Motionless and erect the soldier sat the long night through, and as if she gathered strength from the grasp of his healthy hand, Rose slept quietly until the sun rose, and the women still well enough to wait upon the sick came softly in.
Then she opened her eyes, fixed them upon his with a tender smile, and said,—
"Poor Myles! Thou hast watched all night while selfish I held thee and slept. But now begone and get thine own rest and food. I shall do well with these kind friends."
"I'll leave thee, then, for a little, but I shall not be far away, and if thou needest, send," replied her husband releasing his hand from the frail yet burning grasp that still held him. "Dame Turner, thou 'lt see that I am called if she asks for me, wilt thou?"
"Surely, Captain, but she is doing bravely this morning, and you had better rest."
"Nay, but let her not ask twice for me, or aught else."
Leaving the house, and drawing one or two eager breaths of fresh air, Standish climbed the hill where already the fortification he had proposed was nearly complete, though not yet armed. Stepping upon a great beam, squared but not laid in place, he stood looking around him as if to see what Nature and his own work could offer to fill the great gulf opening in the future.
A light fog still clung to the face of the water and hung in the hollows of the hills; shrouded in its folds the Mayflower lay like a spectre ship, ugly, unsafe, full of discomfort and misery, but yet the only link between this handful of dying men and their home. Standish gazed at her with a gathering darkness upon his face, until the burden of his thought broke out in a savage murmur,—
"Couldst not make thy way through yonder shoals and bring us to the fair shores I told her of! If it be thy fault, Thomas Jones!"—
The slow clenching of a jaw square and strong as a mastiff's finished the sentence, and Standish's eyes came back to the rude hut where all he loved lay dying, perhaps through this man's fault. At his feet lay the sketch as it were of the town he and his comrades had laid down in outline, and intended to build up as time and strength allowed. Already Leyden Street, or The Street, as it was at first called, lay a distinct thoroughfare from the Rock to the Fort, the eastern and western extremities of the village. Along this street were staked out plots of land, some larger and some smaller in the proportion of eight feet frontage to each person in a family, the single men, and those women and children already left desolate, being divided among the householders, and the whole company reduced to nineteen families.