CHAPTER XXIII
THE CAPTAIN'S SOLDIER
LYING upon his own bed, whither Master Hopkins had carried him, Miles harked to the rattle of eager drumsticks in the street, the hurried rush of footsteps, the shrill calls of boys. Nearer, in the living room, he could hear Mistress Hopkins's frightened tones, and the clatter of swords as Master Hopkins and Dotey armed themselves.
Presently heavy footsteps came toward him, and Master Hopkins, with his buff-jacket half fastened, opened the door of the chamber to question him further of Ned. "He's hurt, and he made me to leave him," panted Miles. "And the Frenchmen will find him, and can you not send some one to help him, sir?"
"Unless Edward Lister's neck is broke, I'll trust him to shift for himself till we have space to look to him," Master Hopkins answered with a grim sort of chuckle, and just there the house-door banged open and upon it Miles heard Giles's eager voice, "Father, may I not carry Ned's musket, since he is not here? Bart Allerton has one; the Captain himself said all who could fight should get under arms."
Miles struggled up, with head still dizzy. "I can fight too," he murmured, but the older folk, without heeding him, tramped forth with their weapons and left him to Constance and her stepmother. But the women had terrified thoughts to keep them busy, so busy they took no note when presently Miles, quite recovered from his run, slipped off the bed and darted from the house.
Out-of-doors the men were rallying in haste to the shore, among them John Alden, whom Miles hailed shrilly from the house-yard: "John Alden, O John! May I have your fowling piece to fight with?"
"Ay, take it," Alden called, without looking round, and Miles, forgetting he was weary, scudded his fastest up the hill.
He was to have a gun and fight, even if it was no more than a fowling piece, he told himself, and, in a happy flutter that set at naught the Frenchmen, he clambered on the table in the Captain's living room and dragged down the fowling piece from the wall. He longed to take also the rapier from the chimneypiece, but he had no right, so, contenting himself with the gun, he hurried forth to do his part.
A gray day and a strange day; high noon, yet not dinner time, for the whole order of life was broken, and beyond lay—no one knew what. But Miles thought on the fighting, and, with his pulses leaping, clambered to the gun platform, where a squad was stationed, and, ready as the best of them, gazed out upon the ocean. There, sure enough, loomed larger and larger a speck of white.
Captain Standish had gone down to the other men on the bluff by the landing, so presently Miles ran after him. He carried his fowling piece over his shoulder valiantly, and he stopped at the Elder's cottage to call to Dolly not to be afraid, and he wondered at Mistress Brewster's alarmed face.