Constance dropped a curtsey as well as the narrow space allowed. She, as well as all the rest of the ship's company, loved and trusted this kind young doctor who had left his wife and child to follow him later, and was crossing the seas with the pilgrims as the minister to their suffering bodies.
"Indeed, Doctor Fuller, I will accept the office, though it will make me so proud that I shall be turned out of the community as unfit to be part of it," she cried.
There followed after this long days of bleak endurance, the cold increasing, the storms raging. For days at a time the _Mayflower_ lay to, stripped of all sail, floating in currents, thrown up on high, driven nose down into an apparently bottomless pit, the least of man's work cut off from man's natural life, left to herself in the desert of waters, packed with the humanity that crowded her.
Yet through it all the men and women she bore did not lose heart, but beneath the overwhelming misery of their condition kept alive the sense of God's sustaining providence and personal direction.
Thus it was not strange that the little ship and her company proved stronger than the wintry storms, that she survived and, once more hoisting sail, kept on her westerly course.
It was November; for two months and more the _Mayflower_ had sailed and drifted, but now there were signs that the hazardous voyage was nearly over.
"Come on deck, Con! Come on deck!" shouted Giles Hopkins. "All hands on deck for the first glimpse of land! They think 'twill soon be seen."
Pale, weak, but quivering with joy, the pilgrims gathered on the _Mayflower's_ decks.
Rose Standish was but the shadow of her sweet self. Constance lingered to give the final touches to Rose's toilette; they were all striving to make some little festal appearance to their garments suitably to greet the New World.
"I can hardly go up, dear Connie," murmured Rose. "The _Mayflower_ hath taken all the vigour from this poor rose."
"When the mayflower goes, the rose blooms," said Constance. "Wait till we get ashore and you are in your own warm, cozy home!"
Rose shook her head, but made an effort to greet Captain Myles brightly as he came to help her to the deck.
"What land are we to see, Myles? Where are we?" she asked.
