was but "partly"
responsible for the SPEEDWELL'S leakiness, and directly shows that the
"stratagem" of her master and crew, "afterwards," he adds, "known, and by
some confessed," was the chief cause of her leakiness.

Cushman also shows, by his letter,--written after the ships had put back
into Dartmouth,--a part of which Professor Arber uses, but the most
important part suppresses, that what he evidently considers the principal
leak was caused by a very "loose board" (plank), which was clearly not
the result of the straining due to "crowding sail," or of "overmasting."
(See Appendix.)

Moreover, as the Leyden chiefs were careful to employ a presumably
competent man ("pilott," afterwards "Master" Reynolds) to take charge of
refitting the consort, they were hence clearly, both legally and morally,
exempt from responsibility as to any alterations made. Even though the
"overmasting" had been the sole cause of the SPEEDWELL'S leakiness, and
the delays and vicissitudes which resulted to the MAY-FLOWER and her
company, the leaders of the Leyden church--whom Professor Arber arraigns
--(themselves chiefly the sufferers) were in no wise at fault! It is
clear, however, that the "overmasting" cut but small figure in the case;
"confessed" rascality in making a leak otherwise, being the chief
trouble, and this, as well as the "overmasting," lay at the door of
Master Reynolds.

Even if the MAY-FLOWER had not been delayed by the SPEEDWELL'S condition,
and both had sailed for "Hudson's River" in midsummer, it is by no means
certain that they would have reached there, as Arber so confidently
asserts. The treachery of Captain Jones, in league with Gorges, would as
readily have landed them, by some pretext, on Cape Cod in October, as in
December. But even though they had landed at the mouth of the Hudson,
there is no good reason why the Pilgrim influence should not have worked
north and east, as well as it did west and south, and with the
Massachusetts Bay Puritans there, Roger Williams in Rhode Island, and the
younger Winthrop in Connecticut, would doubtless have made New England
history very much what it has been, and not, as Professor Arber asserts,
"entirely different."

The cruel indictment fails, and the imaginary "turning point in modern
history," to announce which Professor Arber seems to have sacrificed so
much, falls with it.

The Rev. Dr. Griffis ("The Pilgrims in their Three Homes," p. 158) seems
to give ear to Prof