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But as it turned out the force was but a guard of honor to Aspinet, who came in state, followed by two women bringing the stolen coats elaborately bound around with gayly colored withes; these they at once took on board and laid in the cuddy, while Aspinet improving upon Tisquantum's former lessons as to the mode of saluting sovereigns seized upon Standish's hand, and much to his disgust licked it from wrist to fingers, at the same time bending his knee in uncouth genuflection.
But Standish was already half way down the hill, and presently in the open space already spoken of as the Town Square he and two or three of the other leaders met the runner, who escorted by Squanto came panting up the hill from the brook, and after the usual salutations informed the governor that he was sent from Aspinet, sachem of the Nausets, to inform the white men that a vessel had been watched feeling her way through the shoals around Cape Cod, and was now laying her course apparently for Plymouth.
"Enough, enough, Aspinet," exclaimed the captain half laughing, half revolted at the homage. "The coats are returned I see" "And I have much beaten him who took them," averred Aspinet complacently. "And Aspinet is the friend of the white men though all other Indians turn against them."
The voyage prospered, and before night the boy, decked with strings of beads and various savage ornaments, was restored to his guardians by Aspinet himself; while the first red man allowed to come on board the shallop was the owner of the corn "borrowed" by the Pilgrims, who now repaid its value twofold by an order for goods to be delivered at Plymouth.
But some one betrayed them to Corbitant, who was vaporing around the village calling upon the men to rise in revolt against Massasoit and deliver him up to the Narragansetts, and saying that we white men should all be slain, and also those who have made alliance with us, for already he had news of our visit to Nauset, and the contract made with Aspinet, and Canacum, and Iyanough.
At Nauset, Aspinet hath great store of corn hidden from the white men, but it is not his alone, it is mine, it is the tribe's, it is The Sword's. Let my lord come to Nauset and I will have his canoe filled to the brim, there shall not be room to put in one grain more Kamuso says it." "Hm! That would be a matter of fifty bushels or more," replied Standish literally. "What say you, Howland?
Say no more on that head, or thou 'lt stir up strife afresh," muttered Bradford in the interpreter's ear, while Standish fixed his eyes upon Janno ready to sacrifice him at the first hostile movement. But the young chief casting a meaning glance around the circle said quietly, "The-White-Birch was of the blood of Aspinet my brother, and The-White-Fool was her husband."
An hour later the shallop, now riding gayly upon the flood tide, put forth from Barnstable Harbor, carrying not only its own crew, but Janno with several of his followers, he having volunteered as guide and negotiator with Aspinet for the restoration of little Billington.
At a later day, however, one of the warriors then present repeated to the captain the amount of the Neponset's message, which was that Obtakiest, sachem of the Neponsets, had entered into a solemn compact with Canonicus, sachem of the Narragansetts, to cut off the Weymouth colonists, root and branch; but that as the Plymouth men would assuredly revenge their brethren, it was necessary that they should perish as well, and that while the two chiefs mentioned advanced upon the settlement from the west, they invited Canacum, Janno, and Aspinet to fall upon them from the east, and having slain man and boy to equably divide the women and other plunder.
The-White-Birch, sister of Aspinet, chief of the Nausets, having fixed her regards upon the prisoner, discovered these peculiarities, and one day when the boys of the village were amusing themselves with seeing how near they could shoot their blunted arrows to the prisoner's eyes without putting them out, she stepped forward, and, Pocahontas-like, announced that she took this man for her husband, and as such claimed his release from torture.
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