And Standish, smiling grimly, pointed to the troops of clouds scurrying up over Manomet, and Watson’s Hill, and all along the eastern and southern horizon; serried ranks, and scattered outposts, and flying vedettes, which, now by a flank movement, and now by an onward rush, seemed taking possession of all the blue battlefield above, blotting out the azure, and audaciously attacking the great sun himself.
“’Tis the equinoctial,” stammered John Alden, perplexed.
“The wind, the great wind Euroclydon,” replied Standish, who loved the sonorous and martial sound of old Bible English, and read it alternately with his Cæsar.
“Are you ready, Captain? You remember our arrangements?” asked Bradford, his fine face a little more pallid, a little more nervous than its wont, as he stopped on his way up the hill with the Elder and Doctor Fuller, who was vehemently saying,—
“Oh, he’ll clear himself, Elder, he’ll clear himself; an unsuspicious man like Brother Lyford may be led into unadvised action from the very best and soundest of motives.”
“Then he must be restrained, for the safety of other people as well as for his own,” replied the Elder coldly. “If one of your fever patients took a fancy in his delirium to set the house afire, I don’t suppose you would leave him unchecked in his action, however blameless you might hold himself.”
“No, no;—and yet—and yet”—muttered the doctor, whose common sense found itself sadly at war with a whimsical fancy he had conceived for Lyford, who was to be sure a university-bred man, and an accomplished botanist, thus affording to the alumnus of Peter-house, Cambridge, opportunity, which he did not often enjoy, for conversation on his favorite topics.
His annoyance found, however, no farther expression until, entering the Fort, he pettishly exclaimed, “Well, if we are to find an honest man we shall need Diogenes’ lantern, or at any rate a twopenny dip or so.”
“’Tis the gathering storm,” replied Bradford in a depressed voice, as he stood upon the threshold of the low-ceiled chamber, lighted only by narrow slits intended more for defense than comfort. The bare benches were already occupied by some eighty or ninety men, their pointed hats, sombre doublets, and burnished “pieces” showing grotesquely through the gloom which seemed to solidify the shadows and exaggerate the lights, while an occasional flash of lightning added the last effect to the picture.
A restless movement, a sense rather than a sound of expectancy, a feeling of controversy, of doubt, of possible resistance, was in the air, and Bradford’s sensitive organization responded at once to the thrill.