Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of dangers!" 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, 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. 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, But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven by lightning, ,,, Shouting, 'Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat? Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, insulting Miles Standish : While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung at his bosom, Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it back, as he muttered, 66 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, Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning, 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 When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth, 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. He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and reward of his valour. |