unter as to perish here of cold and
exhaustion," suggested Winslow.

"Safety most often lies on the side of courage," declared Standish
sententiously.

"And Master Tilley will die if naught be done for him," pleaded Howland,
and to this consideration Carver at once yielded his careful scruples.

"Ay, John, thou 'rt right to mind me of that," said he. "Some of us will
go ashore and make a fire, whereat to comfort those who are overborne by
cold and weariness, and some shall keep the boat until the first are
refreshed, and so hold watch and watch."

"And I will be of the first watch ashore," cried Clarke, the master's
mate; "for I'd twice liefer meet all the salvages of the Indies than to
freeze like a clod, so here goes." And stepping upon the gunwale he made
a spring in the dark, alighting upon a slippery rock and measuring his
length upon the sand. Nothing daunted, however, he grasped a handful of
sand in each fist, as if his prostration had been voluntary, and
springing to his feet cried in a braggadocio voice,--

"I seize this land for King James of England and for myself."

"Thyself!" growled Coppin, jealously. "We'll call it Clarke's Land,
then; for truly 't is all thou 'rt ever likely to be master of."

"Nay, then, thou 'rt welcome to the six feet they'll give thee after
thou 'rt hung," retorted Clarke, and the sailors chuckled at the jest,
while the Pilgrims gravely arranged which watch should first land, and
which keep the boat.

Peering around in the obscurity, the pioneers soon found a sheltered
nook close under the bluff, and built their fire and made their camp
very near the spot where a little wharf now lies, and where generation
after generation of their children has stood to meditate, to dream, to
drink in the glory of summer seas and skies, or beneath the August moon
to whisper in each others ears the old, old story, never so fresh and
never so real as it has come to some of them on the shores of Clarke's
Island.

No rosy dreams, no moonlit passages were theirs however, who in that
stormy December night first trod that pleasant shore, but rather the
sternest realities of life and death, as with numb and icy fingers they
struck a light and sheltered the feeble blaze loth to catch upon the wet
twigs and leaves hastily collected.

"Either there are no Indians or this is an island too small for
hunting," said Hopkins as he groped in the thicket at the top of the
bluff for small wood.

"And how