MILES STANDISH

Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and saber 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,

MILES STANDISH

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 patted 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!"

MILES STANDISH

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 furry 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,