"Or like a muck-fork," suggested Rigdale in his broad Lancashire dialect, and with a coarse laugh resented by Standish, who, an aristocrat to his heart's core, ill brooked contempt of chivalrous emblems, especially by a rustic of his own shire.
"Well, let us get on with this business," said he peremptorily, and pulling away another mat he disclosed a store of bowls, plates, dishes, and such matters, all new and beautifully carved and decorated.
"For the dead man to cook and eat on his journey to the happy hunting grounds, which the salvages place in the room of heaven," said Hopkins sanctimoniously. Beneath these lay another mat, and beneath this a crypt carefully bedded with dry white sand, upon which lay two packages carefully sewn up in sailcloth, the one more than six feet in length, the other barely three.
"The body of a man and child," said Bradford softly, as he helped to raise them from their pure white cell and lay them upon the earth.
"Open them with care, friends," said Standish uncovering his head. "It is some white man buried in such honor as they had knowledge of by those who loved him."
The many folds of canvas removed, there lay a strange sight before the Pilgrims' eyes. Inclosed in a great quantity of fine red powder, emitting a pungent but agreeable odor, lay the skeleton of a man, fleshless, except upon the skull, where clung the skin and a mass of beautiful hair, yellow as gold, and curling closely as if in life.
"Is the flesh turned to this red powder?" asked Alden fingering it dubiously.
"Dost know, Hopkins?" asked Standish, but the veteran shook his head.
"I have seen naught like this in all my life," confessed he. "See, here is a parcel at his feet done up in another bit of the old sail."
"Shall I open it, Captain?" asked Alden eagerly.