I cheered with the men on the quarterdeck, and we tossed our greasy caps in the air. Henry waved his cutlass; the sun shone on its blade.
The sun was hotter than in England. A solitary goose flying low and to the northwest above the Bay was much bigger than an English goose.
Rigdale said, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
Then there came a smell from the shore like the smell of a garden, and two wild pigeons came as well and lighted on the deck beneath the main-yard.
It took the space of four hours for everyone and his baggage to be conveyed ashore in the Swan’s five boats. I landed on the hot beach with Henry and Abigail. All of us lay about in the shade of some pines and great oaks growing on a strip of land adjacent to the shore. There, within the hour, each of us was given to drink a draught of cool water from earthen jugs carried by a goodly number of men from Plymouth town. A bearded man wearing a steeple-crowned beaver hat gave me mine.
I said, “I thank you, sir. I’ll be sworn. This is the sweetest water I have ever drunk.”
He said, “This is town water, sir, from the Town brook. When I was an exile in Leyden, I worked for five years as a glover with a Jew named DeCosta who had converted to the Dutch Reformed Church. He knew English well enough to teach me a few Jewish blessings for various and sundry things, which he took upon himself to convert to Christian use. The only one I remember is the one he recited before drinking a draught of water. Whenever I drink our town’s cold, sweet water, I think of DeCosta’s converted blessing: ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, at whose word water comes into being, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.’”
Abigail was hailed by a gentleman armed with a cutlass in a black leathern scabbard, who declared himself to be her cousin, Edward Winslow. He said, “God be blessed! Cousin Abigail! Is that really you, sweet coz? Yes. I last saw you as a little girl, but I well remember your eyes. You have your mother’s beautiful blue eyes. Were you with her when she died?”
Abigail said, “I was.”
Edward Winslow said, “And did she make a good end in Christ?”
Abigail said, “Alas, both my beloved parents, of precious memory, died very hard of the consumption and could not speak a word for the space of several hours before the Lord took each of them away by death.”
Edward said, “My beloved first wife, Elizabeth, of precious memory, also sleeps in the Lord. She died of the scurvy last spring at the age of eighteen. Forty-four of our dead lie buried in our graveyard at the foot of Fort Hill. That is almost half our number. We leveled the graves to conceal them from the Indians lest they take advantage of our weak and wretched state.
“I married again within six weeks of Elizabeth’s death. ’Tis a common practice amongst us Saints. Widows and widowers cannot survive for long on their own in this wilderness. My new wife is named Susanna. She is twenty years of age. I trust that God will decide who will be my wife in heaven.”
Abigail said, “Dear coz, this is my brother, Henry.”
Edward said, “I thought as much. You have your father’s look about your mouth and chin. Welcome to the Plymouth Plantation, cousin Henry. God grant health to you and your sister. What’s this? What’s this? You bear a cutlass! Your cutlass marks you for a soldier, cousin Henry.”
Henry said, “I hope to become one.”
“Good,” said Edward. “Good. We need soldiers here. The Narragansets conspire against us.”
“Who are the Narragansets?” said Henry.
“Savage Indians. Our enemies,” said Edward. “Captain Standish will explain everything to you. Suffice it now to say that he is our commander. He fought the Spanish papists in the Low Countries and the Narragansets here in defense of our ally, the Indian king, Massasoit, who rules some sixty warriors to the west of us. We estimate that the Narraganset Indians to the north of us can presently muster two hundred warriors. You will serve against them under Captain Standish, like all the men of the Plymouth Colony.
“Now tell me, coz. What gentleman is this?”
Abigail said, “This is our friend, Charles Wentworth, who once studied Divinity at Cambridge.”
“Well met, sir,” said Edward. “A Cambridge scholar. Well, well. Master Brewster also studied at Cambridge. Methinks ’twas law. I will tell him anon that you have joined us. I warrant that he’ll be happy to have an old schoolmate amongst us. I bid you welcome, sir, to a new life among the godly in the Plymouth Plantation.”
I said, “Alas, sir, I am a member of Master Andrew Weston’s ungodly crew. I have come hither with them to make money trading with the Indians for peltry and timber. And from what I have seen of the straight, tall pine trees that will one day serve as innumerable masts for our stout English ships, we may count ourselves as rich men.”
Edward said, “Have you been reborn in Christ, Master Wentworth?”
I said, “No sir, not yet. But I have faith in the Lord.”
Edward said, “And you, my dear cousins, have you been reborn in Christ?”
Henry said, “Not yet, dear cousin Edward. But we too have faith in the Lord.”
Abigail said, “And you, dear cousin Edward. Have you been reborn in Christ?”
Said he, “I too wait upon the Lord.” Then he said, “You and Henry will lodge with me and Susanna and her infant son who was named Peregrine by her late husband, William White. William died of the scurvy about a month before my poor Elizabeth. Peregrine was born during our crossing on the Mayflower. Hence his name.”
Abigail said, “I do not understand.”
I said, “Peregrine means ‘wanderer’ or ‘traveler’ in Latin.”
Henry said, “A name that befits us all.”
At length, led by two men from Plymouth, the crowd began trudging in the sand to the east. Edward, Henry, and I divided Abigail’s baggage between us and, staggering under the load, trudged along with the rest.
Having gone about a mile, we came to the west gate of the Plymouth town stockade. We passed within to face a murmuring throng.
Edward Winslow left me in charge of all of Abigail’s baggage and led her under the shade of a nearby oak tree. There he said, “Sister, lie down a little—that always does me good.”
Then came here three men: a tall man with a big nose and a man with a grey beard, followed by a very short man in a coat of mail, wearing a pikeman’s helmet and carrying a rapier. These were followed by a drummer, a trumpeter, and two musketeers.
The drum rolled, the trumpet sounded, and the crowd fell silent. The tall man stepped forward and spake in a deep voice, saying, “I am William Bradford, the Governor of the Plymouth Plantation. By arrangement with your Master, Thomas Weston, the Treasurer of the Company of Merchant Adventurers in London, I welcome you as our guests. You will remain with us for several months until, with God’s grace, you will establish a colony of your own.
“Meanwhile, you will lodge amongst us in our homes without payment of rent. We pay no wages here. We have no use for ready money. We buy and sell nothing but rather exchange our labour for necessaries. All of our assets are equally divided. Our victuals are equally apportioned amongst us from what we call our common house, or general rendezvous, for goods. Some of you will help us weed and hill our Indian corn, of which we have twenty-six acres, as well as six acres of barley and pease. Some of you will help us build our fort atop the hill at the head of the Street. Some of you will draw water and gather firewood for the common use. Others will fish in the Bay for cod and catch crabs, which are, by the grace of God, very abundant hereabouts in the summer season. You shall, like us, gather clams and mussels from the shore or ground nuts and acorns from the forest floor.
“A few of you, who are marksmen, will go a-fowling or a-hunting for deer. The divers game that you take will be equally divided amongst yourselves and the sick members of the colony.
“Once
a week, on Saturday, like us, all of you will be recompensed for your labor by our gunsmith and metal worker, William Basset, who is also in charge of our common house. You will receive from him what each of us receive: a peck of Indian corn, some salt, a peck of white pease, and a large bowl of oil of olive, along with gunpowder and whatever shellfish, cod, acorns, and ground nuts that he will apportion you in equal amounts from the common house. Take heed! You must boil the ground nuts and the acorns before you eat them, for they are very bitter to the taste.”
Weston’s men murmured. One of them called out, “Not as bitter to us as thy words!” Bradford ignored the outcry and said, “Our store of victuals is in perilous short supply. Only God’s grace is abundant in these parts. You shall live here, like the rest of us, by the sweat of your brow. We have no oxen, no horses to relieve us from the most oppressive labours.”
William Butts yelled, “I did not cross the sea to become a beast of burden!”
Bradford said, “I see, sirrah, that you are clad in filthy rags. You will be provided at no cost with clean and patched apparel from our common house.”
One of Weston’s men could not stop coughing.
Governor Bradford said, “Good surgeon, Master Fuller, raise thy hand.” A bald man in the crowd raised his right hand.
Weston’s man coughed and coughed. Governor Bradford said, “Your cough, sirrah, will be treated without a fee by our surgeon, Samuel Fuller. Be so good as to raise thy hand once more, Master Fuller.”
Then Governor Bradford said, “We of the Plymouth Plantation have taken what I call this common course out of necessity. We are a poor Christian community, struggling, with God’s help, to survive until we achieve greater prosperity and can disseminate an understanding of the Lord among the savage Indians that surround us. For it is by the knowledge of the Lord that they and we are saved.
“We have no Minister here. We are governed instead in spiritual things by Master William Brewster, who was chosen to be our Church Elder in Leyden, whilst we sojourned in the Low Countries for twelve years.”
Master Brewster, who was the man with the grey beard, said, “Man is altogether vanity. He passeth away as a shadow. His only true home is Heaven. Strangers and pilgrims are we on the earth. Still the spot on which we stand, this shore, this whole land, is dear to us. We are here in obedience to God’s commands.
“We are living our lives as close as we are able to the rules of the early, apostolic church—that sacred time to which the Reformation harkens back—when the Hebrew followers of Jesus became the first Christians. Like them, we celebrate the Sabbath from the setting of the sun to the setting of the sun. And, like them, we are forbidden by Scripture to work or play on the Lord’s Day. As you shall see, we spend it praying together and singing Psalms, with love and joy and fear, in praise of the Lord. We keep the Sabbath just as strictly as ever did the Jew.
“We have here neither crosses nor surplices, nor kneeling at the Sacrament, nor the Book of Common Prayer, nor any other behavior but reading the Word, singing of Psalms, and prayer before and after sermons with catechism.”
My eyes filled with tears of joy. It was of a sudden all so clear. Providence had brought me across the ocean to the Plymouth Colony, wherein, with God’s grace, I shall discover that I was predestined to be one of the elect.
Master Brewster said, “We believe that the equal sharing of our necessaries from the common house will make us happy and flourishing. The strong man here hath no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that is weak. Even I have but one cloak.”
Concluding his speech Master Brewster said, “Amen!”
And I repeated the Hebrew word that impregnates our English prayers with sanctity: “Amen!”
Captain Miles Standish was the last of the three men who addressed us. He was of such short stature that his coat of mail reached almost to his knees.
He said, “I am in command of military affairs in the Plymouth Colony and have accordingly equally divided our eight-and-forty men into four companies. Each company is armed with twelve muskets. Fifteen armed men at a time stand watch over the stockade every night.
“We muster for training every Wednesday afternoon at three of the clock in the glade on the west bank of the Town brook. Our enemies are our next bordering neighbors, the Narraganset Indians, who are over sixty strong and are much incensed and provoked against us. We fear that they have become confederates of the Massachusetts Indians, whose towns lie a few days’ march north from here. They are about two hundred strong.
“The Narragansets worship a devil whom they call Hobbamock. The Massachusetts call him Hobbamoqui. All the savages sacrifice little children to him. He appears in sundry forms unto the savages, as in the shape of a man, a deer, an eagle, &c., but more ordinarily a snake. He appears only to the chiefest and most judicious amongst them—the powohs or priests—though all of them strive to attain to that hellish height of honor.”
“The powohs say that some of them can cause the wind to blow fiercely. They can raise storms and tempests, which they usually do when they intend the death or destruction of their enemies.
“Thus, in these dark forests of New England, we Englishmen wrestle not only against savages of flesh and blood, but against their dark sovereign princes and their dark powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Edward Winslow, Governor Bradford, Isaac Allerton, the assistant governor, Master Brewster, and Andrew Weston gathered together in the common house, where they spent the rest of the day assigning Weston’s sixty men to lodge in each of Plymouth’s six-and-twenty households. Of the eight men left over, three were lodged in the beasts’ house among the chickens, goats, and swine; three more were lodged in the common house, while two slept in sail-cloth tents. Some of Captain Green’s thirty sailors lodged aboard the Swan, while the rest slept under sail-cloth tents within the Plymouth stockade’s north gate. Abigail and Henry, as they had been promised, lodged with Edward, his wife, Susanna, and their babe, Peregrine.
Edward Winslow told Brewster that I had studied at Emmanuel College in Cambridge, and Brewster therefore invited me, Rigdale, and Martin Hook to lodge with his family. It consisted of Master Brewster, his wife, Mary, and their sons, Wrestling and Love.
Master Brewster said to me, “I understand from Edward Winslow that you are a Separatist.”
“That is true, sir.”
“And you, Master Rigdale?”
“I am also.”
“And you, Master Hook?” Master Brewster said. “To what church do you belong?”
“Wherever I am set down to pray, sir.”
Brewster said, “I herewith charge Mister Wentworth to keep watch over thy behavior in our church, particularly during the Sabbath service. We do not use the Book of Common Prayer.”
“I do not use it, either, sir,” said Hook.
“God give you joy,” Master Brewster said.
Hook said, “The truth is, sir, I cannot read anything.”
“You have ears, have you not?”
“Aye, sir, by my faith, sir. I have big, hairy ears like an ass, as you can see.”
“Then use ’em and listen when the Word of God is read to thee.”
Hook said, “Oh, I do, sir, but I have no more understanding of Scripture than a malt-horse. The Word of God is wasted on an animal such as me.”
Master Brewster said, “First an ass and then a malt-horse. Nay, sirrah, you are not a beast of burden. You are a man with an immortal soul.”
And Hook said, “I have been used as a beast of burden my whole life.”
Wrestling, Love, Hook, Rigdale, and I slept that night in our canvas beds stuffed with fresh straw upon the earthen floor of the Brewsters’ house. Master and Mrs. Brewster slept in the loft. The whole house smelled of smoke, drying herbs, and full chamber pots.
&nbs
p; Before breakfast, Master Brewster bade us to fetch wood from a pile without the south gate and then draw two buckets of water from the Town brook. I carried a charged musket. We startled a milk-white fowl, with a very black head, that fluttered into the air. The sun shining upon its white wings was a fine sight to see. I missed my shot.
At breakfast, I savoured my first taste of Indian corn pudding.
I said to Master Brewster, “I like your victuals.”
Then he led us all in prayer. Hook, Rigdale, Wrestling, and I went to work weeding the fields of Indian corn, which was south of the brook to the baywards. Some of the goodly ears of corn were yellow, some red, and some mixed with blue. We crawled on all fours down the rows in the hot sun. I wore my gloves of kid, given me by my uncle Roger, to protect the sharp leaves from slicing my fingers with fine cuts. My knees were rubbed raw. I wrapped them in bloody rags.
I asked Wrestling why each stalk of corn was surrounded about its base by a pile of soil, about a foot in diameter and almost a foot in height.
He said, “Two or three herrings are buried there as manure. An Indian named Squanto taught my father how to grow corn in this barren soil. You will meet him bye and bye.”
“Does he worship the devil?”
“He does,” said Wrestling.
Hook said to Wrestling, “Tell me, good sir. What kind of Christian name is Wrestling?”
Wrestling replied, “When my father named me, he was thinking of Jacob. He who wrestled with the angel of God.”
Hook said, “Pray tell me who is this Jacob the Wrestler?”
Wrestling said, “There was once a godly Hebrew named Jacob who wrestled with an angel of the Lord all through one night. And when the angel saw that he prevailed not against Jacob, he touched the hollow of Jacob’s left thigh and put it out of joint. Though Jacob was sorely in pain, he wrestled with the angel until dawn. Finally the angel cried out, ‘Let me go, for the day breaketh.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let thee go save thou bless me.’ The angel said unto him, ‘What is thy name?’ And Jacob replied, ‘My name is Jacob.’ And the angel said, ‘Thy name shall not be called Jacob any more. Henceforth thou shall be called Israel. For as a prince thou hast wrestled with God and with men and hast prevailed.’ Israel halted painfully on his left leg all the remaining days of his long life.”
The Pilgrim Page 12