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

by Beulah Marie Dix

Ned and Giles Hopkins made the shore thus, so Miles must do the like, and came to land all drenched and dripping. But it was land,—good, stable, brown earth, not the hateful, rolling ship,—he had beneath his feet, and, in the delight of the long unused sensation, he forgot he was wet and chilled, forgot his father awaited him, and there was work to do. He knew only that far and near the shore stretched widely, where a boy could run, so, for choice, he set his face to the bluff that towered above the landing.

Up and up, through the keen, dry bushes, that whipped his hands and face so he laughed in the mere delight of struggling with them, he fought his way till he came breathless to the bare summit. All about him dazzled the blue of the harbor and of the unclouded sky, and yonder on his right, through its fringe of bushes, shone the blue of what seemed a cove. Down the hill rushed Miles, with Trug leaping and barking at his heels, and paused only on the shore of a great brook, that, flowing out between steep bluffs, widened into the sea.

Another was before him there, his distant kinsman, Giles Hopkins, who, for all he was a sober lad of sixteen, was a good comrade to the younger boy. He now bade Miles come upstream to the spring the men had found on their last exploration, and Miles very readily followed him through the scrubby undergrowth, where the cove narrowed on the left hand, and on the right a high bluff kept pace with the boys. "It's on that bluff they mean to set the houses," Giles explained, over his shoulder.

"Then we'll have this big stream in our dooryards," cried Miles. "Won't that be brave? I shall build me a raft, and sail to those wooded hills on the other side whenever I choose. Though, maybe, Indians dwell there," he added, with a dubious glance at Giles; he did not wish to seem afraid, but, though he intended to be a soldier, he did not purpose to fight without a musket and a long sword, and he wondered how much farther from the shore his leader would venture.

But speedily his wonder had an end, for, breaking through a thicket of leafless alders, Giles halted at a little cavity within the sand of the riverbank, where the spring of sweet water bubbled up. Down lay Miles on the turf, and, using his hand for a cup, swallowed his first draught of New England water. "'Tis better than the brackish stuff we have on shipboard," he said, as he wiped his wet hands on his wet doublet.

"The savages must have known the spot," answered the experienced Giles. "We found this path worn down hither from the bluff, and see, here is a line of stepping-stones across the brook."

Miles glanced about him, half nervously, lest along the path or across the stones he see one of their former savage passengers approaching. He was at heart relieved when, as Giles led the way up the bluff, he heard in the distance the sound of an axe crashing on a tree trunk. Giles did not turn toward the sound, however, but went plodding on uphill, for above the bluff a second summit reared itself steeply. Miles panted in his trail, endlessly upward, it seemed, till at last he stood exhausted on a lofty hilltop, whence, far as the sea spread out before him, he beheld the wooded uplands roll away to westward.

Giles was explaining wisely what a proper place this hill was for a fort, and how Captain Standish had advised the company mount upon it guns, which should command to southward the spring, and toward the harbor the landing place and the houses, which were to be built along the river bluff, when Master Hopkins and John Rigdale, tramping thither, ended their sons' holiday.

"Is this the way you would work, Miles?" Goodman Rigdale asked sternly, and, fearing lest the next word sentence him to return at once to the Mayflower, Miles ran eagerly about the task they set him.

All day he tugged chips and branches for the fire at the randevous, but it was work on land, in the free air, where a boy could shout as much as he wished, so he never realized he was weary till night came. He had to pack off to the ship with the other boys and near half the men, but he had no chance to grumble at this, as did some of his mates, for, once aboard the shallop, he leaned against Ned Lister and fell half asleep. Only when the shallop scraped the ship's side did he awake to stagger up the gangway ladder and stumble away to tell Dolly and his mother of the wonders he had seen ashore.