, falling, rolled over and over, and rose up in fear lest he had hurt himself like Ned. But he could run well enough, he found, as he stumbled into the more level part of the trail. His briskest, and warn the Plymouth folk, Ned bade, and suddenly Miles's heart gave a great leap that he was to do so soldierly a part in the Captain's sight. He drew a big breath, and, bending his head, dashed down the trail.
The dry twigs snapped beneath his feet; a frightened quail, with a startling whir, flew across his path; the branches, as he rushed by them, wavered and shook. Below him the ground reeled and the sky above was shot with black; the breath came gripingly in his throat, and a pain like that of a piercing iron bored into his side.
Downhill, where the ground seemed not to be beneath him, and in the hollow splashed a brook. He felt the chill of the water over his ankle as he thrust his foot into it, and, stopping a moment, he plunged his head, that ached to bursting, into the icy ripples, then, gasping, staggered up the opposite slope.
He was running heavily now, so it scarcely could be called running, swaying from side to side of the trail, but more than half, than three quarters, of the way was out. The trees dwindled about him; yonder were cleared fields; yonder the smoke rose from cottage chimneys. Now the stubble of corn was stiff beneath his feet; now he crashed through a little patch of brambles; and at last, thrusting his hands gropingly before him, he pitched up against the door of Captain Standish's cottage. "Open!" he called, but his voice came in a mere whisper.
Within, they heard him, however. The door was flung open; he fell against Master Winslow; and yonder by the table he had sight of the Governor and the Elder and Master Hopkins and the Captain himself, starting up from the conference he had interrupted. Miles reeled forward a step or two and caught Standish's arm. "Captain Standish," he gasped, "the ship—the French—we saw it from the hill—the French are in the offing."
Then his knees gave way and the room whirled round. A blackness was about him in which he heard faintly the questions and re-questions of the men, the clatter of the house-door, a calling in the street. Then thunderously, subduing all other sound, he heard the crash of the great gun upon the Fort Hill that called home from labor the men who should defend their settlement.