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

by Beulah Marie Dix

"Fresh meat," panted Giles. "The Governor wished it for the King. I had this bit of a goose from Mistress Carver, and now I've remembered a mallard I saw stepmother set to boil."

It took him very few minutes to hurry into his father's house, and out again with a second larger platter balanced in one hand, but, short as the space was, Miles had laid a plan. Stepping up to Giles, he took from him Mistress Carver's dish of meat. "Let me aid you," he proffered innocently.

"So that's what you're scheming," laughed Giles; but he let Miles, under that pretext, come at his side down the street, past the little group of envious boys, up the doorstone of the unfinished cottage, and so into the very council chamber.

The room was close and hazy with smoke from the pipes of tobacco that the King and the chief of the English puffed at, but, spite of the dimness, Miles speedily made out the shapes of the Indians. Black, red, yellow, and white, their faces were partly or wholly smeared with paint, and, through the wavering smoke-wreaths, their look was so grim that for an instant he hesitated on the threshold.

But Giles went on, so he followed, across the room, between what seemed endless rows of Indians in hairy skins who stood or squatted on the floor, up to the table, where sat a tall, stalwart savage. Imitating Giles, Miles set down his dish of meat before him, and, with an agitated bow, drew back to the wall, where he wedged himself in between Lister and young Hopkins. "That's the King, yonder at table," the latter whispered him softly.

He did not look at all as Miles thought a king should look, that savage at the table. He wore a scant covering of skins,—a dress like that of his followers, save that the King had also about his neck a great chain of white bone beads. His face was painted a dark red; and face and head alike were oiled so he looked greasy; he fed untidily with his fingers, and sometimes, when he would give a morsel to one of his followers, rent the meat with his hands.

But, for all he seemed so busy with feeding, his quick eyes were darting about the smoky room,—now resting on the Governor, who sat at table near him; now on the English musketeers who lined the walls,—and, to Miles's thinking, the King looked on them timorously; now on his own followers, who crowded silently about him. One of the Indians, squatting on the floor, held in his hands the English trumpet, on which he tried to blow, and, for a moment, the King paused to hark with a child's wonder to his efforts, then once more began tearing Mistress Hopkins's mallard.

When nothing but bones was left of the bird, Giles slipped the platters from the table, and now the serious work of the conference seemed to begin. Up from the floor behind the table, where they had sat, rose two savages, who should interpret between Massasoit and the Governor; the one was a stranger, probably that Squanto whom Master Hopkins had mentioned; the other, Miles's old acquaintance, Samoset. A transformed Samoset, however, with an English felt hat low on his brows and an English shirt worn over his meagre native garments after the manner of a carter's frock. Ned Lister, standing rigid and soldierly against the wall, took Miles a sudden dig in the ribs, and winked at him with a "Didn't I tell you as much" expression.

Miles, on his good behavior, neither looked at him nor smiled, but fixed his gaze on the men about the table. The sun had now shifted down the sky, so a great bar of light thrust in at the western window. The yellow brightness flecked across Elder Brewster's grizzled head, made Governor Carver's stiff ruff even more dazzlingly white, and gleamed back again from Captain Standish's steel corselet. It rested, too, on the papers which Master William Bradford had laid on the table before him, but Master Bradford's grave face, as he bent forward to write what the Governor bade, was in shadow. The features of Massasoit, too, were dark to see, but here and there, as the sunlight, bursting through the smoke, wavered across the room, the painted face or coppery bare shoulders of one of his followers stood out.

The two interpreters jerked out the gutturals of their outlandish tongue, to which the King grunted assent, or now and again the Governor spoke a measured word. But outside the window a bird was singing in a high, purling strain; and Miles wondered if it were a fat, red-breasted bird, and thought more on its song and on the motes that swam in the sunlight, than on what the Governor was saying.