To Buffet Waves and Ride on Storms
The wind held fair, the golden September weather waited on each new day at its rising and sent it at its close, radiantly splendid, into the sea ahead of the Mayflower as she swept westward.
Full canvas hoisted she was able to sail at her best speed under the favouring conditions so that the hopeful young people whom she carried talked confidently of the houses they would build, the village they would found before heavy frosts. Captain Myles Standish, always impetuous as any of the boys, was one of those who let themselves forget there were such things as storms.
"We'll be New Englishmen at this rate before we fully realize we've left home; what do you say, my lassies three?" he demanded, pausing in a rapid stride of the deck before Constance Hopkins and two young girls who were her own age, but seemed much younger, Humility Cooper and her cousin, Elizabeth Tilley.
"What do you three mermaidens in this forward nook each morning?" Captain Standish went on without waiting for a reply to his first question, which indeed, he had not asked to have it answered.
"Elizabeth's mother, Mistress John Tilley, is sick and declares that she shall die," said Constance, Humility and Elizabeth being shyly silent before the captain.
"No one ever thought to live through sea-sickness, nor wanted to," declared Captain Myles with his hearty laugh. "Yet no one dies of it, that is certain. And is Mistress Ann Tilley also lain down and left Humility to the mercy of the dolphins? And is your stepmother, too, Con, a victim? It's a calm sea we've been having by comparison. I've sailed from England into France when there was a sea running, certes! But this—pooh!"
"Humility's cousin, Mistress Ann Tilley, is not ill, nor my stepmother, Captain Standish, but they are attending to those who are, and to the children. Father says that when he sailed for Virginia, before my mother died, meaning to settle there, that the storm that wrecked them on Bermuda Island and kept us from being already these eleven years colonists in the New World, was a wind and sea that make this seem no more than the lake at the king's palace, where the swans float."
Constance looked up smiling at the captain as she answered, but he noted that her eyes were swollen from tears.
"Take a turn with me along the deck, child," Captain Myles said, gruffly, and held out a hand to steady Constance on her feet.