"Ay, 't is sure to come, soon or late, and a peace won by arms is stronger than one framed of words. When the salvages have made their onset and we have chastised them roundly, we shall be right good friends. Meantime, Francis Cooke and I left our adzes and wedges where we were hewing plank, and so soon as I have taken bite and sup I'll forth to look for them with my snaphance."
"We've heard of locking the stable door when the steed was stolen," murmured Priscilla to Mary, and the captain, whose ear was quick as a hare's, half turned toward her with a glint of laughter in his eyes.
But the jibe was prophetic, for when, half an hour later, Standish and Cooke returned to the tree they had felled, the tools were all gone, and a headless arrow was left standing derisively in the cleft of a log.
"Hm! A cartel of defiance," said the captain drawing it out and grimly examining it. "Well, 't is like our savage forefathers of Britain challenging Julius Cæsar and the Roman power. But come, Cooke, 't is certain we cannot rive plank with our naked hands, and since our tools are gone, we had best go home and work at the housen. To-morrow we'll take some order with these masters."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CAPTAIN'S PROMOTION.
The afternoon and evening were devoted to a thorough review and furbishing of weapons, many of which had suffered from exposure and neglect during the press of building and of sickness.
And surely never could artist find better subject for his painting than the scene at Elder Brewster's fireside that night where upon the hearth Standish and Alden moulded a heap of silvery bullets, while Priscilla and Mary and Elizabeth Tilley twirled their spinning-wheels, or knitted the long woolen hose worn both by men and women in those days, looking demurely from time to time toward the hearth, where Alden occasionally dropped a little boiling lead into a skillet of hot water, and nodded to one or other of the girls as he drew out the emblems thus formed.
At the back of the room gathered Brewster and Winslow and Carver and Bradford, discussing plans of defense in low and eager tones, while over all fell the broad and ruddy light of the floods of flame that rushed weltering up the chimney and out upon the night, carrying tidings to the wild woods and wilder men crouching in their depths that here were encamped a little band of invaders stronger than the primeval forest, stronger than the primeval man, stronger than Nature, stronger than Tradition.