Standish rose and looked thoughtfully from face to face.
"'T is a hard matter," said he at last with a gleam of pride in his eye. "Here be fifty good men and true, and I need no more than half a dozen."
"The Neponsets number forty warriors," suggested Winslow.
"Yes, but they will not be gathered together, having no knowledge of our purpose, and if the shallop is watched from shore, as belike it will be, a large force of armed men would bewray our intent, and runners would gather the braves in a few hours and so bring down a great slaughter upon the tribe," replied the captain in confident simplicity. "But if we go no more in number than ordinary, no more than in our late voyage to Nauset for corn, they will suspect nothing, and the matter may be well concluded with no more than five or six examples, Wituwamat being the principal."
"And glad am I, brother, to see a certain tenderness of human life in your counsels," said the elder approvingly.
"Nay, elder, I am not all out a cannibal and ogre," replied the captain. "So now I will choose me Hopkins and Howland and Billington, and Eaton and Browne and Cooke and Soule, seven hearts of oak and arms of steel: it is enough."
"And not one of us Fortune men, Captain?" demanded Robert Hicks, a stalwart fellow who afterward became almost a rebel to the colony's authority.
"Nay, Master Hicks," replied the captain gravely. "I mean no discredit to the courage or the good will of the new-comers, of whom you are a principal; but this service is one of strategy as well as daring, and so soon as the pinnace leaves yon Rock, there must be but one mind and one will in her, and that is mine. The men whom I have chosen, my comrades of the Mayflower, I know as I know mine own sword, and I can trust them as I do him. There's no offense Master Hicks, but a stricken field is no place to learn to handle a new sword or a new comrade."
"And not me, Master," said a low voice as the captain stepped out of the Common house and turned his face homeward.
"Nay, Jack, I've a text for thee too. 'I have married a wife and cannot come.'" And with a somewhat bitter laugh he strode on up the hill, leaving John Alden looking sadly after him.