sion with the Dutch who wished to keep the profits of
their Manhattan Colony to themselves, the Mayflower had found it
impossible to make her way southward around Cape Cod, and after nearly
going to wreck upon the shoals off Malabar, or Tucker's Terror had been
driven within the embrace of the curving arm thrown out by the New World
to welcome and shelter the homeless children of the Old. There she lay
now, the weather-beaten, clumsy, strained, and groaning old bark whose
name is glorious in the annals of our country while Time shall endure,
and whose merest splinter would to-day be enshrined in gold; there she
lay swinging gently to the send of the great Atlantic whose waves broke
sonorously upon the beach outside, and came racing around the point a
flood of shattered and harmless monsters, moaning and hissing, to find
their prey escaped and safely landlocked.

"There's no boat, I say, and there's an end on 't," repeated Master
Jones truculently as he stepped on deck, and two men who had been
earnestly conversing at the stern of the brig turned round and came
toward him. They were John Carver, already governor of the colony, and
William Bradford, his lieutenant and successor. The governor was the
first to speak, and the somewhat measured accents of his voice, with its
inflections at once kindly and haughty, told of gentle breeding, of a
calm and dignified temper, and of an aptness at command.

"And why no boat, Master Jones?" asked he quietly. "Methought by the
terms of our agreement you were to aid us in every way in making our
settlement."

"And I'm not going back of my word, am I, master?" demanded Jones
peevishly. "A pack of wenches going ashore with tubs and kettles and
bales and such gear is not a settlement, is it?"

"Nay, but a means thereto if haply they find the place convenient,"
replied Carver pleasantly. "At any rate, we will send them, since it has
been promised, and the same boat will serve to transport them with their
gear that is already fitted to help us ashore with the pinnace."

"And our own men will do all that is required in lading and rowing the
boat," added Bradford in his mild, persuasive voice. Jones, overborne by
a calm authority against which he could not bluster, turned on his heel
muttering some surly assent. Carver slightly smiled as he watched the
square and clumsy form expressing in every line of its back the futile
rage of an overborne coward, and, turning toward the companion way,