THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH
Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish was marching
steadily northward,
Winding through forest and swamp, and along the trend
of the sea-shore,
All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his
anger
Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous odor
of powder
Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the scents
of the forest.
Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved his
discomfort;
He who was used to success, and to easy victories
always,
Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn
by a maiden,
Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend whom
most he had trusted!
Ah! ’t was too much to be borne, and he fretted
and chafed in his armor!
“I alone am to blame,” he muttered,
“for mine was the folly.
What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray
in the harness,
Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the wooing
of maidens?
’T was but a dream,—let it pass,—let
it vanish like so many others!
What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is
worthless;
Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away,
and henceforward
Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of
dangers!”
Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and
discomfort,
While he was marching by day or lying at night in
the forest,
Looking up at the trees, and the constellations beyond
them.
After a three days’ march he came to an Indian
encampment
Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and
the forest;
Women at work by the tents, and the warriors, horrid
with war-paint,
Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking together;
Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of
the white men,
Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre
and musket,
Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from among
them advancing,
Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as
a present;
Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts
there was hatred.
Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers gigantic
in stature,
Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king
of Bashan;
One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called Wattawamat.
Round their necks were suspended their knives in scabbards
of wampum,
Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp
as a needle.
Other arms had they none, for they were cunning and
crafty.
“Welcome, English!” they said,—these
words they had learned from the traders
Touching at times on the coast, to barter and chaffer
for peltries.
Then in their native tongue they began to parley with
Standish,
Through his guide and interpreter Hobomok, friend
of the white man,
Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets
and powder,
Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with
the plague, in his cellars,
Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the
red man!
But when Standish refused, and said he would give
them the Bible,
Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast
and to bluster.
Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of
the other,
And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake
to the Captain:
“Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of
the Captain,
Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave
Wattawamat
Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born
of a woman,
But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven
by lightning,
Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons about
him,
Shouting, ‘Who is there here to fight with the
brave Wattawamat?’”
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade
on his left hand,
Held it aloft and displayed a woman’s face on
the handle,
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister
meaning:
“I have another at home, with the face of a
man on the handle;
By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty
of children!”
Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, insulting
Miles Standish:
While with his fingers he petted the knife that hung
at his bosom,
Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it back,
as he muttered,
“By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha!
but shall speak not!
This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent
to destroy us!
He is a little man; let him go and work with the women!”
Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures
of Indians
Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the
forest,
Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their
bow-strings,
Drawing about him still closer and closer the net
of their ambush.
But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated
them smoothly;
So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days
of the fathers.
But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt,
and the insult,
All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of
Thurston de Standish,
Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins
of his temples.
Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching
his knife from its scabbard,
Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward,
the savage
Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness
upon it.
Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound
of the war-whoop,
And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of
December,
Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery
arrows,
Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came
the lightning,
Out of the lightning thunder, and death unseen ran
before it.
Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and
in thicket,
Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave
Wattawamat,
Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift
had a bullet
Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands
clutching the greensward,
Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land
of his fathers.
There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors
lay, and above them,
Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of
the white man.
Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart Captain
of Plymouth:
“Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage,
his strength, and his stature,—
Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little
man; but I see now
Big enough have you been to lay him speechless before
you!”
Thus the first battle was fought and won by the
stalwart Miles Standish.
When the tidings thereof were brought to the village
of Plymouth,
And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat
Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was
a church and a fortress,
All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord,
and took courage.
Only Priscilla averted her face from this spectre
of terror,
Thanking God in her heart that she had not married
Miles Standish;
Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from
his battles,
He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and
reward of his valor.
