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Upon that same morning, Thomas Walford, the smith of
Mishawum, was standing alone at his wilderness forge. The
promontory of Mishawum was a narrow tongue of land, thrust
boldly out into the bay, having the Mystic River on its northern,
and the Charles River on its southern side, and advancing very
closely to the craggy heights of Shawmut. Like its neighbor
peninsula, Mishawum was a rough, precipitous spot of ground,
with vast granite rocks frowning here and there through the
masses of pine and cedar, which with white and black oak,
hickory, birch, and maple, covered its sides with wild and
ancient verdure. Thomas Walford has already been presented
to the reader's acquaintance. His residence, consisting of a
thatched log-house, with a kind of shed or shanty which he
called his forge, was surrounded by a strong palisade of cedar
trunks, ten feet in height and driven deeply into the earth. The
general aspect of the place, as may be easily conceived, was
wild, rugged, and solitary. The house stood not far from the
water's edge, upon the southern declivity of a high and precipitous
hill which sloped boldly down into the bay, and the prospect,
excepting the remarkable feature of the triple-headed,
craggy peninsula opposite, which of course presented a more
striking and picturesque effect, when seen from this distance,
was very much the same as that which was spread before the
eyes of the solitary of Shawmut.

The burly smith stood in his half-subterranean and rustic
shanty, whose low thatched roof was supported by the twisted

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and rugged stems of cedars. The glare of a brilliant fire
fell upon his bull-fronted, shaggy head, his rude and swarthy
features, and his massive half-naked bust, while the rest of his
leathern clad person was in dark and heavy shadow. He was
striking millions of sparks from a ponderous and red-hot bar
of iron, at every stroke of his heavy sledge-hammer, and as
he stood there in his hairy strength, the only human figure in
that solitary retreat, he looked more like some gigantic creature
of heathen mythology, some half fabulous Cyclops forging in his
mountainous cavern the thunderbolts of Jupiter, than a real and
tangible mass of human flesh. Although Walford was the only
European inhabitant of the little peninsula where we find him,
and which, as has been seen, he held under the Gorges patent,
the place and the neighborhood were frequented from time to
time by straggling parties of Indians, who were under the nominal
jurisdiction of a peaceable and amiable young sagamore,
who had already formed friendly connections with the scattered
residents of the bay. The natives generally entertained a considerable
respect for the blacksmith, who, although very good-natured,
and never disposed to quarrel with them unnecessarily,
had yet occasionally been known to inflict severe chastisement
upon some of their number who had presumed to meddle
with him.

The smith paused for a moment, as the plash of oars sounded
from the water immediately below him, and listened to learn
if perchance any visitors were about to claim his hospitality that
morning. He supposed, however, for he did not take the trouble
to go to the verge of the cliff to look, that some stray Indians
were landing from their canoes upon the beach below, for the
sake of baking clams, frying fish, boiling lobsters, or for some
other peaceful and culinary purpose, and he had ceased to
trouble himself any more about the matter, when all at once he
heard footsteps scrambling up the steep ascent, and the sound

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of several English voices sounding nearer and nearer to his
own precincts. Presently there was a loud rapping at his outer
gate.

“Hillo, hillo, hillo, Master Walford!” sounded through the
palisades.

“Hillo, hillo,” answered the smith, without stirring from his
anvil. “Who makes such a pother at this early hour in the
morning?”

“Open thy gates, thou inhospitable smith,” said a deep,
muddy voice, which evidently had soaked through the frowzy
beard of Robert Bootefish. “Dost mean to treat thy loving
friends and Christian neighbors as pagan Indians or heathen
Puritans? Here be I, firstly, and secondly Master Humphrey
Rednape, with your friends Cakebread and the Canary Bird, all
come to visit you.”

“They will call me Canary Bird, Master Smith,” whistled a
shrill voice through the palisade, “though they know as well as
you that my name is Bernaby Doryfall. But for the love of
good fellowship let us in. Fear nothing here; we are but honest
friends and Christian white men.”

“Walk in, my masters,” said the burly smith, in a good-humored
voice, swinging wide open the gate to admit his
visitors.

“Good morrow, Master Smith,” said Bootefish, saluting his
host with great dignity, as, followed by his three companions, he
waddled through the gates, with the stately importance of a
plethoric duck. “You have, I think, met with these worthy
gentlemen before. Look you, this be Rednape, a swashing
knave, and a godly but a drunken sot, and a quarreller in his
liquor. And this be Peter Cakebread, a wise fellow, I promise
you, and well-instructed and witty, but a vile coward, who
would cut his shadow from his heels if he could, to prevent
it from following and frightening him forever. And here, this

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yellow-coated, piping, whistling little gentleman, is the Canary
Bird.”

“They call me Cana —”

“Hold your tongue, sot,” interposed the chief butler of Merry-Mount,
indignant at the interruption, as the poor little Canary
Bird was beginning to chirp his favorite tune.

“Ye are all heartily welcome, my masters,” said the smith
after the ceremonious Bootefish had concluded his introductory
harangue; “and now, if each of you will seat himself upon the
softest stump he can find, we will, if you like, proceed to business.
What brings you here so early in the morning, Master
Bootefish?”

“Master Morton of Merry-Mount,” began the Canary Bird.

“Hold your tongue, again, thou impudent yellow-breasted
biped,” interrupted the butler, “and allow your superior to
answer all questions directed to him. Is it thus I am to be
rewarded for my indulgence in taking you out a pleasuring this
fine morning? Have I not bountifully permitted you the healthful
recreation of rowing all the way from Passanogessit? for the
devil an oar have I pulled that you might all be gratified, and now
is this my reward? Be silent all. Good master smith, I pray
your indulgence upon these malapert young followers of mine.”

“A truce to your apologies,” said the blacksmith, “and now
if there be one among you who hath brains enough, I pray to be
informed of the purpose of your visit to my humble abode this
morning. What would ye of me, Master Bootefish, for in truth
thou alone seemest possessed of a sufficient amount of gravity
and sobriety to answer a grave and sober question?”

“I praise Heaven,” answered the respectable Bootefish, in
answer to this address, “I praise Heaven that I am grave and
sober, and, as you remark, the only person of gravity and sobriety
in this worshipful company. Know then, Master Blacksmith,
or in other words, good Master Thomas Walford, that we

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have been specially deputed by his worship, Master Thomas
Morton, armigero and lord of the manor of Merry-Mount, to bid
you to certain mid-summer night revels, which we propose to
keep at the said manor of Merry-Mount, to begin at five of the
clock upon the morrow evening, and to continue throughout the
May-day, which immediately succeedeth, and as many hours
longer as the butt holdeth out.”

“And be this all which bringeth you here this morning, ye
devil's crew?” said the courteous blacksmith to his guests.
“Have I not already been bidden to your mid-summer revels for
May-day, as this pudding-brained Bootefish hath it, and must my
privacy be disturbed for such a marvellous piece of information?
Know, then, that I have already promised your Master of Misrule
to visit him to-morrow, and with that take yourselves off. Away,
ye buffoons; yet stop awhile, your throats shall be moistened
before you go.”

So saying, he thrust his colossal thumb and fore-finger into an
iron ring which was fastened into a large square stone in the
corner of his shanty, and lifting the rough and ponderous granite
slab as easily as if it had been the lid of a snuff-box, he suddenly
disappeared, like some eastern enchanter, into the entrails
of the earth.

When he returned, he bore an earthen jug in his hand, out of
which he filled a pewter can of ample dimensions for each of
his guests, and pledging them himself from the mouth of the
jug, he exclaimed,

“There, my merrymen all, taste ye the rosa solis, which hath
been ripened in the bowels of the wilderness. What sayest thou,
Robin Bootefish, is it potent?”

“Truly good, Master Walford,” said the pompous butler, his
elephant eyes twinkling with delight, “truly thou hast laid bare
a fountain of unequalled purity; thou hast laid up a treasure in
the earth; thou hast found a mine of virgin gold in the

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entrails of the desert. Good master smith, I honor thee and
love thee.”

Peter Cakebread drained his measure of the potent fluid at a
single draught, gasped for breath as if he had swallowed a
sword, according to his paternal avocation, and then with his
toad-like eyes, glittering and almost darting from his leathern
face, he exclaimed, —

“Thou marvellous ogre of Mishawum! Thou potent enchanter!
Let me worship thee. Truly it is comforting to see so sweet
and spiritual a resurrection from beneath you mighty tombstone.
Come then to Merry-Mount, and be king over us, most stalwart
smith, for truly he who can compel such spirits from the bosom
of the earth should fitly rule his fellows.”

To this spontaneous indication of fealty to himself, or rather
to his subterranean treasures, the blacksmith made no further
answer than by filling each man's goblet again, and bidding
them drink it off and begone.

Thus conjured, the respectable party of visitors, having
again done due honor to the blacksmith's cellar, bade their
host farewell.

The blacksmith closed and barred the door as they departed,
and then, after listening for a moment to their confused shouting
and hallooing as they descended the precipitous hills, helter-skelter,
now tumbling over each other, now quarrelling, now
laughing, now cursing, he stepped calmly back to his forge.

“Truly an ill-begotten pack of drunken knaves,” said he to
himself, as he lustily plied the bellows and resumed the occupation
which had been interrupted. “This Master Morton is like
to raise trouble now for himself, by keeping such a nest of
buzzing hornets to swarm about the country, disturbing every
honest man in his business. Small love do I bear yonder
Plymouth crop-ears, yet I swear by my stedge-hammer, I had
rather consort with psalm-singers than with such brawling,

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drunken vermin. Thank fortune, I am fairly rid of them for
to-day; but stay — what mean these shouts yonder? Heaven
forefend the hornets be not all buzzing back again about mine
ears. Stay, that was the yell of a red-breech.”

In truth, during the worthy blacksmith's soliloquy, a complication
of noises had been faintly audible in his sylvan retreat.
For a few moments after the last shouts of his departing visitors
had died away beneath the hill, there had been an absolute
silence. It was, however, soon broken by a confused din of
angry shouts, ferocious execrations, clashing weapons, reports of
fire-arms, and that shrill, unearthly, fiendlike yell of the savage,
which seems to blend into one cry the guttural trill of a Tyrolese
mountaineer with the long howl of a famished wolf.

“The drunken varlets are squabbling with the savages,” said
the smith, after listening attentively. “Have a care, my masters,
or mayhap ye may find the Mishawum red-skins not so
easily tamed as your Passanogessit savages! Yonder coppernosed
Bootefish may chance to find himself without a scalp to
his wooden head before he gets home to his ale butt. By my
beard, he would gain by the loss of it, for methinks his wits be
mightily in need of airing, and I marvel how the fog is to be
ever cleared from his brain, unless a little daylight be let into it
with a tomahawk. Fore George! but there be swinging blows
and bloody coxcombs passing about by this time, I warrant me,”
concluded the smith, as the noise of the scuffle became gradually
louder and more distinct, while the contending parties appeared
to be struggling nearer to the blacksmith's abode.

The worthy blacksmith, who had no particular desire that his
solitude should again be interrupted by the drunken foolery of
his late visitors, was yet something curious as to the cause of
the uproar. As he was, however, about sallying forth to investigate
the matter, the sounds seemed suddenly to cease. Either

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the contest, whatever it might have been, was terminated, or the
scene had been shifted to a more distant spot. He accordingly
relinquished his intention, and went on with his work for a few
minutes, until he was again aroused by confused shouts, yells,
and a variety of other disturbing sounds, which again arrested
his attention.

p285-132

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