“But not to-night, I trust, Captain Standish,” interposed Jeffries. “A shrewd tempest is threatening, and by the time it is past, night will be upon us and no moon.”
“With the shoals and sandbars of this coast thick as plums in a Christmas pudding,” remarked Philip De la Noye, whereat Peter Browne growled, “Make it a Thanksgiving pudding, an it please you, Master Philip. We hold no Papist feasts here.”
Stepping outside the door, Standish took a survey of the skies, the sea, and the forest, already waving its green boughs in welcome to the coming rain.
“Do you hear the ‘calling of the sea,’ Captain?” asked a Cornish man, placing his curved hand behind his ear, and bending it to catch the deep murmur and wail that float shoreward from the hollow of ocean when a thunder-storm is gathering in its unknown spaces.
“Yes,” replied Standish in an unusually hushed voice, “we will stay awhile; perhaps the night, if our friends can keep us.”
“Glad and gayly,” said Jeffries, who, truth to tell, was a little afraid that the remaining garrison of Merry Mount might descend upon his house in the night to rescue their leader or avenge his loss.
“And we’ll feast you on the pair of wild turkeys my boy shot to-day,” cried Bursley. “Come, we’ll make a night on’t, sith there are not beds enough for all to lie down.”
“With your leave, sirs, I will claim one of those beds and take my rest while I may,” broke in Morton sourly. “I have no mind for reveling with tipstaves and jailers.”
“Ne’ertheless you might keep a civil tongue in your head, Morton,” angrily exclaimed Browne, but Standish interposed,—
“Tut, tut, man! Never jibe at a prisoner. A bruised creature ever solaces itself with its tongue, and so may a bruised man. Let him alone!”