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

by Beulah Marie Dix

So Dolly dropped off to sleep in Miles's arms, and, lulled by the drip of the rain, he, too, dozed a time, and awoke very chilly and stiff. The branches above him stirred in a gusty wind, and in the mottled sky he could see some faint stars. He crawled out from the thicket and, as he stood up in the freer air, caught the smell of brine in the breeze, and saw that, in the quarter of the heavens whence it came, the night was paling. "'Tis eastward yonder and the sea," he cried, delighted to find, for all his wanderings, he was not hopelessly lost. "Come, Dolly, we'll walk to the shore."

Over hills and through thickets they trudged bravely, in the exhilaration of knowing whither they were headed, and that the dreadful night was past. Slowly the darkness was waning; the sky faded from black to gray, and in the wet woods a bird piped dolefully. Presently a still more welcome sound reached the ears of the travellers,—a long, mournful sough as of breaking waters. "It's waves; we're near the shore," cried Miles, and added a feeble hurrah, whereat Trug, judging all well, leaped and barked.

There was yet a wide stretch of bare uplands to cross, and the morning had broken in earnest before the children clambered down the low bluff to the sandy beach. The tide was out, and the brown rocks, like dead sea beasts, lay uncovered; but Miles and Dolly gave them little heed, for just then, right in their eyes, the sun burst forth in the east, and made a path of yellow ripples on the water.

Forgetting her weariness, Dolly almost ran down the hard sand to the water's edge. "I thought maybe I could see Plymouth round that point on our left," she told Miles disappointedly. "We can walk thither, can we not, along the shore?"

"We'll eat breakfast first," said Miles, who had found a great shell upon the sand. "I'll wade out and dig clams, while you fetch seaweed for the fire."

He had not yet made up his mind about the return to the settlement; to be sure, he was very wet and hungry, but it did not rain every night, and with the thought of Plymouth came the dreadful vision of the public flogging. Besides, now it was daylight, it was good to be his own man and get his own breakfast; so he paddled about bravely, and did not complain, for all the mud and water were cold and the clams few, and his back ached with stooping to dig them. A dozen were enough for two, he concluded, so when he had that number disposed securely in his doublet, which he had twisted into a bag, he splashed shoreward.

"'Oh, Miles, 'tis the savages come for us!'"

Dolly had patiently fetched a mass of slippery seaweed, and, while he drew on his shoes and stockings, she arranged stones with the clams on top, and the seaweed all about them.

"And now I'll light the fire," Miles said soberly, as he rose up and stamped his feet in his wet shoes. Taking a smooth stone, he knelt over the seaweed, and, striking the stone with his whittle, sought to get a spark. But it seemed not a proper flint, for though he struck and struck, no spark came, and Dolly, cold and hungry, grew impatient, whereat Miles rebuked her sternly: "'Tis like a girl. I'm doing the best I can. Hush, will you, Dolly?"