"They are all in such strength as can be looked for, mother dear, and will hold out as well as any." And Priscilla wanly smiled in the poor pinched face, adjusted the cushions and the foot-rest, and without so much as a drop of cold water for herself, wearily climbed the hill. The captain making room for her to pass looked with anxious sympathy into her face, but spake no word, and again the withering hours passed on, and the elder prayed in a husky and broken whisper, and his hearers muttered an Amen, hollow and mournful as the echo from an open tomb.
Three o'clock, and Hobomok scrambled down from the roof, and stood in the open doorway. His master saw and went out to him. In a moment he came again, and passing between the banks of rude benches stood before the elder, who, pausing suddenly, fixed upon him a gaze of piteous inquiry, while a little movement among the hundred starving souls watching and praying heralded his news.
"The answer has come, Elder," announced the soldier briefly. "A full rigged ship has just cleared Manomet headland, and a cloud black with rain is rolling up out of the Southwest."
"Let us pray!" said the elder softly; and Standish bowed his head with the rest as the holy man, his voice strong and fervent once more, poured out for himself and his people such gratitude as perhaps is only possible from those "appointed to die," and suddenly rescued by the hand of a merciful Father.
A few moments later, as the procession wound down the hill, somewhat less formally than it had gone up, the southern and western sky were black with clouds already veiling the sun, and within an hour a soft and tender rain began to fall, soaking quietly into the earth gaping all over with the wounds of drought, and reviving, as Bradford quaintly phrased it, both their drooping affections and their withered corn.
"The white man's God is better than the red man's," remarked Hobomok privately to Wanalancet, who was visiting Plymouth. "When our powahs pray for rain, and cut themselves, and offer sacrifice, it comes sometimes, but in noisy floods that tear up the earth, and beat down the maize, and do more harm than good. Wanalancet better turn praying Indian like Hobomok."
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE BRIDES' SHIP.
The rain proved as persistent as it was gentle, and under its influence the wind sighed itself asleep, leaving at sunset the ship espied by Hobomok becalmed outside Beach Point. Some of the Pilgrims would have rowed out to her, but Bradford knew from his own feelings how unfit they were for such heavy labor.