And the captain sped joyously up the path, looking to the priming of his long pistols, and loosening Gideon in his scabbard as he went. A rod from the house, however, a bullet nearly found its billet in his brain, while on the threshold stood Morton, his face flushed, his gait unsteady, and a smoking pistol in his hand. “Hola! Captain Shrimp, I warn you stand out of range of my pistol practice. You might get a hurt by chance!” cried he, raising another pistol, but before it could be aimed, or the captain take action, somebody within the house struck up the madman’s arm, and as he turned savagely upon this new foe, Standish, whose muscles were strong and elastic as a panther’s, sprang across the intervening space, and seizing his prisoner by the collar shouted,-- “Yield, Morton, or you’re but a dead man!” “One man may well yield to a mob,” muttered Morton sullenly; and seeing that he was disarmed, Standish released his hold saying quietly,-- “Fair and softly, Master Morton! Governor Bradford sends me and these men, praying for your company at Plymouth, so soon as may be. If you will go quietly, well; but if you resist, you will go all the same; so choose you.” “The Governor of Plymouth does me too much honor to send so many of his servants with the major-domo at the head,” replied Morton bitterly. “And sith as you say the invitation may not be refused, I’ll e’en accept it, but would first return to Merry Mount to fetch some clothes and set my house in order.” “Your return to Merry Mount will be as the governor orders hereafter. I was bid to bring you to Plymouth without delay, and that I shall do.” “But not to-night, I trust, Captain Standish,” interposed Jeffries. “A shrewd tempest is threatening, and by the time it is past, night will be upon us and no moon.” “With the shoals and sandbars of this coast thick as plums in a Christmas pudding,” remarked Philip De la Noye, whereat Peter Browne growled, “Make it a Thanksgiving pudding, an it please you, Master Philip. We hold no Papist feasts here.” Stepping outside the door, Standish took a survey of the skies, the sea, and the forest, already waving its green boughs in welcome to the coming rain. “Do you hear the ‘calling of the sea,’ Captain?” asked a Cornish man, placing his curved hand behind his ear, and bending it to catch the deep murmur and wail that float shoreward from the hollow of ocean when a thunder-storm is gathering in its unknown spaces. “Yes,” replied Standish in an unusually hushed voice, “we will stay awhile; perhaps the night, if our friends can keep us.” “Glad and gayly,” said Jeffries, who, truth to tell, was a little afraid that the remaining garrison of Merry Mount might descend upon his house in the night to rescue their leader or avenge his loss. “And we’ll feast you on the pair of wild turkeys my boy shot to-day,” cried Bursley. “Come, we’ll make a night on’t, sith there are not beds enough for all to lie down.”