"Here's a merry chance, Giles!" John cried as soon as Constance ended. "What with savages likely to visit us and robbers for us to hunt, why life in the New World may be bearable after all!"
"I shall go out to the _Mayflower_ and get the packet," he said. "It is too late to-day, but in the morning early I shall make it. I suppose you will go with me, Jack?"
"Safe to suppose it," said John. "I'd swim after you if you started without me."
"Won't you take Captain Standish? I mean won't you ask him to help you?" asked Constance, anxiously. "It is sufficient matter to engage him, and he is our protector in all dangers."
"We need no protection, little Sis," said Giles, loftily. "It hath been my experience that a just cause is sufficient. We have suspected the master of the _Mayflower_ of trickery all along."
Constance could not forbear a smile at her brother's worldly-wise air of deep knowledge of mankind, but nevertheless she wished that "the right arm of the colony" might be with the boys to strike for them if need were.
It was with no misgiving as to their own ability, but with the highest glee, that Giles and John made their preparations to set forth just before dawn.
They kept their own counsel strictly and warned Constance not to talk.
There was not much to be done to make ready, merely to see that the small boat, built by the boys for their own use, was tight, and to tuck out of sight under her bow seat a heavy coat in case the east wind--which the pilgrims had soon learned was likely to come in upon them sharply on the warmest day--blew up chillingly.
John Billington owned, by his father's reckless indulgence, a pistol that was his chief treasure; a heavy, clumsy thing, difficult to hold true, liable to do the unexpected, the awkward progenitor of the pretty modern revolver, but a pistol for all its defects, and the apple of John's eye. This he had named Bouncing Bully, invariably spoke of it as "he", and felt toward it and treated it not merely as his arms, but as his companion in arms.
Bouncing Bully was to make the third member of the party; he accompanied John, hidden with difficulty because of his bulk, in the breast of his coat, when he crept out without disturbing his father and Francis, to join Giles at the spot on the shore where their flat-bottomed row boat was pulled up.