“Peace, ribald!” broke in the stern voice of Elder Brewster. “If indeed you are of kin to that bloody persecutor and servant of a yet more murderous mistress, boast not of it here among those who have fled into the wilderness to escape the cruelties of the Scarlet Woman and those who serve her.”
“Lo you now! I do most humbly crave your pardon, most worthy—nay, then, what do they call men who are no priests, and yet take upon them the priest’s office under John Calvin and his fellows?”
“Sorry should I be to seem discourteous or inhospitable to a wounded man,” exclaimed Bradford indignantly, “but men have been set in the bilboes and worse for less offense than such words.”
“Do I not know it?” retorted Gardiner. “Did not I, with these eyes, see mine own friend Thomas Morton set in the bilboes and direfully insulted in yon village of Boston, for less,—nay, for naught—for naught—but scaring a pack of saucy Indians by firing some hail-shot over their heads to fright them into bringing him a canoe? And did I not see him, less than two months gone by, haled down to the quay and put by main force aboard a skiff which rowed him out to the Handmaid, a crank leaky old tub, not half victualed or half found, and no provision for his comfort, nay, for his very life, but a handful or two of corn out of his own provision, stolen out of his house at Merry Mount before it was set afire? Yes, sirs, set afire as the Handmaid sailed out of port, as a taunt and a gibe to a helpless prisoner! Ha, ha, though! That word ‘helpless’ minds me of a merry joke even in the midst of such dolor. When our friends yonder had got poor Morton into their boat, and rowed him to the side of the Handmaid,—and marry, she’s much such a handmaid as Hagar of the Bible, turned out into the wilderness with neither meat nor water enough to keep poor Ishmael alive”—
“Profane man! Do you dare”—began Brewster, but with an uplifted hand and deprecatory bow the knight interrupted him:—
“Pardon, your reverence, though ’t was a most apposite quotation and surely more scriptural than profane,—but let it pass. As I was saying, when the boat reached the Handmaid’s rotund sides and a rope was thrown over, Morton was bidden to seize it and climb aboard; but, as he himself might say, he put in a demurrer, and represented that having no business on board the Handmaid he hesitated to intrude where perhaps he was not wanted. The tipstaves persisted, Morton desisted, until in the end the rope was drawn up and a noose let down instead, wherein they netted him and so hoysed him on board, he laughing like a fiend at their toil and rage.”
“They should have put the noose around his neck, and not hasted to pull him inboard,” growled Standish; and Sir Christopher, turning airily upon him, cried,—
“Say you so, Captain Sh—nay, Captain Standish? Well, and truly there’s little love lost ’twixt you and Morton. He had a story that you pleaded hard for leave to shoot him with your own hand, when he was down here at Plymouth a prisoner as I am now.”
“I would have been glad enough to meet him man to man, and let him who was the better marksman shoot the other.”
“And a very pretty main it would be between two such fighting cocks as”—