Again Bradford smiled very quietly, and the two men walked on in silence.
CHAPTER XV.
SAMOSET.
Once more the freemen of the colony were convened in Council around the well-scoured table in the principal room of the Common house, become for the nonce a House of Commons, and Captain Standish was explaining the scheme he had arranged for organizing his little army, when again the solemnity of the meeting was invaded by shrill cries of alarm and anger, this time, however, in a solo rather than chorus, for goodwife Billington having taken the field, her more timid sisters were abashed into silence.
"Thou foul beast, I say begone! Scat! Avaunt! Nay, grin not at me thou devil straight from hell! Wait but till I fetch a bucket of boiling water to throw over thee, thou Cheshire cat! I'll soon see how much of thy nasty color is fast dye"—
"What means this unseemly brawling?" sternly demanded Elder Brewster as Standish ceased speaking, and all eyes involuntarily turned toward the door.
"Billington, the voice is that of thy wife. Go, and warn her that we tolerate no common scolds in our midst, and that the cucking-stool and the pillory"—
But the elder's threats and Billington's shamefaced obedience and the wonder of all who had listened to the outbreak were cut short by a startling apparition upon the threshold; the savages had really come at last, or at least one of them, for here stood, tall and erect, the splendid figure of a man, naked except for a waistband of buckskin fringe, his skin of a bright copper color glistening in the morning sun, and forming a rich background for the vari-colored paints with which it was decorated; his coarse, black hair, cut square above the eyebrows, fell upon his shoulders at the back, and was ornamented by three eagle-feathers woven into its tresses; in his hand he carried a bow nearly as tall as himself, and two arrows; a sharp little hatchet, evidently of European make, was thrust into his girdle, but the keenness of its edge was less than that of the glances with which he watched the slightest movement of the armed men who started to their feet at his approach.
The savage was the first to speak, and his utterance has become as classic as Cæsar's "Veni,"—for it was,—