"Mayhap if the Mayflower's crew had used more diligence in seeking to land us in Virginia they had not themselves made the port thou speakest of," said Standish bitterly, while Carver, sighing profoundly, pushed back from the table in sign that the conference was ended, but said in a voice of unfeigned friendliness,-- "Truly, Master Jones, thou needest and shall have our kindliest sympathy, and our prayers, for this that you tell of is a fearful condition, and a fatal for both body and soul, and well may you call upon Almighty God for pardon and for mercy. If any of your men are fain to come on shore we will receive them and give such tendance as we do to our own, and right certain am I that those of our company yet on board will do all that they are able for you. Forgetting the past, about which we might justly murmur if we would, we are ready in your necessity to reckon you as brothers, and to spend and to be spent in your service, as God giveth ability. "Will it please thee to tarry while we hold our evening devotions, and join thy prayers to ours, that the Lord will have mercy upon all of us?" "Yes, I'll tarry, though 't is not greatly in my way. Haply He might take it amiss if I went," muttered Jones looking about him uneasily, while Carver regarded his hopeless neophyte with divine compassion, and Elder Brewster prayed long and fervently that not only the children should be fed, but that the dogs might eat of the crumbs that fell from the table, and that in the end even the sons of Belial might be forgiven their blindness and hardness of heart, and receive even though undeservingly the uncovenanted mercies of God. Fortunately for his good intentions the object of many of these petitions quite failed to comprehend them, and when the devotion was over rose and went away far more gently than he had come. CHAPTER XII. THE HEADLESS ARROW. "Where is the governor? Hast seen him of late, Mistress Priscilla?" "Nay, Peter Browne, not since breakfast; but what is thy great haste? Have the skies fallen, or our friends the lions eaten up Nero?" "Nay, then, 't is worse than lions; ay, here is Master Carver." "Here am I, Peter, and what wouldst thou with me in such haste?" "Why, sir, I have ill news. This morning I went a-fowling to a pond beyond that where we cut thatch and fell into such mishap, and as I lay quiet at my stand waiting till the ducks might swim my way, I saw, for I heard naught, twelve stout salvages all painted and trimmed up, carrying bows and arrows and every man his little axe at his girdle. Each glided after each like shadows upon the water, so still and smooth, and they seemed making for the town. Then as I bent my ear to the quarter whence they came I caught the far-off echo of that same fiendish cry that saluted us at the First Encounter, and would seem to be their war-cry or slogan." "And then?"