“They allso set up a Maypole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the Indean women for their consorts, dancing and frisking togeather like so many fairies (or furies, rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived and celebrated the feastes of the Roman goddes Flora, or the beastly practices of the madd Bacchinalians.” Although Plymouth and its neighbors were shocked at these practices, they would not probably have interfered, beyond a remonstrance, with the amusements of the Merry Mountaineers had the matter stopped there, but, as the delegates to Plymouth represented, the selling of fire-arms to the Indians, teaching them to shoot, and inflaming their murderous passions with alcohol, was a very different matter, a matter of public import, and one to be arrested by any means before it went farther. So after this long digression, tiresome no doubt, but essential to understanding what follows, we come back to Myles Standish and his eight men, “first-comers” all of them, pulling up their boat upon the shore at Wessagusset, just as they had done five years before. As they turned toward the path leading to the stockade, a man came hurriedly down to meet them. “Good-morrow, Master Bursley,” cried the captain cheerfully. “We are on our way to Merry Mount, and called to tell you so.” But Bursley held up his hand with a warning gesture, and so soon as he was near enough hoarsely muttered in unconscious plagiarism,-- “The devil’s broke loose.” “Say you so, Bill Bursley!” responded Standish, showing all his broad white teeth. “I did not know he’d ever been in the bilboes!” “Morton’s here at the house, full of liquor and swearing all sorts of wicked intent toward--well now, Captain, if you won’t take it amiss, I’ll tell you that he calls you Captain Shrimp!” “Following Master Oldhame,” replied Standish carelessly. “I must marvel at the lack of sound wit at Wessagusset when so small a jest has to serve so many men. But you say this roysterer is here in your house?” “No, in Jeffries’ house. He came this morning asking that we should return with him to Merry Mount and help him against the ‘Plymouth insolents’ as he called you.” “And what answer did he get, Master Bursley?” “What but nay?” demanded Bursley with a glance of honest surprise. “Was not I one of those who came the other day to Plymouth begging Governor Bradford to take order with this rebel? But he has been drinking, and is in such a woundy bad humor that but now he drew a knife upon Jeffries, and may have slain him outright before this.” “Say you so! Then, let us hasten and bury him with all due honors!” exclaimed the captain, in whose nostrils the breath of battle was ever a pleasant savor. “Howland, Alden, Browne, all of you, my merry men! Leave the boat snug, and follow to the house, to chat with Master Morton who awaits us there.”