“Nay, Captain Standish, one matter at a time an’t please you, and I have no mind to be balked of the glory of mine adventure. What say you, friends? Shall not I tell you of the shipwreck?”
“It would give me singular pleasure to hear it, Brother Thacher,” replied the parson, while the elder smiled approval, Jonathan Brewster murmured “Ay!” and the captain, lifting his shaggy beard and taking the pipe from his mouth, said with a merry gesture,—
“It were churlish to refuse to listen to a man who fain would tell his own adventures, so I will e’en put all scruples in my pocket and hearken with the rest of you.”
“Well spoke, mine host, and I can comfort you by saying truthfully that the qualm hath passed and I would rather tell the tale than be silent.
“You men of Plymouth have not forgotten the great storm of August in the year of grace 1635, for it was then that the French villain D’Aulney seized upon your rich trading-post at Castine which they now call Bragaduce, and turned John Willet adrift with only a shallop and a worthless due-bill. The terrific storm that wrecked Willet’s shallop and also the armed ship Angel Gabriel, bound to Boston in the Bay, overtook the humbler craft in which my cousin Dominie John Avery, his wife and six children, and I with my wife and four children, nine mariners, and other persons were making the voyage from Ipswich to Marblehead.”
“It was a bark of Isaac Allerton’s in which you voyaged, was it not?” asked Standish.
“Ay, he was owner, but not master.”
“Never mind who played master, if Allerton was owner, the boat was sure of ill luck,” growled Standish; but the Elder interposed serenely,—