The Courtship of Miles Standish (VII. 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.