"I'll teach you manners, you young savage, Francis Billington!" growled Giles, but he did not mean it, as Francis well knew.
"If I'm a savage I'll be the only one of us at home in America," chuckled the boy.
"Getting ready an arrow for the savage?" he added.
"It's all decided. There's been the greatest to-do ashore. Why didn't you come off the ship to see the last of 'em, Constance?" interrupted the older boy. Constance Hopkins shook her head, sadly.
"Nay, then, John, I've had my fill of partings," she said. "Are they gone back, those we had to leave behind?"
"That have they!" cried John Billington. "Some of them were sorry to miss the adventure, but if truth were told some were glad to be well out of it, and with no more disgrace in setting back than that the _Mayflower_ could not hold us all. Well, they've missed danger and maybe death, but I'd not be out of it for a king's ransom. Giles, what do you think is whispered? That the _Speedwell_ could make the voyage as well as the _Mayflower_, though she be smaller, if only she carried less sail, and that her leaking is--a greater leak in her master Reynolds's truth, and that she'd be seaworthy if he'd let her!"
"Cur!" growled Giles Hopkins. "He knows he'd have to stay with his ship in the wilderness a year it might be and there's better comfort in England and Holland! We're well rid of him if he's that kind of a coward. I wondered myself if he was up to a trick when we put in the first time, at Dartmouth. This time when we made Plymouth I smelled a rat certain. Are we almost loaded?"
"Yes. They've packed all the provisions from the _Speedwell_ into the _Mayflower_ that she will hold. We'll be off soon. Not too soon! The sixth day of September, and we a month dallying along the shore because of the _Speedwell's_ leaking! Constantia, you'll be cold before we make a fire in the New World I'm thinking!"
John Billington chuckled as if the cold of winter in the wilderness were a merry jest.
"Cold, and maybe hungry, and maybe ill of body and sick of heart, but never quite losing courage, I hope, John, comrade!" Constance said, looking up with a smile and a flush that warmed her white cheeks from which heavy thoughts had driven their usual soft colour.