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Strangers. “ ’Tis because of thy voice that this has been writ.”
    “I won’t sign,” said Jack Hilyard.
    “Thou wilt,” ordered Ezra Bigelow, in tone as cold as the mist, “in the name of God.”
    “We compel no one.” William Bradford threw off his heavy wool cape and hat and came down the deck.
    He was one of the youngest of the leaders, raised and trained by Brewster, nurtured by Scripture, a scholar of Hebrew and Greek, yet as tall and rawboned and hardheaded as one of Jones’s own seamen.
    If this plantation had a future, thought Jones, it rested with Bradford.
    “Let it be Goodman Hilyard’s choice,” he said. “A community is well served that has an outsider to look upon and pity.”
    Kate Hilyard jumped in front of Bradford. “We’ll take no pity from no one, Will Bradford, whether Jack signs or not.”
    “ ’Tis his own decision.” Bradford turned his back on Hilyard and looked at the others. “His fate is in the hands of the Lord, within our community or without.”
    “You’d like it if I didn’t sign, wouldn’t you?” shouted Jack Hilyard.
    But Bradford did not respond. Nor did Bigelow, who followed Bradford back to the half deck.
    Christopher Jones knew the Saints to be courageous men of simple faith and true innocence. Only men of faith and innocence would hope to plant a colony in the wilderness with so few skills. But here was the skill that would hold them together. When it came to defending their power, they could be as shrewd and hardheaded as English bishops. William Bradford knew instinctively the way to bring Jack Hilyard into the fold. Ezra Bigelow, for all his declaiming, knew precisely when to be quiet.
    And Jack Hilyard was left shouting like a fool. They hoped he would not sign so they could exclude him and his family, was that it? Well, he was as good as they. And what right did they have to compel any man to sign? He would sign only if he felt like it.
    “Jack!” cried Jones, to save him further embarrassment. “Act as thou wish amongst the elders, but on me ship, act the seaman.”
    “What be you tellin’ me, sir?”
    His wife whacked Hilyard on the shoulder. “He’s tellin’ thee to sign the agreement.”
    “A pledge of submission and obedience?”
    “ ’Tis done by every seaman on this ship,” said Jones.
    “ ’Tis done by every woman on this ship on the day she marries,” said Kate. “A woman knows what’s needed to build a life.”
    That drew murmuring approval from several of the women, and Bradford’s wife Dorothy said, “Well spoken.”
    “If thou don’t know that, Jack,” Kate added, “thou be a bigger fool than I thought for bringin’ us here.”
    Jack was no fool. He had pulled after enough whales to know the need for a firm covenant among men in dangerous places. But he had come to America to make his fortune, and he had served on enough whalers to know that the firm covenant at sea most often enriched those who stayed on land and wrote it.
    He tenderly brushed the droplets of mist from the hair around his wife’s face. “I’ll sign if the master and me wife thinks it’s wise,” he said. But I’ll obey, he thought, only if I think the same.
    And Elder Brewster lost no time completing the reading. “ ‘In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November, in the Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620.’ ”

The Glorious Fourth
    Whatever the Pilgrims faced, they never had to go through this: driving to Cape Cod on the Fourth of July.
    And not in a million nightmares could they have seen themselves as wellspring of faith for this cataract of tourists, vacationers, weekenders, day-trippers, campers, swimmers, boaters, fishermen, artists in oil, in water, in Day-Glo on velvet, and lovers… of seafood, sun, surf, sex in the sand, art in oil and Day-Glo on velvet, antiques and