"Good-bye to you, Ramsay," said Jack abruptly.
"Where to, Jack?" I asked, bestirring myself. I could no more go back to Eli Kirke.
But little Jack Battle was squirming his wooden clogs into the sand as he used to dig his toes, and he answered not a word.
"'Tis early yet for the Grand Banks, Jack. Ben Gillam's ship keeled mast over hull from being ice-logged last spring. The spars were solid with frozen sleet from the crosstrees to the crow's nest. Your dories would be ice-logged for a month yet."
"It—it—it aren't the Grand Banks no more," stammered Jack.
His manner arrested me. The honest blue eyes were shifting and his toes at work in the sand.
"There be gold on the high seas for the taking," vouched Jack. "An your fine gentlemen grow rich that way, why mayn't I?"
"Jack," I warned, thinking of Ben Gillam's craft rigged with sails of as many colours as Joseph's coat, "Jack—is it a pirate-ship?"
"No," laughed the sailor lad sheepishly, "'tis a pirateer," meaning thereby a privateer, which was the same thing in those days.
"Have a care of your pirateers—privateers, Jack," said I, speaking plain. "A gentleman would be run through the gullet with a clean rapier, but you—you—would be strangled by sentence of court or sold to the Barbadoes."
"Not if the warden o' the court owns half the ship," protested Jack, smiling queerly under his shaggy brows.
"Oh—ho!" said I, thinking of Rebecca's father, and beginning to understand who supplied money for Ben Gillam's ventures.
"I'm tired o' being a kick-a-toe and fisticuff to everybody. Now, if I'd been rich and had a ship, I might 'a' sailed for M. Picot."
"Or Mistress Hortense," I added, which brought red spots to the sailor lad's cheeks.
Off he went unanswering, leaving me at gaze across an unbroken sea with a heart heavy as lead.
"Poor fellow! He will get over it," said I.
"Another hath need o' the same medicine," came a voice.
I wheeled, expecting arrest.
A tall, wiry man, with coal-black hair and deep-set eyes and a scar across his swarth skin, smiled pleasantly down at me.
"Now that you have them safely off," said he, still smiling, "better begone yourself."
"I'll thank you for your advice when I ask it, sir," said I, suspicious of the press-gang infesting that port. Involuntarily I caught at my empty sword-belt.
"Permit me," proffered the gentleman, with a broader smile, handing out his own rapier.
"Sir," said I, "your pardon, but the press-gang have been busy of late."
"And the sheriffs may be busy to-day," he laughed. "Black arts don't open stone walls, Ramsay."
And he sent the blade clanking home to its scabbard. His surtout falling open revealed a waistcoat of buckskin. I searched his face.
"M. de Radisson!"
"My hero of rescues," and he offered his hand. "And my quondam nephew," he added, laughing; for his wife was a Kirke of the English branch, and my aunt was married to Eli.
"Eli Kirke cannot know you are here, sir—"
"Eli Kirke need not know," emphasized Radisson dryly.
And remembering bits of rumour about M. Radisson deserting the English Fur Company, I hastened to add: "Eli Kirke shall not know!"
"Your wits jump quick enough sometimes," said he. "Now tell me, whose is she, and what value do you set on her?"
I was speechless with surprise. However wild a life M. Radisson led, his title of nobility was from a king who awarded patents to gentlemen only.
"We neither call our women 'she' nor give them market value," I retorted.
Thereupon M. de Radisson falls in such fits of laughter, I had thought he must split his baldrick.
"Pardieu!" he laughed, wiping the tears away with a tangled lace thing fit for a dandy, "Pardieu! 'Tis not your girl-page? 'Tis the ship o' that hangdog of a New England captain!"
The thing came in a jiffy. Sieur Radisson, having deserted the English Fur Company, was setting up for himself. He was spying the strength of his rivals for the north sea.
"You praised my wit. I have but given you a sample."
Then I told him all I knew of the ship, and M. de Radisson laughed again till he was like to weep.
"How is she called?" he asked.
"The Prince Rupert," said I.
"Ha! Then the same crew of gentlemen's scullions and courtiers' valets stuffing the lockers full o' trash to trade on their master's account. A pretty cheat for the Company!"
The end of it was, M. Radisson invited me to join his ships. "A beaver-skin for a needle, Ramsay! Twenty otter for an awl! Wealth for a merchant prince," he urged.
But no sooner had I grasped at this easy way out of difficulty than the Frenchman interrupts: "Hold back, man! Do you know the risk?"
"No—nor care one rush!"
"Governor Frontenac demands half of the furs for a license to trade, but M. de la Barre, who comes to take his place, is a friend of La Chesnaye's, and La Chesnaye owns our ships——"
"And you go without a license?"
"And the galleys for life——"
"If you're caught," said I.
"Pardieu!" he laughed, "yes—if we're caught!"
"I'd as lief go to the galleys for fur-trading as the scaffold for witchcraft," said I.
With that our bargain was sealed.
Now comes that part of a life which deals with what you will say no one man could do, yet the things were done; with wonders stranger than witchcraft, yet were true. But because you have never lived a sword-length from city pavement, nor seen one man holding his own against a thousand enemies, I pray you deny not these things.
Each life is a shut-in valley, says the jonglière; but Manitou, who strides from peak to peak, knows there is more than one valley, which had been a maxim among the jonglières long before one Danish gentleman assured another there were more things in heaven and earth than philosophy dreamed.
Keen as an arrow from twanging bowstring, Pierre Radisson set sail over the roaring seas for the northern bay.
'Twas midsummer before his busy flittings between Acadia and Quebec brought us to Isle Percée, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Here Chouart Groseillers (his brother-in-law) lay with two of the craziest craft that ever rocked anchor. I scarce had time to note the bulging hulls, stout at stem and stern with deep sinking of the waist, before M. Radisson had climbed the ship's ladder and scattered quick commands that sent sailors shinning up masts, for all the world like so many monkeys. The St. Pierre, our ship was called, in honour of Pierre Radisson; for admiral and captain and trader, all in one, was Sieur Radisson, himself. Indeed, he could reef a sail as handily as any old tar. I have seen him take the wheel and hurl Allemand head-foremost from the pilot-house when that sponge-soaked rascal had imbibed more gin than was safe for the weathering of rocky coasts.
Call him gamester, liar, cheat—what you will! He had his faults, which dogged him down to poverty and ruin; but deeds are proof of the inner man. And look you that judge Pierre Radisson whether your own deeds ring as mettle and true.
The ironwood capstan bars clanked to that seaman's music of running sailors. A clattering of the pawls—the anchor came away. The St. Pierre shook out her bellying sails and the white sheets drew to a full beam wind. Long foam lines crisped away from the prow. Green shores slipped to haze of distance. With her larboard lipping low and that long break of swishing waters against her ports which is as a croon to the seaman's ear, the St. Pierre dipped and rose and sank again to the swell of the billowing sea. Behind, crowding every stitch of canvas and staggering not a little as she got under weigh, ploughed the Ste. Anne. And all about, heaving and falling like the deep breathings of a slumbering monster, were the wide wastes of the sea.
And how I wish that I could take you back with me and show you the two miserable old gallipots which M. de Radisson rode into the roaring forties! 'Twas as if those gods of chance that had held riotous sway over all that watery desolation now first discovered one greater than themselves—a rebel 'mid their warring elements whose will they might harry but could not crush—Man, the king undaunted, coming to his own! Children oft get closer to the essences of truth than older folk grown foolish with too much learning. As a child I used to think what a wonderful moment that was when Man, the master, first appeared on face of earth. How did the beasts and the seas and the winds feel about it, I asked. Did they laugh at this fellow, the most helpless of all things, setting out to conquer all things? Did the beasts pursue him till he made bow and arrow and the seas defy him till he rafted their waters and the winds blow his house down till he dovetailed his timbers? That was the child's way of asking a very old question—Was Man the sport of the elements, the plaything of all the cruel, blind gods of chance?
Now, the position was reversed.
Now, I learned how the Man must have felt when he set about conquering the elements, subduing land and sea and savagery. And in that lies the Homeric greatness of this vast, fresh, New World of ours. Your Old World victor takes up the unfinished work left by generations of men. Your New World hero begins at the pristine task. I pray you, who are born to the nobility of the New World, forget not the glory of your heritage; for the place which God hath given you in the history of the race is one which men must hold in envy when Roman patrician and Norman conqueror and robber baron are as forgotten as the kingly lines of old Egypt.
Fifty ton was our craft, with a crazy pitch to her prow like to take a man's stomach out and the groaning of infernal fiends in her timbers. Twelve men, our crew all told, half of them young gentlemen of fortune from Quebec, with titles as long as a tilting lance and the fighting blood of a Spanish don and the airs of a king's grand chamberlain. Their seamanship you may guess. All of them spent the better part of the first weeks at sea full length below deck. Of a calm day they lolled disconsolate over the taffrail, with one eye alert for flight down the companionway when the ship began to heave.
"What are you doing back there, La Chesnaye?" asks M. de Radisson, with a quiet wink, not speaking loud enough for fo'castle hands to hear.
"Cursing myself for ever coming," growls that young gentleman, scarce turning his head.
"In that case," smiles Sieur Radisson, "you might be better occupied learning to take a hand at the helm."
"Sir," pleads La Chesnaye meekly, "'tis all I can do to ballast the ship below stairs."
"'Tis laziness, La Chesnaye," vows Radisson. "Men are thrown overboard for less!"
"A quick death were kindness, sir," groans La Chesnaye, scalloping in blind zigzags for the stair. "May I be shot from that cannon, sir, if I ever set foot on ship again!"
M. de Radisson laughs, and the place of the merchant prince is taken by the marquis with a face the gray shade of old Tibbie's linen a-bleaching on the green.
The Ste. Anne, under Groseillers—whom we called Mr. Gooseberry when he wore his airs too mightily—was better manned, having able-bodied seamen, who distinguished themselves by a mutiny.
Of which you shall hear anon.
But the spirits of our young gentlemen took a prodigious leap upward as their bodies became used to the crazy pace of our ship, whose gait I can compare only to the bouncings of loose timber in a heavy sea. North of Newfoundland we were blanketed in a dirty fog. That gave our fine gentlemen a chance to right end up.
"Every man of them a good seaman in calm weather," Sieur Radisson observed; and he put them through marine drill all that week. La Chesnaye so far recovered that he sometimes kept me company at the bowsprit, where we watched the clumsy gambols of the porpoise, racing and leaping and turning somersets in mid-air about the ship. Once, I mind the St. Pierre gave a tremor as if her keel had grated a reef; and a monster silver-stripe heaved up on our lee. 'Twas a finback whale, M. Radisson explained; and he protested against the impudence of scratching its back on our keel. As we sailed farther north many a school of rolling finbacks glistened silver in the sun or rose higher than our masthead, when one took the death-leap to escape its leagued foes—swordfish and thrasher and shark. And to give you an idea of the fearful tide breaking through the narrow fiords of that rock-bound coast, I may tell you that La Chesnaye and I have often seen those leviathans of the deep swept tail foremost by the driving tide into some land-locked lagoon and there beached high on naked rock. That was the sea M. Radisson was navigating with cockle-shell boats unstable of pace as a vagrant with rickets.
Even Forêt, the marquis, forgot his dainty-fingered dignity and took a hand at the fishing of a shark one day. The cook had put out a bait at the end of a chain fastened to the capstan, when comes a mighty tug; and the cook shouts out that he has caught a shark. All hands are hailed to the capstan, and every one of my fine gentlemen grasps an ironwood bar to hoist the monster home. I wish you had seen their faces when the shark's great head with six rows of teeth in its gaping upper jaw came abreast the deck! Half the fellows were for throwing down the bars and running, but the other half would not show white feather before the common sailors; and two or three clanking rounds brought the great shark lashing to deck in a way that sent us scuttling up the ratlines. But Forêt would not be beaten. He thrust an ironwood bar across the gaping jaws. The shark tore the wood to splinters. There was a rip that snapped the cable with the report of a pistol, and the great fish was over deck and away in the sea.
By this, you may know, we had all left our landsmen's fears far south of Belle Isle and were filled with the spirit of that wild, tempestuous world where the storm never sleeps and the cordage pipes on calmest day and the beam seas break in the long, low, growling wash that warns the coming hurricane.
But if you think we were a Noah's ark of solemn faces 'mid all that warring desolation, you are much mistaken. I doubt if lamentations ever did as much to lift mankind to victory as the naughty glee of the shrieking fife. And of glee, we had a-plenty on all that voyage north.
La Chesnaye, son of the merchant prince who owned our ships, played cock-o'-the-walk, took rank next to M. Radisson, and called himself deputy-governor. Forêt, whose father had a stretch of barren shingle on The Labrador, and who had himself received letters patent from His Most Christian Majesty for a marquisate, swore he would be cursed if he gave the pas to La Chesnaye, or any other commoner. And M. de Radisson was as great a stickler for fine points as any of the new-fledged colonials. When he called a conference, he must needs muster to the quarter-deck by beat of drum, with a tipstaff, having a silver bauble of a stick, leading the way. This office fell to Godefroy, the trader, a fellow with the figure of a slat and a scalp tonsured bare as a billiard-ball by Indian hunting-knife. Spite of many a thwack from the flat of M. de Radisson's sword, Godefroy would carry the silver mace to the chant of a "diddle-dee-dee," which he was always humming in a sand-papered voice wherever he went. At beat of drum for conference we all came scrambling down the ratlines like tumbling acrobats of a country fair, Godefroy grasps his silver stick.
"Fall in line, there, deputy-governor, diddle-dee-dee!"
La Chesnaye cuffs the fellow's ears.
"Diddle-dee-dee! Come on, marquis. Does Your High Mightiness give place to a merchant's son? Heaven help you, gentlemen! Come on! Come on! Diddle-dee-dee!"
And we all march to M. de Radisson's cabin and sit down gravely at a long table.
"Pot o' beer, tipstaff," orders Radisson; and Godefroy goes off slapping his buckskins with glee.
M. Radisson no more takes off his hat than a king's ambassador, but he waits for La Chesnaye and Forêt to uncover. The merchant strums on the table and glares at the marquis, and the marquis looks at the skylight, waiting for the merchant; and the end of it is M. Radisson must give Godefroy the wink, who knocks both their hats off at once, explaining that a landsman can ill keep his legs on the sea, and the sea is no respecter of persons. Once, at the end of his byplay between the two young fire-eaters, the sea lurched in earnest, a mighty pitch that threw tipstaff sprawling across the table. And the beer went full in the face of the marquis.
"There's a health to you, Forêt!" roared the merchant in whirlwinds of laughter.
But the marquis had gone heels over head. He gained his feet as the ship righted, whipped out his rapier, vowed he would dust somebody's jacket, and caught up Godefroy on the tip of his sword by the rascal's belt.
"Forêt, I protest," cried M. Radisson, scarce speaking for laughter, "I protest there's nothing spilt but the beer and the dignity! The beer can be mopped. There's plenty o' dignity in the same barrel. Save Godefroy! We can ill spare a man!"
With a quick rip of his own rapier, Radisson had cut Godefroy's belt and the wretch scuttled up-stairs out of reach. Sailors wiped up the beer, and all hands braced chairs 'twixt table and wall to await M. Radisson's pleasure.
He had dressed with unusual care. Gold braid edged his black doublet, and fine old Mechlin came back over his sleeves in deep ruffs. And in his eyes the glancing light of steel striking fire.
Bidding the sailors take themselves off, M. Radisson drew his blade from the scabbard and called attention by a sharp rap.
Quick silence fell, and he laid the naked sword across the table. His right hand played with the jewelled hilt. Across his breast were medals and stars of honour given him by many monarchs. I think as we looked at our leader every man of us would have esteemed it honour to sail the seas in a tub if Pierre Radisson captained the craft.
But his left hand was twitching uneasily at his chin, and in his eyes were the restless lights.
"Gentlemen," says he, as unconcerned as if he were forecasting weather, "gentlemen, I seem to have heard that the crew of my kinsman's ship have mutinied."
We were nigh a thousand leagues from rescue or help that day!
"Mutinied!" shrieks La Chesnaye, with his voice all athrill. "Mutinied? What will my father have to say?"
And he clapped his tilted chair to floor with a thwack that might have echoed to the fo'castle.
"Shall I lend you a trumpet, La Chesnaye, or—or a fife?" asks M. Radisson, very quiet.
And I assure you there was no more loud talk in the cabin that day; only the long, low wash and pound and break of the seas abeam, with the surly wail that portends storm. I do not believe any of us ever realized what a frail chip was between life and eternity till we heard the wrenching and groaning of the timbers in the silence that followed M. Radisson's words.
"Gentlemen," continues M. Radisson, softer-spoken than before, "if any one here is for turning back, I desire him to stand up and say so."
The St. Pierre shipped a sea with a strain like to tear her asunder, and waters went sizzling through lee scuppers above with the hiss of a cataract. M. Radisson inverts a sand-glass and watches the sand trickle through till the last grain drops. Then he turns to us.
Two or three faces had gone white as the driving spray, but never a man opened his lips to counsel return.
"Gentlemen," says M. Radisson, with the fires agleam in his deep-set eyes, "am I to understand that every one here is for going forward at any risk?"
"Aye—aye, sir!" burst like a clarion from our circle.
Pierre Radisson smiled quietly.
"'Tis as well," says he, "for I bade the coward stand up so that I could run him through to the hilt," and he clanked the sword back to its scabbard.
"As I said before," he went on, "the crew on my kinsman's ship have mutinied. There's another trifle to keep under your caps, gentlemen—the mutineers have been running up pirate signals to the crew of this ship——"
"Pirate signals!" interrupts La Chesnaye, whose temper was ever crackling off like grains of gunpowder. "May I ask, sir, how you know the pirate signals?"
M. de Radisson's face was a study in masks.
"You may ask, La Chesnaye," says he, rubbing his chin with a wrinkling smile, "you may ask, but I'm hanged if I answer!"
And from lips that had whitened with fear but a moment before came laughter that set the timbers ringing.
Then Forêt found his tongue.
"Hang a baker's dozen of the mutineers from the yard-arm!"
"A baker's dozen is thirteen, Forêt," retorted Radisson, "and the Ste. Anne's crew numbers fifteen."
"Hang 'em in effigy as they do in Quebec," persists Forêt.
Pierre Radisson only pointed over his shoulder to the port astern. Crowding to the glazed window we saw a dozen scarecrows tossing from the crosstrees of Groseillers's ship.
"What does Captain Radisson advise?" asks La Chesnaye.
"La Chesnaye," says Radisson, "I never advise. I act!"
Quick as tongue could trip off the orders, eyes everywhere, thought and act jumping together, Pierre Radisson had given each one his part, and pledged our obedience, though he bade us walk the plank blindfold to the sea. Two men were set to transferring powder and arms from the forehold to our captain's cabin. One went hand over fist up the mainmast and signalled the Ste. Anne to close up. Jackets were torn from the deck-guns and the guns slued round to sweep from stem to stern. With a jarring of cranes and shaking of timbers, the two ships bumped together; and a more surprised looking lot of men than the crew of the Ste. Anne you never saw. Pierre Radisson had played the rogues their own game in the matter of signals. They had thought the St. Pierre in league, else would they not have come into his trap so readily. Before they had time to protest, the ships were together, the two captains conferring face to face across the rails, and our sailors standing at arms ready to shoot down the first rebel.
At a word, the St. Pierre's crew were scrambling to the Ste. Anne's decks. A shout through the trumpet of the Ste. Anne's bo'swain and the mutinous crew of the Ste. Anne were marched aboard the St. Pierre.
Then M. Radisson's plan became plain. The other ship was the better. M. de Radisson was determined that at least one crew should reach the bay. Besides, as he had half-laughingly insinuated, perhaps he knew better than Chouart Groseillers of the Ste. Anne how to manage mutinous pirates. Of the St. Pierre's crew, three only remained with Radisson: Allemand, in the pilot-house; young Jean Groseillers, Chouart's son, on guard aft; and myself, armed with a musket, to sweep the fo'castle.
And all the time there was such a rolling sea the two ships were like to pound their bulwarks to kindling wood. Then the Ste. Anne eased off, sheered away, and wore ship for open sea.
Pierre Radisson turned. There faced him that grim, mutinous crew.
No need to try orders then. 'Twas the cat those men wanted. Before Pierre Radisson had said one word the mutineers had discovered the deck cannon pointing amidships. A shout of baffled rage broke from the ragged group. Quick words passed from man to man. A noisy, shuffling, indeterminate movement! The crowd swayed forward. There was a sudden rush from the fo'castle to the waist. They had charged to gain possession of the powder cabin—Pierre Radisson raised his pistol. For an instant they held back. Then a barefoot fellow struck at him with a belaying-pin.
'Twere better for that man if he had called down the lightnings.
Quicker than I can tell it, Pierre Radisson had sprung upon him. The Frenchman's left arm had coiled the fellow round the waist. Our leader's pistol flashed a circle that drove the rabble back, and the ringleader went hurling head foremost through the main hatch with force like to flatten his skull to a gun-wad. There was a mighty scattering back to the fo'castle then, I promise you.
Pierre Radisson uttered never a syllable. He pointed to the fore scuttle. Then he pointed to the men. Down they went under hatches—rats in a trap!
"Tramp—bundle—pack!" says he, as the last man bobbed below.
But with a ping that raised the hair from my head, came a pistol-shot from the mainmasts. There, perched astride of the crosstrees, was a rascal mutineer popping at M. Radisson bold as you please.
Our captain took off his beaver, felt the bullet-hole in the brim, looked up coolly, and pointed his musket.
"Drop that pistol!" said he.
The fellow yelped out fear. Down clattered his weapon to the deck.
"Now sit there," ordered Radisson, replacing his beaver. "Sit there till I give you leave to come down!"
Allemand, the pilot, had lost his head and was steering a course crooked as a worm fence. Young Jean Groseillers went white as the sails, and scarce had strength to slue the guns back or jacket their muzzles. And, instead of curling forward with the crest of the roll, the spray began to chop off backward in little short waves like a horse's mane—a bad, bad sign, as any seaman will testify. And I, with my musket at guard above the fo'scuttle, had a heart thumping harder than the pounding seas.
And what do you think M. Radisson said as he wiped the sweat from his brow?
"A pretty pickle,[1] indeed, to ground a man's plans on such dashed impudence! Hazard o' life! As if a man would turn from his course for them! Spiders o' hell! I'll strike my topmast to Death himself first—so the devil go with them! The blind gods may crush—they shall not conquer! They may kill—but I snap my fingers in their faces to the death! A pretty pickle, indeed! Batten down the hatches, Ramsay. Lend Jean a hand to get the guns under cover. There's a storm!"
And "a pretty pickle" it was, with the "porps" floundering bodily from wave-crest to wave-crest, the winds shrieking through the cordage, and the storm-fiends brewing a hurricane like to engulf master and crew!
In the forehold were rebels who would sink us all to the bottom of the sea if they could. Aft, powder enough to blow us all to eternity! On deck, one brave man, two chittering lads, and a gin-soaked pilot steering a crazy course among the fanged reefs of Labrador.
The wind backed and veered and came again so that a weather-vane could not have shown which way it blew. At one moment the ship was jumping from wave to wave before the wind with a single tiny storms'l out. At another I had thought we must scud under bare poles for open sea.
The coast sheered vertical like a rampart wall, and up—up—up that dripping rock clutched the tossing billows like watery arms of sirens. It needed no seaman to prophecy the fate of a boat caught between that rock and a nor'easter.
Then the gale would veer, and out raced a tidal billow of waters like to take the St. Pierre broadside.
"Helm hard alee!" shouts Radisson in the teeth of the gale.
For the fraction of a second we were driving before the oncoming rush.
Then the sea rose up in a wall on our rear.
There was a shattering crash. The billows broke in sheets of whipping spray. The decks swam with a river of waters. One gun wrenched loose, teetered to the roll, and pitched into the seething deep. Yard-arms came splintering to the deck. There was a roaring of waters over us, under us, round us—then M. de Radisson, Jean, and I went slithering forward like water-rats caught in a whirlpool. My feet struck against windlass chains. Jean saved himself from washing overboard by cannoning into me; but before the dripping bowsprit rose again to mount the swell, M. de Radisson was up, shaking off spray like a water-dog and muttering to himself: "To be snuffed out like a candle—no—no—no, my fine fellows! Leap to meet it! Leap to meet it!"
And he was at the wheel himself.
The ship gave a long shudder, staggered back, stern foremost, to the trough of the swell, and lay weltering cataracts from her decks.
There was a pause of sudden quiet, the quiet of forces gathering strength for fiercer assault; and in that pause I remembered something had flung over me in the wash of the breaking sea. I looked to the crosstrees. The mutineer was gone.
It was the first and last time that I have ever seen a smoking sea. The ocean boiled white. Far out in the wake of the tide that had caught us foam smoked on the track of the ploughing waters. Waters—did I say? You could not see waters for the spray.
Then Jean bade me look how the stays'l had been torn to flutters, and we both set about righting decks.
For all I could see, M. Radisson was simply holding the wheel; but the holding of a wheel in stress is mighty fine seamanship. To keep that old gallipot from shipping seas in the tempest of billows was a more ticklish task than rope-walking a whirlpool or sacking a city.
Presently came two sounds—a swish of seas at our stern and the booming of surf against coast rocks. Then M. de Radisson did the maddest thing that ever I have seen. Both sounds told of the coming tempest. The veering wind settled to a driving nor'easter, and M. de Radisson was steering straight as a bullet to the mark for that rock wall.
But I did not know that coast. When our ship was but three lengths from destruction the St. Pierre answered to the helm. Her prow rounded a sharp rock. Then the wind caught her, whirling her right about; but in she went, stern foremost, like a fish, between the narrow walls of a fiord to the quiet shelter of a land-locked lagoon. Pierre Radisson had taken refuge in what the sailors call "a hole in the wall."
There we lay close reefed, both anchors out, while the hurricane held high carnival on the outer sea.
After we had put the St. Pierre ship-shape, M. Radisson stationed Jean and me fore and aft with muskets levelled, and bade us shoot any man but himself who appeared above the hatch. Arming himself with his short, curved hanger—oh, I warrant there would have been a carving below decks had any one resisted him that day!—down he went to the mutineers of the dim-lighted forehold.
Perhaps the storm had quelled the spirit of rebellion; but up came M. de Radisson, followed by the entire crew—one fellow's head in white cotton where it had struck the floor, and every man jumping keen to answer his captain's word.
I must not forget a curious thing that happened as we lay at anchor. The storm had scarce abated when a strange ship poked her jib-boom across the entrance to the lagoon, followed by queer-rigged black sails.
"A pirate!" said Jean.
But Sieur de Radisson only puckered his brows, shifted position so that the St. Pierre could give a broadside, and said nothing.
Then came the strangest part of it. Another ship poked her nose across the other side of the entrance. This was white-rigged.
"Two ships, and they have us cooped!" exclaimed Jean.
"One sporting different sails," said M. de Radisson contemptuously.
"What do you think we should do, sir?" asked Jean.
"Think?" demanded Radisson. "I have stopped thinking! I act! My thoughts are acts."
But all the same his thought at that moment was to let go a broadside that sent the stranger scudding. Judging it unwise to keep a half-mutinous crew too near pirate ships, M. Radisson ordered anchor up. With a deck-mop fastened in defiance to our prow, the St. Pierre slipped out of the harbour through the half-dark of those northern summer nights, and gave the heel to any highwayman waiting to attack as she passed.
The rest of the voyage was a ploughing through brash ice in the straits, with an occasional disembarking at the edge of some great ice-field; but one morning we were all awakened from the heavy sleep of hard-worked seamen by the screaming of a multitude of birds. The air was odorous with the crisp smell of woods. When we came on deck, 'twas to see the St. Pierre anchored in the cove of a river that raced to meet the bay.
The screaming gulls knew not what to make of these strange visitors; for we were at Port Nelson—Fort Bourbon, as the French called it.
And you must not forget that we were French on that trip!
[1] These expressions are M. de Radisson's and not words coined by Mr. Stanhope, as may be seen by reference to the French explorer's account of his own travels, written partly in English, where he repeatedly refers to a "pretty pickle." As for the ships, they seem to have been something between a modern whaler and old-time brigantine.—Author.
The sea was touched to silver by the rising sun—not the warm, red sun of southern climes, nor yet the gold light of the temperate zones, but the cold, clear steel of that great cold land where all the warring elements challenge man to combat. Browned by the early frosts, with a glint of hoar rime on the cobwebs among the grasses, north, south, and west, as far as eye could see, were boundless reaches of hill and valley. And over all lay the rich-toned shadows of early dawn.
The broad river raced not to meet the sea more swiftly than our pulses leaped at sight of that unclaimed world. 'Twas a kingdom waiting for its king. And its king had come! Flush with triumph, sniffing the nutty, autumn air like a war-horse keen for battle, stood M. Radisson all impatience for the conquest of new realms. His jewelled sword-hilt glistened in the sun. The fire that always slumbered in the deep-set eyes flashed to life; and, fetching a deep breath, he said a queer thing to Jean and me.
"'Tis good air, lads," says he; "'tis free!"
And I, who minded that bloody war in which my father lost his all, knew what the words meant, and drank deep.
But for the screaming of the birds there was silence of death. And, indeed, it was death we had come to disenthrone. M. Radisson issued orders quick on top of one another, and the sailors swarmed from the hold like bees from a hive. The drum beat a roundelay that set our blood hopping. There were trumpet-calls back and forth from our ship to the Ste. Anne. Then, to a whacking of cables through blocks, the gig-boats touched water, and all hands were racing for the shore. Godefroy waved a monster flag—lilies of France, gold-wrought on cloth of silk—and Allemand kept beating—and beating—and beating the drum, rumbling out a "Vive le Roi!" to every stroke. Before the keel gravelled on the beach, M. Radisson's foot was on the gunwale, and he leaped ashore. Godefroy followed, flourishing the French flag and yelling at the top of his voice for the King of France. Behind, wading and floundering through the water, came the rest. Godefroy planted the flag-staff. The two crews sent up a shout that startled those strange, primeval silences. Then, M. Radisson stepped forward, hat in hand, whipped out his sword, and held it aloft.
"In the name of Louis the Great, King of France," he shouted, "in the name of His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France, I take possession of all these regions!"
At that, Chouart Groseillers shivered a bottle of wine against the flag-pole. Drums beat, fifes shrieked as for battle, and lusty cheers for the king and Sieur Radisson rang and echoed and re-echoed from our crews. Three times did Allemand beat his drum and three times did we cheer. Then Pierre Radisson raised his sword. Every man dropped to knee. Catholics and Protestants, Calvinists and infidels, and riff-raff adventurers who had no religion but what they swore by, bowed their heads to the solemn thanks which Pierre Radisson uttered for safe deliverance from perilous voyage. [1]
That was my first experience of the fusion which the New World makes of Old World divisions. We thought we had taken possession of the land. No, no, 'twas the land had taken possession of us, as the New World ever does, fusing ancient hates and rearing a new race, of which—I wot—no prophet may dare too much!
"He who twiddles his thumbs may gnaw his gums," M. Radisson was wont to say; and I assure you there was no twiddling of thumbs that morning. Bare had M. Radisson finished prayers, when he gave sharp command for Groseillers, his brother-in-law, to look to the building of the Habitation—as the French called their forts—while he himself would go up-stream to seek the Indians for trade. Jean and Godefroy and I were sent to the ship for a birch canoe, which M. Radisson had brought from Quebec.
Our leader took the bow; Godefroy, the stern; Jean and I, the middle. A poise of the steel-shod steering pole, we grasped our paddles, a downward dip, quick followed by Godefroy at the stern, and out shot the canoe, swift, light, lithe, alert, like a racer to the bit, with a gurgling of waters below the gunwales, the keel athrob to the swirl of a turbulent current and a trail of eddies dimpling away on each side. A sharp breeze sprang up abeam, and M. Radisson ordered a blanket sail hoisted on the steersman's fishing-pole. But if you think that he permitted idle paddles because a wind would do the work, you know not the ways of the great explorer. He bade us ply the faster, till the canoe sped between earth and sky like an arrow shot on the level. The shore-line became a blur. Clumps of juniper and pine marched abreast, halted the length of time an eye could rest, and wheeled away. The swift current raced to meet us. The canoe jumped to mount the glossy waves raised by the beam wind. An upward tilt of her prow, and we had skimmed the swell like a winged thing. And all the while M. Radisson's eyes were everywhere. Chips whirled past. There were beaver, he said. Was the water suddenly muddied? Deer had flitted at our approach. Did a fish rise? M. Radisson predicted otter; and where there were otter and beaver and deer, there should be Indians.
As for the rest of us, it had gone to our heads.
We were intoxicated with the wine of the rugged, new, free life. Sky above; wild woods where never foot had trod; air that drew through the nostrils in thirst-quenching draughts; blood atingle to the laughing rhythm of the river—what wonder that youth leaped to a fresh life from the mummified existence of little, old peoples in little, old lands?
We laughed aloud from fulness of life.
Jean laid his paddle athwart, ripped off his buckskin, and smiled back.
"Ramsay feels as if he had room to stretch himself," said he.
"Feel! I feel as if I could run a thousand miles and jump off the ends of the earth—"
"And dive to the bottom of the sea and harness whales and play bowling-balls with the spheres, you young rantipoles," added M. Radisson ironically.
"The fever of the adventurer," said Jean quietly. "My uncle knows it."
I laughed again. "I was wondering if Eli Kirke ever felt this way," I explained.
"Pardieu," retorted M. de Radisson, loosening his coat, "if people moved more and moped less, they'd brew small bile! Come, lads! Come, lads! We waste time!"
And we were paddling again, in quick, light strokes, silent from zest, careless of toil, strenuous from love of it.
Once we came to a bend in the river where the current was so strong that we had dipped our paddles full five minutes against the mill race without gaining an inch. The canoe squirmed like a hunter balking a hedge, and Jean's blade splintered off to the handle. But M. de Radisson braced back to lighten the bow; the prow rose, a sweep of the paddles, and on we sped!
"Hard luck to pull and not gain a boat length," observed Jean.
"Harder luck not to pull, and to be swept back," corrected M. de Radisson.
We left the main river to thread a labyrinthine chain of waterways, where were portages over brambly shores and slippery rocks, with the pace set at a run by M. de Radisson. Jean and I followed with the pack straps across our foreheads and the provisions on our backs. Godefroy brought up the rear with the bark canoe above his head.
At one place, where we disembarked, M. de Radisson traced the sand with the muzzle of his musket.
"A boot-mark," said he, drawing the faint outlines of a footprint, "and egad, it's not a man's foot either!"
"Impossible!" cried Jean. "We are a thousand miles from any white-man."
"There's nothing impossible on this earth," retorted Radisson impatiently. "But pardieu, there are neither white women in this wilderness, nor ghosts wearing women's boots! I'd give my right hand to know what left that mark!"
After that his haste grew feverish. We snatched our meals by turns between paddles. He seemed to grudge the waste of each night, camping late and launching early; and it was Godefroy's complaint that each portage was made so swiftly there was no time for that solace of the common voyageur—the boatman's pipe. For eight days we travelled without seeing a sign of human presence but that one vague footmark in the sand.
"If there are no Indians, how much farther do we go, sir?" asked Godefroy sulkily on the eighth day.
"Till we find them," answered M. Radisson.
And we found them that night.
A deer broke from the woods edging the sand where we camped and had almost bounded across our fire when an Indian darted out a hundred yards behind. Mistaking us for his own people, he whistled the hunter's signal to head the game back. Then he saw that we were strangers. Pulling up of a sudden, he threw back his arms, uttered a cry of surprise, and ran to the hiding of the bush.
M. Radisson was the first to pursue; but where the sand joined the thicket he paused and began tracing the point of his rapier round the outlines of a mark.
"What do you make of it, Godefroy?" he demanded of the trader.
The trader looked quizzically at Sieur de Radisson.
"The toes of that man's moccasin turn out," says Godefroy significantly.
"Then that man is no Indian," retorted M. Radisson, "and hang me, if the size is not that of a woman or a boy!"
And he led back to the beach.
"Yon ship was a pirate," began Godefroy, "and if buccaneers be about——"
"Hold your clack, fool," interrupted M. Radisson, as if the fellow's prattle had cut into his mental plannings; and he bade us heap such a fire as could be seen by Indians for a hundred miles. "If once I can find the Indians," meditated he moodily, "I'll drive out a whole regiment of scoundrels with one snap o' my thumb!"
Black clouds rolled in from the distant bay, boding a stormy night; and Godefroy began to complain that black deeds were done in the dark, and we were forty leagues away from the protection of our ships.
"A pretty target that fire will make of us in the dark," whined the fellow.
M. Radisson's eyes glistened sparks.
"I'd as lief be a pirate myself, as be shot down by pirates," grumbled the trader, giving a hand to hoist the shed of sheet canvas that was to shield us from the rains now aslant against the seaward horizon.
At the words M. Radisson turned sharply; but the heedless fellow gabbled on.
"Where is a man to take cover, an the buccaneers began shooting from the bush behind?" demanded Godefroy belligerently.
M. Radisson reached one arm across the fire. "I'll show you," said he. Taking Godefroy by the ear, with a prick of the sword he led the lazy knave quick march to the beach, where lay our canoe bottom up.
"Crawl under!" M. Radisson lifted the prow.
From very shame—I think it was—Godefroy balked; but M. Radisson brought a cutting rap across the rascal's heels that made him hop. The canoe clapped down, and Godefroy was safe. "Pardieu," mutters Radisson, "such cowards would turn the marrow o' men's bones to butter!"
Sitting on a log, with his feet to the fire, he motioned Jean and me to come into the shelter of the slant canvas; for the clouds were rolling overhead black as ink and the wind roared up the river-bed with a wall of pelting rain. M. Radisson gazed absently into the flame. The steel lights were at play in his eyes, and his lips parted.
"Storm and cold—man and beast—powers of darkness and devil—knaves and fools and his own sins—he must fight them all, lads," says M. Radisson slowly.
"Who must fight them all?" asks Jean.
"The victor," answers Radisson, and warm red flashed to the surface of the cold steel in his eyes.
"Jean," he began, looking up quickly towards the gathering darkness of the woods.
"Sir?"
"'Tis cold enough for hunters to want a fire."
"Is the fire not big enough?"
"Now, where are your wits, lad? If hunters were hiding in that bush, one could see this fire a long way off. The wind is loud. One could go close without being heard. Pardieu, I'll wager a good scout could creep up to a log like this"—touching the pine on which we sat—-"and hear every word we are saying without a soul being the wiser!"
Jean turned with a start, half-suspecting a spy. Radisson laughed.
"Must I spell it out? Eh, lad, afraid to go?"
The taunt bit home. Without a word Jean and I rose.
"Keep far enough apart so that one of you will escape back with the news," called Radisson, as we plunged into the woods.
Of the one who might not escape Pierre Radisson gave small heed, and so did we. Jean took the river side and I the inland thicket, feeling our way blindly through the blackness of forest and storm and night. Then the rain broke—broke in lashing whip-cords with the crackle of fire. Jean whistled and I signalled back; but there was soon such a pounding of rains it drowned every sound. For all the help one could give the other we might have been a thousand miles apart. I looked back. M. Radisson's fire threw a dull glare into the cavernous upper darkness. That was guide enough. Jean could keep his course by the river.
It was plunging into a black nowhere. The trees thinned. I seemed to be running across the open, the rain driving me forward like a wet sail, a roar of wind in my ears and the words of M. Radisson ringing their battle-cry—"Storm and cold—man and beast—powers of darkness and devil—knaves and fools and his own sins—he must fight them all!"—"Who?"—"The victor!"
Of a sudden the dripping thicket gave back a glint. Had I run in a circle and come again on M. Radisson's fire? Behind, a dim glare still shone against the sky.
Another glint from the rain drip, and I dropped like a deer hit on the run. Not a gunshot away was a hunter's fire. Against the fire were three figures. One stood with his face towards me, an Indian dressed in buckskin, the man who had pursued the deer. The second was hid by an intervening tree; and as I watched, the third faded into the phaseless dark. Who were these night-watchers? I liked not that business of spying—though you may call it scouting, if you will, but I must either report nothing to M. Radisson, or find out more.
I turned to skirt the group. A pistol-shot rang through the wood. A sword flashed to light. Before I had time to think, but not—thanks to M. Picot's lessons long ago—not before I had my own rapier out, an assassin blade would have taken me unawares.
I was on guard. Steel struck fire in red spots as it clashed against steel. One thrust, I know, touched home; for the pistol went whirling out of my adversary's hand, and his sword came through the dark with the hiss of a serpent. Again I seemed to be in Boston Town; but the hunting room had become a northland forest, M. Picot, a bearded man with his back to the fire and his face in the dark, and our slim foils, naked swords that pressed and parried and thrust in many a foul such as the French doctor had taught me was a trick of the infamous Blood! Indeed, I could have sworn that a woman's voice cried out through the dark; but the rain was in my face and a sword striking red against my own. Thanks, yes, thanks a thousand times to M. Picot's lessons; for again and yet again I foiled that lunge of the unscrupulous swordsman till I heard my adversary swearing, between clinched teeth. He retreated. I followed. By a dexterous spring he put himself under cover of the woods, leaving me in the open. My only practice in swordsmanship had been with M. Picot, and it was not till long years after that I minded how those lessons seemed to forestall and counter the moves of that ambushed assassin. But the baffling thing was that my enemy's moves countered mine in the very same way.
He had not seen my face, for my back was turned when he came up, and my face in the shade when I whirled. But I stood between the dark and the fire. Every motion of mine he could forecast, while I could but parry and retreat, striving in vain to lure him out, to get into the dark, to strike what I could not see, pushed back and back till I felt the rush that aims not to disarm but to slay.
Our weapons rang with a glint of green lightnings. A piece of steel flew up. My rapier had snapped short at the hilt. A cold point was at my throat pressing me down and back as the foil had caught me that night in M. Picot's house. To right, to left, I swerved, the last blind rushes of the fugitive man.…
"Storm and cold—man and beast—powers of darkness and devil—he must fight them all——"
The memory of those words spurred like a battle-cry. Beaten? Not yet! "Leap to meet it! Leap to meet it!"
I caught the blade at my throat with a naked hand. Hot floods drenched my face. The earth swam. We were both in the light now, a bearded man pushing his sword through my hand, and I falling down. Then my antagonist leaped back with a shivering cry of horror, flung the weapon to the ground and fled into the dark.
And when I sat up my right hand held the hilt of a broken rapier, the left was gashed across the palm, and a sword as like my own as two peas lay at my feet.
The fire was there. But I was alone.