Some of the women are busy below, sorting over and arranging their little household stores and stuff with a view to moving on shore, and holding domestic consultations with each other.
A sadness hangs over the little company, for since their arrival the stroke of death has more than once fallen; we find in Bradford's brief record that by the 24th of December six had died.
What came nearest to the hearts of all was the loss of Dorothea Bradford, who, when all the men of the party were absent on an exploring tour, accidentally fell over the side of the vessel and sunk in the deep waters.

What this loss was to the husband and the little company of brothers and sisters appears by no note or word of wailing, merely by a simple entry which says no more than the record on a gravestone, that, "on the 7th of December, Dorothy, wife of William Bradford, fell over and was drowned." That much-enduring company could afford themselves few tears.

Earthly having and enjoying was a thing long since dismissed from their calculations.

They were living on the primitive Christian platform; they "rejoiced as though they rejoiced not," and they "wept as though they wept not," and they "had wives and children as though they had them not," or, as one of themselves expressed it, "We are in all places strangers, pilgrims, travelers and sojourners; our dwelling is but a wandering, our abiding but as a fleeting, our home is nowhere but in the heavens, in that house not made with hands, whose builder and maker is God." When one of their number fell they were forced to do as soldiers in the stress of battle--close up the ranks and press on.
But Mary Winslow, as she sat over her sewing, dropped now and then a tear down on her work for the loss of her sister and counselor and long-tried friend.

From the lower part of the ship floated up, at intervals, snatches of an old English ditty that Margery was singing while she moved to and fro about her work, one of those genuine English melodies, full of a rich, strange mournfulness blent with a soothing pathos: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun Nor the furious winter rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages." The air was familiar, and Mary Winslow, dropping her work in her lap, involuntarily joined in it: "Fear no more the frown of the great, Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe and eat, To thee the reed is as the oak." "There goes a great tree on shore!" quoth little Love Winslow, clapping her hands.