"Ay, John, thou 'rt right to mind me of that," said he. "Some of us will go ashore and make a fire, whereat to comfort those who are overborne by cold and weariness, and some shall keep the boat until the first are refreshed, and so hold watch and watch."
"And I will be of the first watch ashore," cried Clarke, the master's mate; "for I'd twice liefer meet all the salvages of the Indies than to freeze like a clod, so here goes." And stepping upon the gunwale he made a spring in the dark, alighting upon a slippery rock and measuring his length upon the sand. Nothing daunted, however, he grasped a handful of sand in each fist, as if his prostration had been voluntary, and springing to his feet cried in a braggadocio voice,—
"I seize this land for King James of England and for myself."
"Thyself!" growled Coppin, jealously. "We'll call it Clarke's Land, then; for truly 't is all thou 'rt ever likely to be master of."
"Nay, then, thou 'rt welcome to the six feet they'll give thee after thou 'rt hung," retorted Clarke, and the sailors chuckled at the jest, while the Pilgrims gravely arranged which watch should first land, and which keep the boat.
Peering around in the obscurity, the pioneers soon found a sheltered nook close under the bluff, and built their fire and made their camp very near the spot where a little wharf now lies, and where generation after generation of their children has stood to meditate, to dream, to drink in the glory of summer seas and skies, or beneath the August moon to whisper in each others ears the old, old story, never so fresh and never so real as it has come to some of them on the shores of Clarke's Island.
No rosy dreams, no moonlit passages were theirs however, who in that stormy December night first trod that pleasant shore, but rather the sternest realities of life and death, as with numb and icy fingers they struck a light and sheltered the feeble blaze loth to catch upon the wet twigs and leaves hastily collected.
"Either there are no Indians or this is an island too small for hunting," said Hopkins as he groped in the thicket at the top of the bluff for small wood.
"And how know you that?" inquired Howland who helped him.
"By this undergrowth that we are gathering, lad. The Indians burn it off year by year in the haunts of the deer, so that they may course there freely, but here thou seest are plenty of old and dry twigs."