Some inarticulate farewell, in the Indian tongue, he breathed through his quivering lips. His eyes grew dimmed. He fancied he saw a smile of farewell and of encouragement play intangibly on those still, saddened lineaments, and so he held forth his arms for a second and then turned away to join his new-found protector.
William Phipps, having thought the boy to be following more closely than he was, stopped to let him catch up. Thus he noted the look of anguish with which the lad was leaving that grim remnant of King Philip behind. Phipps was one of Nature’s “motherly men”—hardly ever more numerous than rocs’ eggs on the earth. He felt his heart go forth to Adam Rust. Therefore it was that he looked down in the boy’s face, time after time, as they walked along together. Thus they came to the water-front and wharves, at the end of one of which the brig “Captain Spencer” was swinging.
“This ship belongs to me and I made her,” said Phipps, with candid pride in his achievement. “You shall see that she sails right merrily.”
They went aboard. A few sailors scrubbing down the deck, barefooted and with sleeves at elbow, now abandoned their task temporarily, at the command of the mate, who had seen his captain coming, to hoist sail and let go the hawsers. The chuckle in the blocks, as the sailors heaved and hauled at the ropes, gave Adam Rust a pleasure he had never before experienced.
Breakfast being not yet prepared for service, Phipps conducted his foundling about the craft for a look at her beauties. When Adam had putted the muzzle of the brig’s gun and felt the weight of a naked sword in his fist, in the armory, the buoyancy of his youth put new color in his cheeks and a sparkle in his eyes. He was a bright-natural, companionable lad, who grew friendly and smiled his way into one’s affections rapidly, but naturally. When he and Phipps had come up again to the deck, after breakfast, they felt as if they had always been friends.
The brig was under way. Shorewards the gray old Atlantic was wrinkled under the fretful annoyance of a brisk, salty breeze. The ship was slipping prettily up the coast, with stately courtesies to the stern rocks that stood like guardians to the land.
“I think we shall find you were born for a sailor, Adam,” said the master of the craft. “I can give you my word it is more joy and life to sail a ship than to make one. And some day——” but he halted. The modest boasts, with which he warmed the heart of his well-beloved wife, were a bit too sacred for repetition, even to a boy so winning. “But,” he concluded, “perhaps you would like to tell me something of yourself.”
Thus encouraged Adam related his story. He was the son of John Rust, a chivalrous gentleman, an affectionate husband and a serious man, with a light heart and a ready wit. John Rust had been the friend of the Indians and the mediator between them and the whites until the sheer perfidy of the Puritans had rendered him hopeless of retaining the confidence of the Red men, when he had abandoned the office. Adam’s mother had been dead for something more than four years. Afflicted by his sense of loss, John Rust had become a strange man, a restless soul hopelessly searching for that other self, as knights of old once sought the holy grail.
He went forth alone into the trackless wilderness that led endlessly into the west. Although the father and son had been knit together in their affections by long talks, long ranges together in the forests and by the lessons which the man had imparted, yet when John Rust had gone on his unearthly quest, he could not bear the thought of taking young Adam with him into the wilds.
He had therefore left the boy with his friends, the lad’s natural guardians, the honorable nation of Wampanoags. “Keep him here, teach him of your wisdom, make him one of your young warriors,” he had said when he went, “so that when I return I may know him for his worth.”