United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A bushy hillock lay midway between the two parties, and the Indians were making for its shelter, when the Pilgrims breaking into a double run forestalled them, and reached the summit where, as Standish declared, he was ready to welcome the whole Neponset tribe. The Indians at once fell behind each man his tree, and a flight of arrows aimed chiefly at Standish and Hobomok ensued.
"Let no man shoot until he hath a fair mark," ordered the Captain. "'T is useless to waste ammunition upon tree-trunks." "Both their pnieses are dead, and Obtakiest himself is none!" suddenly declared Hobomok. "I alone can drive them!" and throwing off his coat, leaving his chest with its gleaming "totem" bare, he extended wide his arms and rushed down the hill shouting at the top of his voice,
The rain proved as persistent as it was gentle, and under its influence the wind sighed itself asleep, leaving at sunset the ship espied by Hobomok becalmed outside Beach Point. Some of the Pilgrims would have rowed out to her, but Bradford knew from his own feelings how unfit they were for such heavy labor.
Child, then Miss Francis and the author of "Hobomok" and "The Rebels," wrote her that she had nearly completed a story on Capt. John Smith which now she will not dare to print, but she surrenders with less reluctance, she says, "for I love my conqueror." "Is not that beautiful?" says Miss Sedgwick. "Better to write and to feel such a sentiment than to indite volumes."
Standish and Winslow, followed by Hobomok, marched meantime straight into a hut, and the captain in a loud voice demanded, "Where is Corbitant? Give him up and no one else shall be harmed!" A moment of panic-stricken silence ensued, and then through the darkness was heard the indefinite rustling sound of living creatures seeking covertly to escape from an enclosure.
Winslow meantime had stirred up the embers of a fire near the doorway of the hut, and the flame leaping out cast a wild and fitful glare over the scene, in the midst of which Hobomok, climbing the stout pole in the centre of the cabin, thrust his head through the smoke-hole at the top, and after emitting a hideous war-whoop shouted the names of Tisquantum and Tockamahamon at the top of his voice, for one of the women had assured him that the former was alive, and that Corbitant was already many miles on his homeward way.
The Indians had begun at once to collect and arm, and he foreboding evil had slunk away after vainly trying to persuade his comrades to do the same. "They will be slain out of revenge," declared Hobomok in his own tongue, and the event proved him a true prophet.
Soon after dark the little troop set forth, but Hobomok, deceived by the darkness and the rain, missed the route, and for three weary hours the men floundered around in the dripping forest, the guide wisely keeping out of the captain's reach, until in a gleam of watery moonlight Winslow recognized a peculiar clump of trees which he had noticed upon his late journey with Hopkins to visit Massasoit; and Hobomok recovering from his bewilderment led the way as fast as the men could follow him, until in the edge of a large clearing he paused, and pointing to a detached hut whispered,
And before the sun, just risen over Manomet, sank behind Captain's Hill, the Little James had rounded the Gurnet, and was standing on for Cape Ann, with Myles Standish leaning against her mainmast, and smoking the pipe Hobomok had bestowed upon him with the assurance that he who used it carried a charmed life so long as it remained unbroken.
"Neen squaes! Neen squaes!" The women also hung around Hobomok, pulling at his hands and clothing, for attention, while they shrieked, "Oh Hobomok, I am thy friend! Thou knowest I am thy friend!"
Word Of The Day