But as the military manœuvres accompanied with frequent discharges of musketry, and accented at one point with a tremendous roar from the cannon of the Fort progressed, not only Quadequina, but many other of the braves became very uneasy; and to this cause as well as benevolence, may be attributed the offer made at dinner time by Quadequina to lead a hunting party of his own people into the woods to look for deer, whose haunts they well knew.
Standish alone suspected this arrière pensée, and when Bradford mildly applauded the generous kindness of their guests, he answered with a chuckle,—
"Ay, as kind as the traveler who begs the highwayman to let him go home and fetch a larger treasure."
But in spite of his doubts the prince intended and made a bonâ fide hunt, and returned early in the next day with as much venison as lasted the entire company four days.
"Oh, if I had but some Spanish chestnuts to stuff these turkeys, they might seem more like their brethren across the seas," exclaimed Priscilla as she turned over a pile of the wild birds and chose those to be first cooked.
"Nay, but to me the flavor is better, and the meat more succulent of these than of any I ever saw at home," replied John Alden. "And the size! Do but look at this fellow, he will scale well-nigh twenty pound if an ounce."
"If 't were a goose I would name it John, 't would be so prodigious a goose," replied Priscilla with a glance so saucy and so bewitching that her adorer forgot to reply, and she went briskly on,—
"Come now, young man, there's much to do and scant time to talk of it. Call me some of those gaping boys yonder and let them pluck these fowl, and bid John Billington come and break up these deer. And I must have wood and water galore to make meat for a hundred men. Stir thyself!"
"I was thinking, Priscilla—why not stuff the turkeys with beechnuts? There is store of them up at our cottage."
"How came they there? Doth our doughty Captain go birds-nesting and nutting in his by-times?"