Placid by nature, she did not fret over discomfort or danger. Trim and neat, she was a pleasant sight among the distressed, pallid faces about her, like a bit of English sky, a green English meadow, a warm English hearth in the waste of waters that led to the waste of wintry wilderness. "What am I do to for thee, Constance?" Priscilla asked in her deep, alto voice. "Help me get these children up into the air in a sheltered nook on deck," said Constance. "They are suffocating here." "No, no!" cried two or three mothers. "They will be washed away, Constantia." "Not where we have been taking them these three days past," said Priscilla. "Let me go first and get John Alden to prepare that nest of sails and ropes he made so cleverly for us two days ago." "What doesn't John Alden do cleverly?" murmured Constance, with a sly glance. "Go then, Pris dear, but don't forget to hasten back to tell me it is ready." Priscilla did not linger. John Alden had gotten two others to help him, and a safe shelter where the children could be packed to breathe the air they sorely needed was ready when Priscilla came to ask for it. So Priscilla hurried back and soon she and Constance had the little pilgrims safely stowed, made comfortable, though Damaris feared the great waves towering on every side and clung to Constance in desperate faith. "What is to do yonder?" asked Priscilla of John Alden, who after they were settled came to see that everything was right with them. "What are the men working upon?" "I suppose it's no harm telling you now," said John Alden, "since they are at work as you see, but the ship has been leaking badly, and one of her main beams bowed and cracked, directly amidships. There has been the next thing to mutiny among the sailors, who have no desire to go to the bottom, and wanted to turn back. We have been in consultation and they have growled and threatened, but we are half way over to the western world so may as safely go on as to return. At last we got them to agree to that and now they are mending the ship. We have aboard a great jack; one of the passengers brought it out of Holland, luckily. What they are doing yonder is jacking up that broken beam. The carpenter is going to set a post under it in the lower deck, and calk the leaky upper parts, and so we shall go on to America. The ship is staunch enough, we all agree, if only we can hold her where she is strained. But you had no idea of how near you were to going back, had you?" "Oh, no!" cried Priscilla. "Almost am I tempted to wish we had returned." "No, no, no!" cried Constance. "No turning back! Storms, and savages, and wilderness ahead, but no turning back!"