But none came, more than to the priests of Baal what time Elijah jeered them, and after a brief consultation with his crew Standish once more altered his course, and the pinnace with double-reefed sails flew before the rising wind like a hunted creature to her covert, bearing The-Sword-of-the-White-Men safely to his post.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A POT OF BROTH.
Yes, a Pot of Broth, and one more classic than any black broth ever supped by Spartan; more pregnant of Fate than the hell-broth compounded by Macbeth's witches; broth in which was brewed the destiny of a great nation, broth but for whose brewing I certainly, and you, if you be of Pilgrim strain, had never been, for in its seething liquid was dissolved a wide-spread and most powerful conspiracy that in its fruition would have left Plymouth Rock a funeral monument in a field of blood.
Hardly an hour after the pinnace had landed its passengers at the Rock, and the Pamet, sullenly declining farther hospitality, had proceeded on his way to meet Obtakiest and report his ill success, when Winslow with John Hampden and Hobomok entered the village from the north, sore spent with travel and scanty food, but laden with matter of the profoundest interest. A Council of the chiefs, including nearly all of the Mayflower men, was immediately called together in the Common house, now used altogether for these assemblages and for divine worship, and first Standish and then Winslow were called upon for their reports.
The captain's was given with military brevity.
"I have brought a hundred bushels of corn and all the men I carried away. The savages are no doubt disaffected, and a notorious blood-thirsty rascal called Wituwamat, a Neponset, brought Canacum a knife wherewith to kill some one, and I fancy 't is myself; but though he impudently delivered both knife and message in my presence, he so wrapped up his meaning in new and strange phrases, that I could make but little of it. Perhaps Master Winslow can read my riddle as well as tell his own story."
"Methinks I can, Captain," replied Winslow pleasantly; and then in smooth and polished phrase bearing such resemblance to Standish's rough and brief utterances as a rapier doth to a battle-axe, the future Grand Commissioner narrated how he had found Massasoit as it seemed already dying, for he could neither see, nor swallow either medicine or food.
The sachem's wigwam was so crowded with visitors that the white men could scarcely edge their way in, and around the bed circled the powahs at their incantations, "making," said Winslow, "such a hellish noise as distempered us that were well, and was therefore unlike to ease him that was sick."