e a hunted creature to her covert, bearing
The-Sword-of-the-White-Men safely to his post.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A POT OF BROTH.

Yes, a Pot of Broth, and one more classic than any black broth ever
supped by Spartan; more pregnant of Fate than the hell-broth compounded
by Macbeth's witches; broth in which was brewed the destiny of a great
nation, broth but for whose brewing I certainly, and you, if you be of
Pilgrim strain, had never been, for in its seething liquid was dissolved
a wide-spread and most powerful conspiracy that in its fruition would
have left Plymouth Rock a funeral monument in a field of blood.

Hardly an hour after the pinnace had landed its passengers at the Rock,
and the Pamet, sullenly declining farther hospitality, had proceeded on
his way to meet Obtakiest and report his ill success, when Winslow with
John Hampden and Hobomok entered the village from the north, sore spent
with travel and scanty food, but laden with matter of the profoundest
interest. A Council of the chiefs, including nearly all of the Mayflower
men, was immediately called together in the Common house, now used
altogether for these assemblages and for divine worship, and first
Standish and then Winslow were called upon for their reports.

The captain's was given with military brevity.

"I have brought a hundred bushels of corn and all the men I carried
away. The savages are no doubt disaffected, and a notorious
blood-thirsty rascal called Wituwamat, a Neponset, brought Canacum a
knife wherewith to kill some one, and I fancy 't is myself; but though
he impudently delivered both knife and message in my presence, he so
wrapped up his meaning in new and strange phrases, that I could make but
little of it. Perhaps Master Winslow can read my riddle as well as tell
his own story."

"Methinks I can, Captain," replied Winslow pleasantly; and then in
smooth and polished phrase bearing such resemblance to Standish's rough
and brief utterances as a rapier doth to a battle-axe, the future Grand
Commissioner narrated how he had found Massasoit as it seemed already
dying, for he could neither see, nor swallow either medicine or food.

The sachem's wigwam was so crowded with visitors that the white men
could scarcely edge their way in, and around the bed circled the powahs
at their incantations, "making," said Winslow, "such a hellish noise as
distempered us that were well, and was therefore unlike to ease him that
was sick."

This en