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

by Beulah Marie Dix

But Ned began presently to have coughing fits even when he was bidden to go hunting, though Miles, who had grown distrustful of his convenient illness, urged him to "have done with fooling and come along." One morning in February, when Lister, instead of going about his work, was wasting his time thus with Miles and Jack and Giles by the fire in Goodman Cooke's cottage, came another to urge him, no less a one than Master Hopkins. Miles remembered a long time the terrible rating he gave Ned for his laziness and trickery, and he wondered that the young man sat with his head leaning on his fist, and flung back but a single protest: "I can judge better than you, sir, whether I be ill or not. 'Tis my head that's aching, not yours."

To which Master Hopkins retorted grimly that, if there were a whipping post in the colony, something besides Ned's head would ache.

Then, for that there was no help for it, Lister took his fowling piece and slouched away from the fire. "I'm going, since you drive me," he said sulkily, "but these youngsters need not follow at my heels. 'Twill be all I can do to fetch myself home again, let alone three brats."

Much disappointed, Miles spent the day in the less joyous labor of fetching and carrying on the great hill, where they were putting the last touches to the platform on which the guns were to be mounted. He came to be interested, none the less, when Goodman Cooke told him how, in a few days, they would drag the guns up the hill and put them in place. That would be a brave thing to see, Miles thought, for the sailors from the Mayflower were to come ashore and help, and the street from the hill to the landing place would be noisy and busy. Not so busy, though, as the crew of the Mayflower would have made it a month before, for the sickness now had settled on the ship, where it was raging unchecked.

At dusk, as Miles came down from the hill, he chanced on Master Hopkins, still grumbling at Lister, who bade him go see if that malingerer were loitering anywhere in the settlement. It seemed a spying errand, but, not thinking of disobedience, Miles started down the street. Nearest the shore stood the Common House, the house for the sick, and the storehouse, all three of which, to make the search complete, he visited.

In the big main room of the sick-house lay the men who were ill, and, as Miles stepped in, on tiptoe because of his heavy shoes, the first thing he saw beneath the candlelight was Ned Lister's black head, half hidden under the coverlets of one of the bunks. Miles stole up to him. "Why, Ned, ha' you cheated the Doctor himself?" he whispered cheerfully.

Lister raised his head and looked at him, with his eyes very bright. "I'm cheating you all; yes," he said, with a laugh. "Go tell Hopkins be more cautious next time how he wastes so good a property as a serving man. A pity! If I die he'll be out my passage-money. Well, I always owed him a grudge for bringing me to this forsaken country, and I'll even scores now."

The thought seemed to please Ned mightily, for he laughed, till Doctor Fuller, stepping from the inner room, sharply bade him hush. "Get you to Master Hopkins and tell him the man is ill," he ordered Miles; and, as he let the boy out at the door, added, for his ear alone, "very ill."

Somehow Ned's overthrow frightened Miles more than any other illness. Lister had always seemed so tough and wiry that his succumbing at last set the boy to asking himself, in some fright, if he, too, might not fall ill. A soreness in his throat or an ache in his head made him nervous. He questioned Jack minutely as to how he felt before he was taken sick, and then he began at once to feel as Jack had felt. He started to tell his mother and get her to comfort him, but then he was ashamed; she was busy and anxious all the time for the people she was called on to nurse, and he was a great, strong boy, who, of course, would not be sick.

But one day his head ached in good earnest—no imagination; and next morning the ache was worse, so he was too stupid even to go out. Wrestling Brewster was ailing too, so Dolly and Love stayed by his bed to amuse him, and Miles was left quite alone. All day he sat toasting himself by the fire, till he was too warm and was sure his head ached because of the heat, so out he went, and tramped up and down the street till his teeth chattered with cold. He wanted no supper, but he went back to the house to bid his mother good night and get to bed early.