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

by Beulah Marie Dix

ONE sharp December afternoon, a week and a day after the Pilgrim leaders went forth the third time to seek a place for settlement, Love Brewster and his little brother Wrestling climbed down to the cabins beneath the main deck to visit their playmate, Dolly Rigdale. The cubby where Dolly and Miles and their father and mother had lived during the two months of the voyage over the sea and the five weeks of exploration that followed, was a dim box of a place, but the little boys liked to visit it, not only to talk with Dolly, who was nearer their age than most of the children in the company, but to see Trug and Solomon.

Trug was the big, grizzled mastiff, who had guarded the house and the cattle faithfully for so many years that even stern John Rigdale had not the heart to leave him to strangers; and Solomon, with the wise eyes of royal yellow, was the fat house-cat, whom Dolly had insisted on bringing with her to the new home.

"If it had been my pet, 'twould 'a' had to bide in England," Miles had told himself, in one bitter, jealous moment, of which he was justly ashamed. For, without question, Goodman Rigdale cared equally for his two children, only he held Miles, being a stubborn chip of manhood, needed frequent beatings, such as the Scriptures enjoined on good fathers to give their sons, whereas Dolly was just a little wench, with gray eyes like her mother, so she received very gentle whippings and triumphantly lugged Solomon on shipboard.

The sleek, striped creature lay beside her now, for Dolly, still ailing with her cough, was resting on the bunk beneath the blankets. Wrestling Brewster, a big-eyed, silent child, sat by her, and, sorry to tell, joined forces with the little girl in rumpling poor Solomon's fur. "You are the best pussy," Dolly purred meantime, and, either because of her flattery or because the warm blankets were comfortable, the cat made no movement to leave her.

Ordinarily Miles sniffed at the conversation of eight-year-olds, such as his sister, but this afternoon he gladly lingered in the cabin, for the accomplishments of the Brewster lads were amazing enough to lift them to the rank of companions. Both could jabber Dutch quite as fast as Miles could speak English, and Love, the talkative one, could tell wonderful stories of the queer Low Country city of Leyden, where all his short life had been spent. It was of Leyden he spoke now, sitting beside Miles on the turned-up mattress, where at night Goodman Rigdale and his son slept, and Miles, with a question here and there to draw out what he sought, listened again to the story of the Pilgrims.

Love had good reason to know it well, for his father, Elder Brewster, had been from the first one of the leaders of the little company. He had given all his substance to help the cause of that faith which the bishops of the great Established Church of England held it right to crush out; he had suffered imprisonment for the sake of that faith; and finally, that he and his friends might worship God as they thought best, had gone into exile in Holland.

There for twelve years the Pilgrim church held its own, though its members, for all their efforts to support themselves in that strange country, fared hardly and poorly. Good Deacon Fuller, the physician, had been glad to earn his living as a say or serge maker; Master William Bradford had been a maker of fustian; and the Elder had maintained his family and aided his poorer companions by teaching English to Danish and German gentlemen, and later by printing English books.

Love told also of Master Carver, the recently elected governor of the company, who had given his whole fortune to the Pilgrim cause; and he spoke of gallant Master Edward Winslow, who, travelling in the Low Countries with his newly married wife, had come to know and to respect the Pilgrim folk and finally to cast in his lot with theirs. And, best of all, Love could tell of Captain Standish.

There the boy turned to what Miles had been waiting to hear, and be sure that now he eagerly drank in each word: how the Captain came of a great family in Lancashire, where he had a vast estate which his kinsfolk had taken from him,—so Love had once heard him say to the Elder; how he had fought bravely against the wicked Spaniards, as far back as the time of Queen Bess, when Miles Standish was a very young man indeed; and how, of a sudden, he had come with his young wife and joined himself to the Pilgrims, why, none could say, for he was "not of our faith," Love gravely quoted the older people.