Mizpah, with a flushed face, stepped in at once; but I hung back a little, sick with their cowardly folly.
"At least," said I, angrily, "you must sell me a sack of bread, and some powder and ball. Till I get them I swear I will not go."
"Sartinly!" sing-songed the captain; and in a twinkling the supplies were in the boat. "Now go, and God speed ye!"
I slipped a piece of gold into his hand, and was off. But frightened as he was, he was honest, and in half a minute he called me back.
"Here is your silver," came the queer, high voice over the rail. "You have overpaid me three times," and I saw his long arm reaching out to me.
"Keep it," I snapped. "We are in more haste to be gone than you to get rid of us."
In five minutes more the woods enfolded us, and the little Osprey was hid from our view. I walked violently in my wrathful disappointment, till at last Mizpah checked me. "If the good soldier," said she, "might advise his captain, which would be, of course, intolerable, I would dare to remind you of what you have said to me more than once lately. Is not this pace too hot to last, Monsieur?" And stopping, she leaned heavily on her musket.
"Forgive me," I exclaimed, flinging myself down on the moss. "And what a fool I am to be angry, too, just because those poor bumpkins wouldn't take up our quarrel."
The look of gratitude which Mizpah gave me for that little phrase, "our quarrel," made my heart on a sudden strong and light. Presently we resumed our journey, going moderately, and keeping enough inland to avoid the windings of the coast. The little Osprey we never saw again; but months later, when it came to my ears that a fishing vessel of Plymouth had been taken by the Indians that autumn while storm-stayed at Merigomish, and her crew all slain, I felt a qualm of pity for the poor lads whose selfish fears had so misguided them.