olved to run into what is now called East Harbor, land the
passengers, and allow the long-boat to return to the ship, while the
pinnace lay to until the gale moderated. This was done, but owing to the
shoals, the men were obliged to wade knee-deep to reach land, and the
cold was now so intense that their clothes froze upon them as they
resumed their journey on foot. Well may we believe what William Bradford
later said: "Some of our people who are dead took the original of their
death on that day."

Marching six or seven miles on foot, the party encamped, building a
barricade, or as they called it a "randevous," of pine boughs to protect
them from savage beasts or men, and within it kindling a fire beside
which they sat down to eat such provisions as they had brought, and to
solace themselves with modest draughts of the strong waters they used
but not abused.

The next day the exploration was continued both by sea and land, the
hardy adventurers marching through snow six inches deep, or upon the
loose sands of the beach where the wind flogged them with lashes of icy
spray and stinging shards. In passing through a belt of woods traces of
human presence were to be seen, especially certain young trees bent down
and their tops made fast to the earth. Stepping aside to examine one of
these, William Bradford suddenly found his leg inclosed in a noose,
while the tree, released and springing upward, would have carried him
ignominiously with it had not he seized the trunk of another sapling,
and lustily shouted for help. His comrades came running back, and not
without laughter and some grim pleasantries released him. Stephen
Hopkins alone understood the trap, and cutting from it a piece of smooth
fine cord twisted of wood fibres handed it to Bradford, saying,--

"Here, man, keep it by way of horn-book to teach thee wood-lore in these
salvage countries. It is the moral of what we used to see among the
Bermoothes some ten years gone by. Ay, and the traps too. I've seen many
a wild thing, deer or what not, jerked up by the leg and hanging from a
tree like Absalom, until its master came along to cut its throat and
dress it, as it hung."

"Glad am I that no such master came to release me," said Bradford
laughing ruefully as he rubbed his leg and limped along.

"So thou wert in the Bermudas, Hopkins?" asked Standish who was of the
walking party; "wast buccaneering?"

"Nay, Captain, all men do not follow thy trade," replied Hopkin