“I attacked nobody, Captain Standish,” replied John Alden more nearly in the same tone than he had ever addressed his beloved commander. “I carried my sword in my hand thus, and was making in to the house when this drunken fool stumbled out and ran his nose against the point. He’ll be none the worse for a little blood-letting.”
“Two of my fellows were drunk, and one an arrant coward, or you had not made so easy a venture of your piracy,” snarled Morton viciously, and one of the younger of the Plymouth men would have dealt him a blow with the flat of his sword, but Standish struck it up saying sternly,—
“Hands off, Philip De la Noye, or you’ll feel the edge instead of the flat of my sword. Know you nothing, nothing at all of the usages of war that you would strike an unarmed prisoner!”
A few moments more and the whole affair was over. Morton’s three men, foolish, worthless fellows, hardly dangerous even under his guidance, and perfectly harmless when deprived of it, were set at liberty with a stern warning from Standish that they were simply left at Merry Mount on probation, and that the smallest disobedience to the law prohibiting the sale of fire-arms, or instruction of the Indians in their use, would at once be known at Plymouth and most severely punished.
“As for your Maypole, and your Indian blowzabellas, and your dancing and mummery,” concluded the captain, “I for one have naught to say, except that there must be some warlock-work in the matter to tempt even a squaw to frisk round a Maypole with such as you.”
Morton, sullen, silent, and disarmed, was meantime led to the boat between Alden and Howland, the other men after, and last of all Standish muttering,—
“Better if there had been a garrison strong enough to hold the position. Then we might have burned the house and haply slain the traitor in hot blood.”