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

by Beulah Marie Dix

"Rain and naught else; the third day of it now, yet by the look it might pour on for a week."

"And my daddy's yonder in the wet on shore," murmured Dolly, pressing close against her mother's knee, and the Goodwife sewed more slowly, with her eyes downcast.

But Miles burst into lamentation: "I think they might 'a' taken me ashore. Since we came into Plymouth Harbor they've explored and explored, and never suffered me to come, but they took Giles Hopkins with them. And now the randevous is built on shore, and some of the men are staying there, it has rained and rained so I cannot go to them. But I'm going to-morrow, the very next time the shallop sails."

"To be sure you shall," Lister answered, as he scrambled into his mended doublet. "I'll take you along with me."

Then he swaggered away jauntily, as if he had promised ample service in return for his mending, and Goodwife Rigdale, with a bit of a sigh, said softly to Miles: "'Tis well meant of Edward Lister to see you safe ashore, but when you are there, remember, you are to stay with your father, not go roving with him."

Miles's satisfaction at Ned's offer was a bit tempered by her words, but he lost the remembrance of them next morning, when he saw the sun was rising clear and the shallop would go shoreward. At once he clattered down to the cabin to get his cap and mittens, and Trug, who must go with him; then ran up on deck again, where, in the chill sunlight, the men were laboring briskly to load the shallop. Miles watched them while they put in the felling-axes and handsaws and hammers, all the tools that were to build the new town of Plymouth, and the biscuit and salt beef and pease that were to form the workers' rations.

About the time the labor was ended, Ned sauntered up to the gangway, and, seeing Miles, very speedily helped him clamber down the ladder, and made Trug leap after him. Master Isaac Allerton, who was settled comfortably in the stern, grumbled at burdening the shallop with children and curs, so Miles put his arms about Trug, and, cuddling down in the bottom of the boat, made himself as still and small as possible lest, after all, the company, thinking better of it, bid him scramble up the gangway ladder again.

But the time for that was past, for the shallop, with her sail hanging sluggish, had crept surely out from the lee of the Mayflower, and now, catching the light breeze, actually stood in to the shore. Miles forgot the discomfort of his seat among the tools while he gazed toward the approaching coast line, where was to be his home. Behind him the sun was up, and the hills that rose away inland from the harbor were bright in the cold, yellow radiance, and the water and the sky that spread about him were both very blue. He glanced back over his shoulder at the dreary old Mayflower, and was surprised to find that, as the sun struck athwart her patched sails, even she was beautiful.

Then the movement of those about him, and the sound of waves crunching on the shingle, made him look forward again. Under the shelter of a high bluff, where a great boulder ran out into the water, he saw those standing who had kept the randevous, and the randevous itself, a rude hut of boughs. In his eagerness Miles jumped up, and Trug, springing up too, began to bark, but no one took note or scolded, for the men were busied in running the shallop in alongside the rock, and some, leaping over the gunwale, were already splashing through the shallow water to the beach.