CIHM Microfiche Series (I^Aonographs) ICI\AH Collection de microfiches (monographies) [g] Canadian InatituM for Historical MIcrorapradiictions / Inatitut Canadian do microropraductlana Mstoriquoa ©1995 Tha Imtitutt hn atttmpttd to obtain tha taatt orijinal copy anilaMa for filmini. Faaturas of thii eo|iy whkh may ba blMioyaphkaHy uniqua, whidi may ahar any of tha knaiai in ttM raproduetien, or oliidi may lignifieantly ehan«a tha uaual mathod of fUmint, ara chackad balow. 0Colo^PPLIED IIVHGE I ^^ 16SJ Eost Main Street g'JB Rochester. New York 1 4609 USA :^g; (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^= (716) 288 - 598'J - Fa., ^'- -^ ? V '' Ki ^c^ iMsmmmmm w {• mr -«lllllf»iiPi HERALDS OF EMPIRE 1 ilwalbs of empire BEING THE STORY OF ONE RAMSAY STANHOPE LinrrniAMT to Piuu Radiuon in tmi No.th.ii. Fo. T.aii. BY A. C. LAUT AUTHOR OF LORDS OF THE NORTH TORONTO, CANADA WILLIAM BRIGGS 1902 EnteKd uconlliic to Act of the P»rii«inent of CaiwU in the y«« ,,o2 By A. C. LAUT •« the Deputment of Agileultun ^tt ritUt nmvtd I DEDICATED TO THE NEW WORLD NOBILITY Jl»ow S leanuii iM tfte man mu^ babe frtt »Bten U ttt about conquning t|» ttmtntt, *uS» Duint lant anb tta anb irabagnr. Wnb in tbat titt tbe tfonuric gteatne^jl of m$ baft fmft gum Wetib of ouc^. gaut 4Mb C^otlb tttm taht^ uy tbe nnfin.- irtrt tttrt lift if gtnnation^ of men. gout JUm Wotn beto btgin^ at tbe ptiftine ta;rt. 9 ;ta; ;ou, »bo ate batn to tbe nobilitp of tbe gua »ot», forget not tbe Blotp of ;out beritaae ; fot tbe place uibicb " Now. my collar was point-de-vice of prime Tafrn'oreTh''"' "'"^- ^^ ""^'^'^ -'-- was more than a vam lad could stomach- and what youth of his first teens hath not a van'y hidden about him somewhere? und'e7tSr, '''"* T ^"' '^^ ^""''^ ^"-^ the ass under the same yoke, sir," said I. drawing mvself up far as ever high heels would lift ^ me St "h*?'*^ t"^^ ^°' " ™""*^- Then he told "ess ht 'P^'^^^°"'^^™'n& «y spiritual blind- tne error of my way. At that, old nurse must needs take fire. passiot!!" T ' ^^^ ^'■°'" '^^ ^^'' °' «'<^h com- prettv hLv '■ ''f' '" *^^ ^^^'^ Lord makes sCi^to hf T- !"'"■' *^''^'"^ P^^^'« before swine to shave his head like a cannon-ball "- th.s with a look at my uncle's crown-" or to tSL:^ ""'^ ^-'-- «^e a ragged "Tibbie, hold your tongue!" I order. ' II HERALDS OF EMPIRE " Silence were fitter for fools and children," says Eli Kirke loftily. There comes a time when every life must choose whether to laugh or weep over trivial pains, and when a cut may be broken on the foil of that glancing mirth which the good Crea- tor gave mankind to keep our race from going mad. It me to rr.i^ on the night of my arrival on the wharves of Boston Town. We lumbered up through the straggling vil- lage in one of those clumsy coaches that had late become the terror of foot-passengers in Lon- don crowds. My aunt pointed with a pride that was colonial to the fine light which the towns- people had erected on Beacon Hill; and told me pretty legends of Rattlesnake Hill that fired the desire to explore those inland dangers. I noticed that the rubble-faced houses showed lanterns in iron clamps above most of the door- ways. My kinsman's house stood on the verge of the wilds — rough stone below, timbered plas- ter above, with a circle of bay windows mid- way, like an umbrella. High windows were safer in case of attack from savages. Aunt Ruth explained; and I mentally set to scaling rope ladders in and out of those windows. We drew up before the front garden and entered by a turnstile with flying arms* Many 13 WHAT ARE KING-KILLERS? a ride have little Rebecca Stocking, of the court-house, and Ben Gillam, the captain's son. and Jack Battle, the sailor lad, had, perched on that turnstile, while I ran pushing and jumping on, as the arms flew creaking round. The home-coming was not auspicious. Yet I thought no resentment against my uncle I realized too well how the bloody revenge of the royalists was turning the hearts of England to stone. One morning I recall, when my poor father lay a-bed of the gout and there came a roar through London streets as of a burst ocean dike. Before Tibbie could say no, I had snatched up a cap and was off. God spare me another such sight! In all my wild wanderings have I never seen savages do worse. Through the streets of London before the shoutmgs of a rabble rout was whipped an old white-haired man. In front of him rumbled a cart; in the cart, the axeman, laving wet hands- at the axeman's feet, the head of a regicide-^ all to intimidate that old, white-haired man fearlessly erect, singing a psalm. When they reached the shambles, know you what they did? Go read the old court records and learn what that sentence meant when a man's body was cast into fire before his living eyes! All the HERALDS OF EMPIRE while, watching from a window were the princes and their shameless ones. Ah, yes! God wot, I understood Eli Kirke's bitterness! But the beginning was not auspicious, and my best intentions presaged worse. For in- stance, one morning my uncle was sounding my convictions — he was ever sounding other peo- ple's convictions — "touching the divine right of kings." Thinking to give strength to con- tempt for that doctrine, I applied to it one for- cible word I had oft heard used by gentlemen of the cloth. Had I shot a gun across the table, the effect could not have been worse. The serv- ing maid fell all of a heap against the pantry door. Old Tibbie yelped out with laughter, and then nigh choked. Aunt Ruth glanced from me to Eli Kirke with a timid look in her eye; but Eli Kirke gazed stolidly into my soul as he would read whether I scoffed or no. Thereafter he nailed up a little box to re- ceive fines for blasphemy. " To be plucked as a brand from the burn- ing," I hear him say, fetching a mighty sigh. But sweet, calm Aunt Ruth, stitching at some spotless kerchief, intercedes. "Let us be thankful the lad hath come to us." 14 WHAT ARE KING-KILLERS? TT 'i^^""f ^*'* '" ^°'^' °^ ^*"»ty/' deplores Uncle Kirke. "But all things are possible," Aunt Ruth softly interposes. " All things are possible," concedes Eli Kirke grudgingly, " but thou knowest, Ruth, all things are not probable! " ' s» And I, knowing my uncle loved an argument as dearly as merry gentlemen love a glass, slip away leg-bail for the docks, where sits Ben Gil- lam among the spars spinning sailor yams to Jack Battle of the great north sea, whither his he half-wild Frenchman, who married an Eng- lish kinswoman of Eli Kirke's and went where never man went and came back with so many pelts that the Quebec governor wanted to build a fortress of beaver fur;* or of the English squadron, rocking to the harbour tide, fresh from winning the Dutch of Manhattan, and ready to subdue malcontents of Boston Town Then Jack Battle, the sailor lad from no one knows where, liv i ng no one knows how, digs non with fact. Radisson was fined for going overland to butrfo'rra.''^hr«!'' '""-r'' p-™'-'-. '"«"-;: daThter ^f I T k l""^' ^" ^'"^"'^ kinswoman was a HERALDS OF EMPIRE his bare toes into the sand and asks under his breath if we have heard about king-killers. "What are king-killers?" demands young Gillam. I discreetly hold my tongue; for a gentleman v/ho supped late with my uncle one night has strangely disappeared, and the rats in the attic have grown boldly loud. " What are king-killers? " asks Gillam. "Them as sent Charles I to his death" explains Jack. "They do say," he whispers fearfully, "one o' them is hid hereabouts now! The king's commission hath ordered to have hounds and Indians run him down." "Pah!" says Gillam, making little of what he had not known, " hounds are only for run- aways," this with a sneering look at odd marks round Jack's wrists. " I am no slave! " vows Jack in crestfallen tones. " Who said ' slave '? " laughs Gillam trium- phantly. " My father saith he is a runaway rat from the Barbadoes," adds Ben to me. With the fear of a hunted animal under his shaggy brows, little Jack tries to read how much is guess. " I am no slave, Ben Gillam," he flings back at hazard; but his voice is thin from fright i6 WHAT ARE KING-KILLERS? " My father saith some planter hath lost ten pound on thee, little slavie," continues Ben. " Pah! Ten pound for such a scrub! He's not worth six! Look at the marks on his arms, Ram- say "—catching the sailor roughly by the wrist. He can say what he likes. He knows chains." Little Jack jerked free and ran along the sands as hard as his bare feet could carry h-m Then I turned to Ben, who had always bullied us both. Dropping the solemn " thou's " which our elders still used, I let him have plain you's." " You— you— mean coward! I've a mind to knock you into the sea! " " Grow bigger first, little billycock," taunts Ben. By the next day I was big enough. Mistress Hortense Hillary was down on the beach with M. Picot's blackamoor, who dogged her heels wherever she went; and presently comes Rebecca Stocking to shovel sand too. Then Ben must show what a big fell-- v he is by kicking over the little maid's cart-loau. " Stop that ! " commands Jack Battle, spring- ing of a sudden from the beach. For an instant, Ben was taken aback. Then the insolence that provokes its own punishment broke forth. 17 HERALDS OF EMPIRE " Go play with your equals, jack-pudding! Jailbirds who ape their betters are strangled up in Quebec," and he kicked down Rebecca's pile too. Rebecca's doll-blue eyes spilled over with tears, but Mistress Hortense was the high- mettled, high-stepping little dame. She fairly stamped her wrath, and to Jack's amaze took him by the hand and marched off with the hau- teur of an empress. Then Ben must call out something about M. PJcot, the French doctor, not being what he ought, and little Hortense having no mother. "Ben," said I quietly, "come out on the pier." The pier ran to deep water. At the far end I spoke. "Not another word against Hortense and Jack! Promise me!" His back was to the water, mine to the shore. He would have promised readily enough, I think, if the other monkeys had not followed— Re- becca with big tear-drops on both cheeks, Hor- tense quivering with wrath. Jack flushed, half shy and half shamed to be championed by a girl. "Come, Ben; 'fore I count three, prom- ise " But he lugged at me. 1 dodged. With a i8 WHAT ARE KING^KILLERS? splash that doused us four, Ben went headlong into the sea. The uplift of the waves caught him. He threw back his arms with a cry. Then he sank like lead. The sailor son of the famous captain could not swim. Rebecca's eyes nigh jumped from her head with fright. Hortense grew white to the hps and shouted for that lout of a blacka- moor sound asleep on the sand. Before I could get my doublet off to dive. Jack Battle was cleaving air like a leaping fish and the waters closed over his heels. Bethink you, who are not withered into for- getfulness of your own merry youth, whether our hearts stopped beating then! But up comes that water-dog of a Jack grip- ping Ben by the scrufJ of the neck; and when by our united strength we had hauled them both on the pier, little Mistress Hortense was the one to roll Gillam on his stomach and bid us Quick! Stand him on his head and pour the water out!" From that day Hortense was Jack's slave. Jack was mine, and Ben was a pampered hero because he never told and took the punishment like a man. But there was never a word more slurring Hortense's unknown origin and Jack's strange wrist marks. 19 CHAPTER II I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED So the happy childhood days sped on, a swift stream past flowered banks. Ben went off to sail the north sea in Captain Gillam's ship. M. Picot. the French doctor, brought a governess from Paris for Hortense, so that we saw little of our playmate, and Jack Battle con- tinued to live like a hunted rat at the docks. My uncle and Rebecca's father, who were beginning to dabble in the fur trade, had joint- ly hired a peripatetic dominie to give us young- sters lessons in Bible history and the three R's. At nr.^n hour I initiated Rebecca into all the thrilling dangers of Indian warfare, and many a time have we had wild escapes from imaginary savages by scaling a rope ladder of my own mak- ing up to the high nursery window. By-and- bye, when school was in and the dominie dozed, I would lower that timid little whiffet of a Puri- tan maid out through the window to the turn- stile. Then I would ride her round till our heads whirled. If Jack Battle came along, Rebecca 20 I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED would jump down primly and run in, for Jack was unknown in the meeting-house, and the meeting-house was Rebecca's measure of the whole world. One day Jacl: lingered. He was carrying something tenderly in a red cambric handker- chief. "Where is Mistress Hortense?" he asked sheepishly. " That silly French woman keeps her caged like a squirrel." Little Jack began tittering and giggling. "Why— that's what I have here," he ex- plained, slipping a bundle of soft fur in my hand. " It's tame! It's for Hortense," said he. " Why don't you take it to her. Jack? " " Take it to her? " reiterated he in a daze. "As long as she gets it, what does it matter who takes it?" With that, he was off across the marshy com- mons, leaving the squirrel in my hand. Forgetting lessons, I ran to M. Picot's house. Th-r.t governess answered the knocker. From Jack Battle to Mistress Hortense! " And I proflfered the squirrel. Though she smirked a world of thanks, she would not take it. Then Hortense came dan- cing d-)wn the hall. 21 .^.^-:t..^1^M'' III HERALDS OF EMPIRE "Am I not grown tall?" she ,.sl.ed, mis- chievously shaking her curls. " No," suid I, looking down to her feet cased in those high slippers French ladies then wore, "'tis your heels!" And we all laughed. Catching sight of the squirrel, Hortense snatched it up with caresses against her neck, and the French governess sputtered out something of which I knew only the word " beau." " Jack is no beau, mademoiselle," said I loft- ily. "Pah! He's a wharf lad." I had thought Hortense would die in fits. " Mademoiselle means the squirrel, Ram- say," she said, choking, her handkerchief to her lips. "Tell Jack thanks, with my love," she called, floating back up the stairs. And the governess set to laughing in the pleasant French way that shakes all over and* has no spite. Emboldened, I asked why Hor- tense could not play with us any more. Hor- tense, she explained, was become too big to prank on the commons. " Faith, mademoiselle," said I ruefully, " an jhe mayn't play war on the commons, what may she play?" "Beau!" teases mademoiselle, perking her lips saucily; and she shut the door in my face. 22 I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED It seemed a silly answer enough, but it put a notion in a lad's head. I would try it on Rebecca. When I re-entered the window, the dominie still slept. Rebecca, the demure monkey, bent over her lesson book as innocently as though there were no turnstiles. " Rebecca," I whispered, leaning across the bench, "you are big enough to have a— what? Guess." "Go away, Ramsay Stanhope!" snapped Rebecca, grown mighty good of a sudden, with glance fast on her white stomacher. "0-ho! Crosspatch," thought I; and from no other motive than transgressing the forbid- den, I reached across to distract the attentive goodness of the prim little baggag- • but— an iron grip lifted me bodily from the bench. It was Eli Kirke, wry-faced, tight-lipped. He had seen all! This was the secret of Mis- tress Rebecca's new-found d igence. No sylla- ble was uttered, but it was the awfullest silence that ever a lad heard. I was lifted rather than led upstairs and left a prisoner in locked room with naught to do but gnaw my conscience and gaze at the woods skirting the crests of the in- land hills. Those rats in the attic grew noisier, and pres- 23 HERALDS OF EMPIRE ently sounds a mighty hallooing outside, with a blowing of hunting-horns and baying of hounds. What ado was this in Boston, where men were only hunters of souls and chasers of devils? The rats fell to sudden quiet, and from the yells of the rabble crowd I could make out only "King-killers! King-killers!" These were no Puritans shouting, but the blackguard sailors and hirelings of the English squadron set loose to hunt down the refugees. The shouting became a roar. Then in burst Eli Kirke's front door. The house was suddenly filled with swearings enough to cram his blasphemy box to the brim. There was a trampling of feet on the stairs, followed by the crashing of over- turned furniture, and the rabble had rushed up with neither let nor hindranL- and were search- ing every room. Who had turned informer on my uncle? Was I not the only royalist in the house? Would suspicion fall on me? But questions were put to flight by a thunderous rapping on the door. It gave as it had been cardboard, and in tumbled a dozen ruffians with gold-lace doublets, cockades and clanking swords. Behind peered Eli Kirke, pale with fear, his eyes asking mine if I knew. True as eyes can speak, mine told him that I knew as well as he. 24 I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED "Bodyo'mel What-a-deuce? Only a lit- tle fighting sparrow of a royalist! " cried a swae- genng colt of a fellow in officer's uniform " ^° °"^ J^ere, lad? " demanded a second And I saw Eli Kirke close his eyes as in prayer. « T 1 ^^^'" ^^''^ ^' *^"w*n& "myself up on my heels, 1 don t understand you. I— am here." They bellowed a laugh and were tumblin? over one another in their haste up the attic stairs. Then my blood went cold with fear, for the memory of that poor old man going to the shambles of London flashed back. A window lifted and fell in the attic gable With a rush I had slammed the door and was cranmg out full length from the window-sill Against the lattice timber-work of the plastered wall below the attic window clung a figure in Geneva cloak, with portmanteau under arm It was the man who had supped so late with Eli Kirke. " Sir," I whispered, fearing to startle him from perilous footing, " let me hold your port- manteau. Jump to the slant roof below." For a second his face went ashy, but he tossed me the bag, gained the shed roof at a leap, snatched back the case, and with a " Lord bless thee, child! " was down and away. 2S HERALDS OF EMPIRE The spurred boots of the searchers clanked on the stairs. A blowing of horns! They were all to horse and off as fast as the hounds coursed away. The deep, far baying of the dogs, now loud, now low, as the trail ran avay or the wind blew clear, told where the chase led inland. If the fugitive but hid till the dogs passed he was safe enough; but of a sudden came the hoarse, furious barkings that signal hot scent. What had happened was plain. The poor wretch had crossed the road and given the hounds clew. The baying came nearer. He had discovered his mistake and was trying to regain the house. Balaam stood saddled to carry Eli Kirke to the docks. 'Twas a wan hope, but in a twinkling I was riding like wind for the barking behind the hill. A white-faced man broke from the brush at crazy pace. " God ha' mercy, sir," I cried, leaping off; "to horse and away! Ride up the brook bed to throw the hounds off." I saw him in saddle, struck Balaam's flank a blow that set pace for a gallop, turned, and — for a second time that day was lifted from the ground. " Pardieu! Clean done! " says a low voice. " 'Tis a pretty trick! " 36 '!(:; I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED And I felt myself set up before a rider. " To save thee from the hounds," says the voice. Scarce knowing whether I dreamed, I looked over my shoulder to see one who was neither royalist nor Puritan— a thin, swarth man, tall and straight as an Indian, bare-shaven and scarred from war, with long, wiry hair and black eyes full of sparks. The pack came on in a whirl to lose scent at the stream, and my rescuer headed our horse away from the rabble, doffing his beaver famil- iarly to the officers galloping past. "Ha!" called one, reining his horse to its haunches, " did that snivelling knave pass this way? " " Do you mean this little gentleman? " The officer galloped oflf. " Keep an eye open, Radisson," he shouted over his shoulder. "'Twere better shut," says M. Radisson softly; and at his name my blood pricked to a jump. Here was he of whom Ben Gillam told, the half-wild Trenchman, who had married the roy- alist kinswoman of Eli Kirke; the hero of Span- ish fights and Turkish wars; the bold explorer of the north sea, who brought back such wealth from an unknown land, governors and merchant 3 27 HERALDS OF EMPIRE " princes were spying his heels like pirates a treas- ure ship. " 'Tis more sport hunting than being hunt- ed," he remarked, with an air of quiet reipinis- cence. His suit was fine-tanned, cream buckskin, garnished with gold braid like any courtier's, with a deep collar of otter. Unmindful of man- ners, I would have turned again to stare, but he bade me guide the horse back to my home. " Lest the hunters ask questions," he ex- plained. "And what," he demanded, "what doth a Httle cavalier in a Puritan hotbed? " " I am even where God hath been pleased to set me, sir." " 'Twas a ticklish place he set thee when I came up." " By your leave, sir, 'tis a higher place than I ever thought to know." M. Radisson laughed a low, mellow laugh, and, vowing I should be a court gallant, put me down before Eli Kirke's turnstile. My uncle came stalking forth, his lips pale with rage. He had blazed out ere I could ex- plain one word. " Have I put bread in thy mouth, Ramsay Stanhope, that thou shouldst turn traitor? Vi- per and imp of Satan ! " he shouted, shaking his 38 ^ i I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED clinched fist in my face. " Was it not enough that thou wert utterly bound in iniquity with- out persecuting the Lord's anointed? " I took a breath. " Where is Balaam? " he demanded, seizing me roughly. " Sir," said I, " for leaving the room with- out leave, I pray you to flog me as I deserve. As for the horse, he is safe and I hope far away under the gentleman I helped down from the attic." His face fell a-blank. M. Radisson dis- mounted laughing. "Nay, nay, Eli Kirk'e, I protest 'twas to the lad's credit. 'Twas this way, kinsman," and he told all, with many a strange-sounding, for- eign expression that must have put the Puri- tan's nose out of joint, for Eli Kirke began blow- ing like a trumpet. Then out comes Aunt Ruth to insist that M. Radisson share a haunch of venison at our noonday meal. And how I wish I could tell you of that dinner, and of all that M. Radisson talked; of captivity among Iroquois and imprisonment in Spain and wars in Turkey; of his voyage over land and lake to a far north sea, and of the conspiracy among merchant princes of Quebec 29 I ! HIRALDS OF EMPIRE to ruin him. By-and-bye Rebecca stocking's father came in, and the three sat iaiking plans for the northern trade till M. R; di.^son let drop that the English commissioners were keen to join the enterprise. Then the two Puritans would have naught to do with it. Long ago, as you know, we dined at mid- day; but so swiftly had the hour flown with M Radisson's tales of daring that Tibbie was al- ready lighting candles when we rose from the dinner table. "And now," cried M. Radisson, lifting a stirrup-cup of home-brewed October. " health to the little gentleman who saved a life to-day! Health to mine host! And a cup fathoms deep to his luck when Ramsay sails yon sea! " " He might do worse," said Eli Kirke grimly. And the words come back like the echo of a prophecy. I would have escaped my uncle, but he way- laid me in the dark at the foot of the stairs. " Ramsay," said he gently. ". fi^ " ^^^^ ^' '«'°"«^ering if flint could melt. Tne Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord li.t up his counte- nance upon thee, and give thee peace! ' " 30 CHAPTER III TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT t«W" '°'"'°°"' "»" »««' I fed b„„ i„ Aunt rr'?''/'''' '"^'" ^ •"^^"d to keep." whed .„ » 'r^'' "P '^°'" ''^^ ^P'nning- nal EH l^T Y ^'^ ''^^°"'^ «" ^'^^'n sig- nal- El, Kirke glanced dubiously to the blas- Phemy b as though „y words' were action- loom tJl r/"r/°""' '"* ^''^ ^-- °^ the 'oom till I shpped from the room. Then they 31 ..Il HERALDS OF EMPIRE both began to talk. Soon after came transfer from the counting-house to the fur trade. That took me through the shadowy forests from town to town, and when I returned my old comrades seemed shot of a sudden from youth to man- hood. There was Ben Gillam, a giff-gaffing blade home from the north sea, so topful of spray that salt water spilled over at every word. " Split me fore and aft," exclaims Ben, " if I sail not a ship of my own next year! I'll take the boat without commission. Stocking and my father have made an offer," he hinted darkly. "I'll go without commission!" "And risk being strangled for't, if the French governor catch you." "Body o' me!" flouts Ben, ripping out a peck of oaths that had cost dear and meant a day in the stocks if the elders heard, "who's going to inform when my father sails the only other ship in the bay? Devil sink my soul to the bottom of the sea if I don't take a boat to Hudson Bay under the French governor's nose! " " A boat of your own," I laughed. " What for, Ben? " " For the same as your Prince Rupert, Prince Robber, took his. Go out light as a 32 TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT cork, come back loaded with Spanish gold to the water-line." Ben paused to take a pinch of snuff and display his new embroidered waist- coat. " Look you at the wealth in the beaver trade," he added. " M. Radisson went home with George Carteret not worth a curse, formed the Fur Company, and came back from Hud- son Bay with pelts packed to the quarter-deck. Devil sink me! but they say, after the fur sale, the gentlemen adventurers had to haul the gold through London streets with carts! Bread o' grace, Ramsay, have half an eye for your own purse! " he urged. " There is a life for a man o' spirit! Why don't you join the beaver trade, Ramsay? " Why not, indeed? 'Twas that or turn cut- purse and road-lifter for a youth of birth with- out means in those days. Of Jack Battle I saw less. He shipped with the fishing boats in the summer and cruised with any vagrant craft for the winter. When he came ashore he was as small and eel-like and shy and awkward as ever, with the same dumb fidelity in his eyes. And what a snowy maid had Rebecca be- come! Sitting behind her spinning-wheel, with her dainty fingers darting in the sunlight, she 33 ;S HERALDS OF EMPIRE seemed the pink and whitest thing that ever grew, with a look on her face of apple-blossoms in June; but the sly wench had grown mighty der with me. When I laughed over that ending to our last lesson, she must affect an air o mjury. 'Twas neither her fault nor mine. 1 declare, coaxing back her good-humour; 'twas the fault of the face. I wanted to see where the white began and the pink ended. Then Re- becca, with cheeks a-bloom under the hiding of her bonnet, quickens steps to the meeting-house; but as a matter of course we walk home to- gether, for behind march the older folk, staidly discoursing of doctrine. "Rebecca." I say. "you did not take your eyes off the preacher for one minute." " How do you know. Ramsay? " retorts Re- becca, turning her face away with a dimple trem- bling in her chin, albeit it was the Sabbath. " That preacher is too handsome to be sound m his doctrine, Rebecca." Then she grows so mighty prim she must ask which heading of the sermon pleases me best. " I liked the last," I declare; and with that we are at the turnstile. Hortense became a vision of something lost a type of what I had known when great ladies 34 TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT came to our country hall. M. Picot himself took her on the grand tour of the Continent. How much we had been hoping to see more of her I did not realize till she came back and we saw less. Once I encountered M. Picot and his ward on the wharf. Her curls were more wayward than of old and her large eyes more lustrous, full of deep, new lights, dark like the flash of a black diamond. Her form appeared slender against the long, flowing mantilla shot with gold like any grand dame's. She wore a white beaver with plumes sweeping down on her curls. In- deed, little Hortense seemed altogether such a great lady that I held back, though she was looking straight towards me. " Give you good-e'en, Ramsay," salutes M. Picot, a small, thin man with pointed beard, eye- brows of a fierce curlicue, and an expression under half-shut lids like cat's eyes in the dark. "Give you good-e'en 1 Can you guess who this is? " As if any one could forget Hortense! But I did not say so. Instead, I begged leave to welcome her back by saluting the tips of her gloved fingers. She asked me if I minded that drowning of Ben long ago. Then she wanted to know of Jack. 35 HERALDS OF EMPIRE " I hear you are fur trading, Ramsay? " re- marks M. Picot with th", inflection of a ques- I told him somewhat of the trade, and he broke out in almost the same words as Ben Gil- wT" 77f\'^' "^' ^°' ^ gentleman of spirit. Why didn t I join the beaver trade of Hudson Bay? And did I know of any secret league be- tween Captain Zachariah Gillam and Mr Stock- mg to trade withput commission? "Ah, Hillary," he sighed, "had we been beaver tradmg like Radisson instead of pound- iefto^ed "'■ ""' '"'"^' ^^"" ^^'^ ""'^ ^°'''^'' "Restored!" thought I. And M. Picot Tolrt, fr '"^. '"'P"'^' ^°^ ^' d'^^ back o h.s shell hke a pncked snail. Observing that ti^^wmd was chill, he bade me an icy |ood- uJi^^^ 1^ ^^^''^ *° P'^ '"*° ^- P'cot's secrets, fur trade. From that 'twas but a step to the guess that he had come to New England to amass wealth to restore Mistress Hortense sharo'T '"■ '° f''^- "^^^^^ ' P""«d up sharp. Twas none of my aflfair; and yet, in spite of resolves, ,t daily became more of my affair 36 TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT Do what I would, spending part of every day with Rebecca, that image of lustrous eyes un- der the white beaver, the plume nodding above the curls, the slender figure outlined against the gold-shot mantilla, became a haunting memory. Countless times I blotted out that mental pic- ture with a sweep of common sense. " Shr was a pert miss, with her head full of French non- sense and a nose held too high in air." Then a memory of the eyes under the beaver, and fancy was at it again spinning cobwebs in moonshine. M. Picot.kept more aloof than formerly, and was as heartily hated for it as the little minds of a little place ever hate those apart. Occasionally, in the forest far back from the settlement, I caught a flying glimpse of Lincoln green; and Hortense went through the woods, hard as her Irish hunter could gallop, followed by the blackamoor, churning up and down on a blowing nag. Once I had the good luck to restore a dropped gauntlet befc.'e the blacka- moor could come. With eyes alight she threw me a flashing thanks and r as off, a sunbeam through the forest shades; and something was thumping under a velvet waistcoat faster than the greyhound's pace. A moment later, back came the hound in springy stretches, with the riders at full gallop. 37 HERALDS OF EMPIRE tunf "" "^^'^ ^'"' ^"' '^^ *'"•= '^^ did not But when I carried the whip to the doctor's h^u« that nigh, M. Picot received it with sSnt Whisper^gall-midges among evil tongues -were ra.smg a buzz that bodedlll for the do - tor. France had paid spies among the English some sad. Deliveranr*. n^KK- *= ^"S"sn, fi7D-,-o. r.( r^"^^'^3"ce Dobbins, a frumpish, fizgig of a maid, ever complaining of bodily ills though her chuffy cheeks were red as pippin reported that one day when she had gonTfor jars of M. Plot's dispensaiy. At this I laughed as Rebecca told it me, and old Tibbie winked fath rf 5"^' ^""^^" --d'^ ''-d; for mj father, hke the princes, had known that love o^ gentlemen. Had I not noticed the mole on the French doctor's cheekP Rebecca asked. I ha'd! "The crops have been blighted," says Re- bec^; though what connection that ha5 ,^tt M. Picot's mole, I could not see oainl-t^'Tl °°^'''"' °^* ^^'^ "--^king w2h "^^ u'^'""' ^'''^ '^^' ^'^ °f injury which became her demure dimples so well. Urat that Deliverance Dobbins for a low- 38 TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT bred mongrel mischief-maker! " cries old Tibbie from the pantry door. " Tibbie," I order, " hold your tongue and drop an angel in the blasphemy box." " Twas good coin wasted," the old nurse vowed; but I must needs put some curb on her royalist tongue, which was ever running a-riot in that Puritan household. It was an accident, in the end, that threw me across M. Picot's path. I had gone to have him bind up a splintered wrist, and he invited me to stay for a round of piquet. I, having only one hand, must beg Mistress Hortense to sort the cards for me. She sat so near that I could not see her. You may guess I lost every game. "Tut! tut! Hillary dear, 'tis a poor helper Ramsay gained when he asked your hand. Pish! pish!" he added, seeing our faces crimson; " come away," and he carried me off to the dis- pensary, as though his preserved reptiles would be more interesting than Hortense. With an indifference a trifle too marked, he brought me round to the fur trade and wanted to know whether I would be willing to risk trad- ing without a license, on shares with a partner. "Quick wealth that way, Ramsay, an you have courage to go to the north. An it were 39 :M ;i HERALDS OF EMPIRE not for Hortense, I'd hire that young rapscal I'on of a Gillam to take me north " ^ th./i'""^''' ^'' '^""' ""^ •'^d to tell him court """' '° "^ "^ '°'^""^ - ^^« English But he paid small heed to what I said, gaz- ing absently at the creatures in the jars. ^ Twould be devilish dangerous for a girl " he muttered, pulling fiercely at his mustafhe Do you mean the court, sir? "I asked. th.. ^'' T'"™"'^ '''" ^°"'°'" ^'th a dry laugh that meant the opposite of his words. " An you inchne to the court, learn the tricks o' the foT or rogues will slit both purse and throat •' And all the while he war smiling as though ^^ If I could bu and a master," I lamented. " T'l. r°"l! *° "' °^ ^" evening," says M. Picot. trade."'' '^°"' '""^ ^'''" ''" *^" ""^ °^ ^^^^ ^^^ cn„M°"ivr^-^' '"'" ^ ^""* -' °^t^" as ever I could. M. P.cot took me upstairs to a sort o huntmg room. It had a great many ponderous oak p eces carved after the Flemish pattern and w r o :^"''-'^^^^' *^'^'^^ ^"^ ^"^^^™bTes with courtly scenes painted on top, which he Z ^:lr% ""TT^ ""'' broughfback as o the latest French fashion. The blackamoor 40 TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT drew close the iron shutters; for, though those in the world must know the ways of the world worldling practices were a sad oflFence to New England. Shoving the furnishings aside M Picot picked from the armory rack two slim foils resembling Spanish rapiers and prepared to give me my lesson. Carte and tierce, low carte and flanconnade, he laught me with many a nngmg clash of steel till beads were dripping from our brows like rain-drops. ^^ "Bravo!" shouted M. Picot in a pause. Are you son o' the Stanhope that fought on the king's side?" I said that I was. " I knew the rascal that got the estate from the king," says M. Picot, with a curious look from Hortense to me; and he told me of Blood, the freebooter, who stole the king's crown but won royal favour by his bravado and entered court service for the doing of deeds that bore not the light of day. Nightly I went to the French doctor's house, and I learned every wicked trick of thrust and parry that M. Picot knew. Once when I bun- gled a foul lunge, which M. Picot said was a habit of the infamous Blood, his weapon touched my chest, and Mistress Hortense uttered a sharp cry. 4- HERALDS OF EMPIRE I exclaims M. Picot, " What— what—what! ' whirling on her. her'li'^**' «° '■«*''" murmurs Hortense, biting After that she sat still enough. Then the steel was exchanged for cards; and when I lost too steadily M. Picot broke out: "Pish bov your luck fails here! Hillary, child, go practise thy songs on the spinet." Or: "Hortense, go mull us a smack o' wme! Or: "Ha, ha, little witch! Up yet' Late hours make old ladies." And Hortense must go oflF, so that I never saw her alone but once. 'Twas the night before 1 was to leave for the trade. The blackamoor appeared to say that De- liverance Dobbins was "a-goin' in fits" on the dispensary floor. " Faith, doctor," said I, " she used to have dumps on our turnstile." "Yes" laughed Hortense, "small wonder she had dumps on that turnstile! Ramsay used to tilt her backward." M. Picot hastened away, laughing. Hor- tense was in a great carved high-back chair with chtmsy, wooden cupids floundering all about the tall head-rest. Her face was alight in soft-hued 42 o TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT crimson flaming from an Arabian cresset stuck m sockets against the Flemish cabinet. "A child's trick," began Hortense, catchine at the shafts of light. "I often think of those old days on the beach." " So do I," said Hortense. " I wish they could come back." " So do I." smiled Hortense. Then, as if to check more: " I suppose, Ramsay, you would want to drown us all— Ben and Jack and Re- becca and me." " And I suppose you would want to stand us all on our heads," I retorted. Then we both laughed, and Hortense de- manded if I had as much skill with the lyre as with the sword. She had heard that I was much given to chanting vain airs and wanton songs she said. And this is what I sang, with a heart that knocked to the notes of the old madrigal like the precentor's tuning-fork to a meeting-house psalm: " Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting, Which, clad in damask mantles, deck the arbours. And then behold your lips where sweet love harbours. My eyes perplex me with a double doubting. Whether the roses be your lips, or your lips the roses." ■» 43 HERALDS OF EMPIRE Barely had I finished when Mistress Hor- tense seats herself at the spinet, and, changing the words to suit her saucy fancy, trills oflf that ballad but newly writ by one of our English courtiers: " " Shall I, wasting; in despair. Die beautae—Jleiecea' J— fair} Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause Retecca't rosier are ? " "Hortense!^' I protested. " Be it fairer than the day Or the June-field coils of hay; If ^« be not so to me. What care I how fine he be? " There was such merriment in the dark- ashed eyes, I defy Eli Kirke himself to have taken offence; and so, like many another youth. I was all too ready to be the pipe on which a dainty lady played her stops. As the song faded to the last tinkling notes of the spinet her fingers took to touching low, tuneless melo- dies like thoughts creeping into thoughts, or perfume of flowers in the dark. The melting airs slipped into silence, and Hortense shut her eyes, " to get the memory of it," she said. I thought she meant some new-fangled tune. " This is memory enough for me," said I. " Oh? " asked Hortense, and she uncovered 44 J TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT all the blaze of the dark lights hid in those eyes. "Faith, Hortense," I answered, like a moth gone giddy in flame, "your naughty mu- sic wakes echoes of what souls must hear in paradise." " Then it isn't naughty," said Hortense, be- ginnmg to play fiercely, striking false notes and discords and things. " Hortense," said I. "No—Ramsay!" cried Hortense, janeline harder than ever. " But— yes I — Hortense " And in bustled M. Picot, hastier than need methought. ' "What, Hillary? Not a-bed yet, child? Ha!— crow's-feet under eyes to-morrow! Bed httle baggage! Forget not thy prayers! Pish! Pish! Good-night! Good-night 1" That is the way an older man takes it. "Now, devil fly away with that prying wench of a Deliverance Dobbins! " ejaculated M. Picot, stamping about. " Oh, I'll cure her fanciful fits! Pish! Pish! That frump and her fits! Bad blood, Ramsay; low-bred, low-bred! Tis ever the way of her kind to blab of aches and stuffed stomachs that were well if left empty. An she come prying into my chemicals, taking 45 'i II HERALDS OF EMPIRE fits when she's caught, I'll mix her a pill o' De- liverance!" And AI. Picot laughed heartily at his own joke. The next morning I was off to the trade. Though I hardly acknowledged the reason to myself, any youth can guess why I made excuse to come back soon. As I rode up, Rebecca stood at our gate. She had no smile. Had I not been thinking of another, I had noticed the sadness of her face; but when she moved back a pace, I flung out some foolishness about a gate being no bar if one had a mind to jump. Then she brought me sharp to my senses as I sprang to the ground. Ramsay," she exclaimed, " M. Picot and Mistress Hortense are in jail charged with sor- cery! M. Picot is like to be hanged! An they do not confess, they may be set in the bilboes and whipped. There is talk of putting Mistress Hortense to the test." "The test!" 'Twas as if a great weight struck away power to think, for the test meant neither more nor less than torture till confession were wrung from agony. The night went black and Rebecca's voice came as from some far place. " Ramsay, you are hurting— you are crush- ing my hands! " 46 TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT Poor child, she was crying; and the words I would have said stuck fast behind sealed lips. She seemed to understand, for she went on: "Deliverance Dobbins saw strange things in his house. She went to spy. He hath crazed her intellectuals. She hath dumb fits." Now I understood. This trouble was the result of M. Picot's threat; but little Rebecca's voice was tinkling on like a b;ll in a dome. " My father hath the key to their ward. My father saith there is like to be trouble if they do not confess " "Confess!" I broke out. "Confess what? If they confess the lie they will be burned for witchcraft. And if they refuse to confess, they will be hanged. for not telling the lie. Pretty justice! And your holy men fined one fellow a hundred pounds for calling their justices a pack of jackasses " " Sentence is to be pronounced to-morrow after communion," said Rebecca. " After communion? " I could say no more. On that of all days for tyranny's crime! God forgive me for despairing of mankind that night. I thought freedom had been won in the Commonwealth war, but that was only freedom of body. A greater strife was to wage for freedom of soul. 47 CHAPTER IV REBECCA AND JACK BATTLE CONSPIRE TwAS cocl:cxow when I left pacing the shore where we had so often played in child- hood; and through the darkness came the howl of M. Picot's hound, scratching outside the prison gate. As well reason with maniacs as fanatics, say I. for they hide as much folly under the mask of conscience as ever court fool wore 'neath painted face. There was Mr. Stocking, as well- meamng a man as trod earth, obdurate beyond persuasion against poor M. Picot under his charge. Might I not speak to the French doc- tor through the bars of his window? By no means, Mr. Stocking assured. If once the great door were unlocked, who could tell what black arts a sorcerer might use? " Look you, Ramsay lad," says he, " I've had this brass key made against his witchcraft, and I do not trust it to the hands of the jailer." Then, I fear, I pleaded too keenly; for, sus- 48 .Ji. REBECCA AND JACK CONSPIRE pecting collusion with M. Picot, the warden of the court-house grew frigid and bade me ask Eli Kirke's opinion on witchcraft. Thou Shalt not suffer a witch to live,' " rasped Eli Kirke, his stern eyes ablaze from an inner fire. " 'A man also, or woman, that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death.' Think you M. Picot burns incense to the serpent in his jars for the healing of mankind? " he demanded fiercely. "Yes," said I, "'tis for the healing of mankind by experimentation with chemicals. Knowledge of God nor chemicals springs full grown from man's head, Uncle Eli. Both must be learned. That is all the meaning of his jars and crucibles. He is only trying to learn what laws God ordained among materials. And when M. Picot makes mistakes, it is the same as when the Church makes mistakes and learns wisdom by blunders." Eli Kirke blinked his eyes as though my monstrous pleadings dazed him. Thou Shalt not suffer a witch to live,' " he cried doggedly. " Do the Scriptures lie, Ram- say Stanhope? Tell me that?" "No," said I. "The Scriptures condemn liars, and the man who pretends witchcraft is a liar. There's no such thing. That is why the 49 HERALDS OF EMPIRE Scriptures command burning." I paused H. made no answer, and I pleafed on ^' But M. Picot denies witchcraff an^ would bum him for not lyinr" ^°" fppf Jn o c r ^-TKe, lor he leaped to his HoVvVr'"^""^^^"^^^^^-cease'iugg,ing snouted. T,s abomination! It shall utterlv be put away from you! Because of th h S n.qu.ty the colony hath fallen on evil da^s ^ It perish root and branch!" But Tibbie breaks in upon his declamation bv •■God ™ awakening the charches by mar- H^d^^S^Slcl^S.^^^-^^"-'-^^^ 'Have we not wrestled mightily for signs SO REBECCA AND JACK CONSPIRE and wonders?" demanded another with jaw of steel. And one description of the generation seeking signs was all but off the tip of my tongue. ^ ' "Some aver there be no witches-so fear- hally hath error gone abroad," lamentech young Mather keen to be heard then, as he always was. Brethren, toleration would nake a kinir- bnT"° ^^^°'' ^ ^°''*""' ^ ^°"'°"^^' a Baby- Faith, it needed no horoscope to forecast that young divine's dark future! I stood it as long as I could, with palms tching to knock their solemn heads together like so many bowling balls; but when one cadav- erous-faced fellow, whose sanctity had gone bil- ious from lack of sunshine, whined out against the saucy miss," meaning thereby Mistress Hortense, and another prayed Heaven through his nose that his daughter might "lie in her grave ere she minced her steps with such dis- soluteness of hair and unseemly broideries and bnght^ cotours, showing the lightness of her mmd and a third averred that " a cucking-stool would teach a maid to walk more shamefaced- ly, I whirled upon them in a fury that had disinherited me from Eli Kirke's graces ere I spake ten words. St HERALDS OF EMPIRE "Sirs," said I, "your slatternly wenches may be dead ere they match Mistress Hortensel As for wearing light colours, the devil himself IS painted black. Let them who are doing shameful acts to the innocent walk shamefaced- ly! i "^^ at each tread. s, 11 fitted to pioneer wild lands. c, w , ?^. ^''^''•" ""^^ ^"^ why he had so That he had attacked was natural enough- for in thr;;°°' 'r P°^"^^'°" °^ no-manVlani n those days e.ther murdered his rivals or sold them to slavery. But why had he flung his sword down at the moment of victory? ^ The pelting of the rain softened to a leafy patter the patter to a drip, ana a watery moon came glimmering through the clouds. With mv enemy s rapir i„ hand I began cutting a couZ through the thicket. Radisson's fire no longer "3 1 1 HERALDS OF EMPIRE shone. Indeed, I became mighty uncertain which direction to take, for the rush of the river merged with the beating of the wind. The ground sloped precipitously; and I was holding back by the underbrush lest the bank led to water when an indistinct sound, a smothery murmur like the gurgle of a subterranean pool, came from below. The wind fell. The swirl of the flowing river sounded far from the rear. I had become con- fused and was travelling away from the true course. But what was that sound? I threw a stick forward. It struck hard stone. At the same instant was a sibilant, human— distinctly human—" Hss-h," and the sound had ceased. That was no laving of inland pond against pebbles. Make of it what you will— there were voices, smothered but talking. " No— no — no " . . . then the warning . . . "Hush!" . . , then the wind and the river and ..." No no!" with words like oaths. . . . "No — I say, no ! Having come so far, no ! — not if it were my own brother!" . . . then the low "Hush!" ... and pleadings . . . then— "Send Le Borgne!" And an Indian had rushed past me in the dark with a pine fagot in his hand. 114 VISITORS Rising, I stole after him. 'Twas the M Gray dawn came over the trees a«. I reached the swo en waters ami n,« 7 "^^aoea heaven wheH cam' fo Jhe "'? '''^' '" '"'^- M. de Radisson hTd camped^'pl^T' "^" bendrnther^Verastran^ShtSed/^^^ ies ^t oTt'h ""'"? ''''^" "•''> P^'"te= Habitalion with co.;z?Lt;s£tir:ftr".' lort r»dy ,„ welcome them," Ja h"' ' "''"'* "3 CHAPTER X i THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING The landing was but a part of the labyrin- thine trickery in which our leader delighted to play; for while Jean delayed the natives we ran overland through the woods, launched our canoe far ahead of the Indian flotilla, and went racing forward to the throbs of the leaping river. " If a man would win, he must run fast as the hour-glass," observed M. Radisson, poising his steering-pole. " And now, my brave lads," he began, counting in quick, sharp words that rang with command, "keep time — one — two — three! One— two— three 1" And to each word the paddles dipped with the speed of a fly-wheel's spokes. " One— two— three! In and up and on! An you keep yourselves in hand, men, you can win against the devil's own artillery! Speed to your strokes, Godefroy," he urged. And the canoe answered as a iine-strung racer to the spur. Shore-lines blurred to a green 124 THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING streak. The frosty air met our faces in wind Gurghng waters curled from the prow in co ru gated runnels. And we were ruling a S race w.th a tumult of waves, mountingfhe swell athwart 'drrTS T' '^'''^^ Tu '" a"its. M. Radisson braced back aea n Td '''';'°.' '^ ""''■'''' '^^^"^^^ - - tha boned r, "'"■'"^ ''^•■°"^^ ^^« -•"--" !^L K ""^ ^ """'""""■ Once the canoe Trent K ?• ^" ."^^ ^^ ^^^s in mid! by Godefroy's counter-stroke at the stern- and itdtToZ^^^^ '-'' ''' -^^ - ^ '^ai^-s- frov"hrr"'' ^""'^' ""'■"y'" '""•"Wed Gode- a °urn^^f." '^ '""^ *'^ ""°^ ^^ ^^ breasted a turn ,n the nver to calmer currents, "Sainte Anne ha' mercy! But the mastered run us ov r Niagara, if he had a mind." " Or the River Styx, if 'twould gain his end " sharply added Radisson. nnisend. But he ordered our paddles athwart for bow With the rash presumption of youth I of- fered to take ti,e bow that he might rest but he threw his head back with a^oud Wh I2S HERALDS OF EMPIRE more of scorn than mirth, and bade me nurse a wounded hand. On the evening of the third day we came to the Habitation. Without disembarking, M. de Radisson sent the sol- diers on sentinel dutv at the river front up to the fort with warning to prepare for instant siege. " 'Twill put speed in the lazy rascals to finish the fort," he remarked; and the canoe ghded out to mid-current again for the far expanse of the bay. By this we were all ^o used to M. ladisson's doings, 'twould not have surprised us when the craft shot out from river-mouth to open sea if he had ordered us to circumnavigate the ocean on a chip. He did what was nigh as venturesome. A quick, unwarned swerve of his pole, which bare gave Godefroy time to take the cue, and our prow went scouring across the scud of whip- ping currents where two rivers and an ocean- tide met. The seething waves lashed to foam with the long, low moan of the world-devouring serpent which, legend says, is ever an-hungering to devour voyageurs on life's sea. And for all the world that reef of combing breakers was not unlike a serpent type of malignant elements bent on man's destruction! 126 THE CAUSK OF THE FIRING agist a new ""°' ^'^ "^""'"^ "P"^*"^"" against a new current; and the moan of the S'rsrrfo^;trn:^Hr^rr'^^°"°^- Bering J. too du„ for LX^t nXt adamant coud conoiipr a«^ ""unuess as ber while thl^ !' ^ ^°" """^^ '■^"'em- oer, While the diamond and the charcoal are n( he same family, 'tis the diamond h lute be c^use 1 ,s Hard. Faults, M. Radisson had which Wm h n .r"""' '"^ '"^'^ y°" -ho judge h m-h,s faults were not the faults of nearly fll other men. the faults which are a cnml-f crtme of being weak! crime—the sun ros'etflf '"^ T '''' "^'^'^^ «" ^'hen the sun rose m flaming darts through the gray haze ri er ""Auh? '^-'"^ ^^^ ^ - islan'd i^ m ! antTn. t ''^*"" '"'" '"y ^ queer-rigged brig- antine. rocking to the swell of the tidf Here 127 ' •a HERALDS OF EMPIRE then, was cause of that firing heard across the marsh on the lower river. " 'Tis the pirate ship we saw on the high sea," muttered Godefroy, rubbing his eyes. " She flics no flag! She has no license to trade! She's a poacher! She will make a prize worth the taking," added M. Radisson sharply. Then, as if to justify that intent — " As we have no license, we must either take or be taken! " The river mist gradually lifted, and there emerged from the fog a stockaded fort with two bastions facing the river and guns protruding from loopholes. " Not so easy to take that fort," growled Godefroy, who was ever a hanger-back. " All the better," retorted M. de Radisson. " Easy taking makes soft men! 'Twill test your mettle! " " Test our mettle ! " sulked the trader, a key higher in his obstinacy. " All very well to talk, sir, but how can we take a fort mounted with twenty cannon " " I'll tell you the how when it's done," inter- rupted M. de Radisson. But Godefroy was one of those obstinates who would be silent only when stunned. " I'd like to know, sir, what we're to do," he began. 128 THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING " Godefroy, 'twould be waste time to knock sense in your pate! There is only one thing to do always— only one, the right thing! Do it, fool! An I hear more clack from you till its done, I'll have your tongue out with the nip- pers!" ^ Godefroy cowered sulkily back, and M. de Radisson laughed. "That will quell him," said he. "When Godefroy's tongue is out he can't grumble, and grumbling is his bread of life! " Stripping oflf his bright doublet, M. Radisson hung it from a tree to attract the fort's notice. Then he posted us in ambuscade with orders to capture whatever came. But nothing came. And when the fort guns boomed out the noon hour M. Radisson sprang up all impa- tience. " I'll wait no man's time," he vowed. "Los- ing time is losing the game! Launch out! " Chittering something about our throats be- ing cut, Godefroy shrank back. With a quick stride M. Radisson was towering above him. Catching Godefroy by the scrufT of the neck, he threw him face down into the canoe, muttering out it would be small loss if all the cowards in the world had their throats cut. HERAI^DS OF EMPIRE " The pirates come to trade," he explained. " They will not fire at Indians. Bind your hair back like that Indian there! " No sooner were we in the range of the fort than M. Radisson uttered the shrill call of a na- tive, bade our Indian stand up, and himself en- acted the pantomime of a savage, waving his arms, whistling, and hallooing. With cries of welcome, the fort people ran to the shore and left their guns unmanned. Reading from a syl- lable book, they shouted out Indian words. It was safe to approach. Before they could arm we could escape. But we were two men, one lad, and a neutral Indian against an armed garrison in a land where killing was no murder. M. de Radisson stood up and called in the Indian tongue. They did not understand. "New to it," commented Radisson, "not the Hudson's Bay Company! " All the while he was imperceptibly approach- mg nearer. He shouted in French. They shook their heads. " English highwaymen, blundered in here by chance," said he. Tearing oflf the Indian head-band of dis- guise, he demanded in mighty peremptory tones who they were. 130 W ii THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING "English," they called back doubtfully. Vv^hat have you come for? " insisted Radis- son, wuh a great swelling of his chest. The beaver trade," came a faint voice. Where had I heard it before? Did it rise from the ground in the woods, or from a far -emory of children throwing a buHy^to the len;5trso:°^^^^°-'--'"''°''^>ychal- toge'^her''"' '^" ^'"°''' ^'^°'' P"' *^^'^ ^-^^^s vo.,r ?" '^' """' °^ ^^' ^^^' ^ 'l<^'"«"d to see your license mstantly," repeated Sieur de Radis- son, with louder authority. " We have no license," explained one of the men who was dressed with slashed boots red doublet, and cocked hat. clos^: ^''''''°" '""''^ '"^ P^'^'^ « l^"gth taking. ' jiP ^•*^°"^^ ««"«e! A prize-for the SerCielSST'"-^^^^^"^-^^ Ships! Shapmg h.s hands trumpet fashion to has n,outh, he called this out again, adding "hit 131 HERALDS OF EMPIRE ourj^ndian was of a nation in league with the The pirates were dumb as if he had tossed a hand grenade among them. «nJ^''^''''P '' °'"'' "°^' ^^''" said Radisson softly, pohng nearer. "See, lads, the bottom has tumbled from their courage! We'll not waste a pound o' powder in capturing that prize! "He turned suddenly to me-" a! I live by bread, t.s that bragging young dandy-prat -h^op-o-my-thumb-Ben Gillam of BosL "Ben Gillam!" ^^ I was thinking of my assailant in the woods Ben was ta The pirate, who came carving at tne, was small." ^ But Ben Gillam it was, turned pirate or pri- va eer-as you choose to call it-grown to a well-timbered rapscallion with head high in air jack-boots half-way to his waist, a ^clankiW sword at heel, and a nose too red from rum As we landed, he sent his men scattering to the fort, and stood twirling his mustaches till the recognition struck him. "By Jerich(^Radisson! " he gasped. Then he tossed his chin defiantly in air like masL" "'' '"P°"' '' ''y °^ds with a 132 TI.£ 'TAUSE OF THE FIRING " Don't be afraid to land," he called down out of sheer impudence. " Don't be afraid to have us land," Radisson shouted up to him. " We'll not harm you! " Ben swore a big oath, fleered a laugh, and kicked the sand with his heels. Raising a hand, he signalled the watchers on the ship. " Sorry to welcome you in this warlike fash- ion," said he. " Glad to welcome you to the domain of His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France," retorted Radisson, leaping ashore. Ben blinked to catch the drift of that. "Devil take their majesties! " he ejaculated. " He's king who conquers! " " No need to talk of conquering when one is master already," corrected M. de Radisson. " Shiver my soul," blurts out Ben, " I haven't a tongue like an eel, but that's what I mean; and I'm king here, and welcome to you, Ra- disson!" "And that's what I mean," rughed M. Ra- disson, with a bow, quietly motioning us to fol- low ashore. " No need to conquer where one is master, and welcome to you. Captain Gillam! " And they embraced each other like spider and fly, each with a free hand to his sword-hilt, and a questioning look on the other's face. 133 HERALDS OF EMPIRE forer^' ^' ^^^'''°'''- "I'^«= «"" that ship be- Ben laughs awkwardly. " We captured her from a Dutchman," he begins. «;h ".?''' " '*^' ^'^"'' R^disson. " I meant out- side the straits after the storm! " ,>,.-n^p"T'' ?^' '"''*""■ " ^^'^ those your ships? 'he ask.. Then both men laugh Not much to boast in the way of a fleet " taunts Ben. ' "Those are the two smallest we have" quickly explains Radisson. .v.^'f^"^' ^^" '"'"* '''^"'^' ^""^ M. Radisson's hunting '° ' ^'''''"^ '"' °^ ^ "^^^ '"°"^«- H.n'fl^"""! r ^°"''' " "'^"'^''"^ ^^n'' with a sud- den flare of friendliness. "I am no baby-eaterl Put a peg m that! Shiver my soul if this is a way to welcome friends! Come aboard all of you and test the Canary we got in the hold of a fine Spanish galleon last v/eek! Such a top-heavy ship with sails like a tinker's tatters, you never TZ A^ ", •*'"■ ^°^^ '"""'"& °^^'- with Canary awdrreVg;^.' ^^""^ ^^°-' ^- It was Pierre Radisson s turn to blink And drink to the success of the beaver trade, importunes Ben. '34 THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING 'Twas as pretty a piece of play as you could see: Ben. scheming to get the Frenchman cap- tive; M. Radisson, with the lightnings under his brows and that dare-devil rashness of his blood temptmg him to spy out the lad's strength. " Ben was the body of the venture! Where was the orain? It was that took me aboard his ship," M. Radisson afterward confessed to us. " Come ! Come I " pressed Gillam " i know young Stanhope there "—his mighty air brought the laugh to my face— "young Stan- hope there has a taste for fine Canary " " But, lad," protested Radisson, with a con- descension that was vinegar to Ben's vanity, we cannot be debtors altogether. Let two of ,'our men stay here and whiff pipes Wi.n my fel- lows, while I go aboard! " Ben's teeth ground out an assent that sound- ed precious like an oath; for he knew that he was being asked for hostages of safe-conduct while M. Radisson spied out the ship. He sig- nalled, as we thought, for two hostages to come down from the fort; but scarce had he dropped his hand when fort and ship let out such a roar of cannonading as would have lifted the hair from any other head than Pierre Radisson's Godefroy cut a caper. The Indian's eyes bulged with terror, and my own pulse went a- '35 HERALDS OF EMPIRE Radisson never changed counte- hop; but M. nance. "Pardieu," says he softly, with a pleased smile as the last shot went skipping over the wa- ter, "you're devilish fond o' fireworks, to waste good powder so far from home! " Ben mumbled out that he had plenty of pow- der, and that some fools didn't know fireworks from war. M. Radisson said he was glad there was plenty of powder, there would doubtless be use found for it, and he knew fools oft mistook fire- works for war. With that a cannon-shot sent the sand spat- tering to our boots and filled the air with pow- der-dust; but when the smoke cleared, M. Radis- son had quietly put himself between Ben and the fort. Drawing out his sword, the Frenchman ran his finger up the edge. " Sharp as the next," said he. Lowering the point, he" scratched a line on the sand between the mark of the last shot and us. " How close can your gunners hit. Ben? " asked Radisson. " Now I'll wager you a bottle ' ey can't hit that line without hit- ting you ! 136 THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING Ben's hand went up quick enough. The gunners ceased firing and M. Radisson sheathed his sword with a laugh. stead!^°Trt"°* '"^">^'' °^^^- ^^'^^ ^^^^^ '"- stead! Take a man's advice, and never waste powder! You'll need it all if he's king wL cot quersi Besides." he added, turning suddenly senous. "if my forces learn you are here I'll not promise I've strength to restrain them! " ^^ How many have you? " blurted Ben th. /r*^. 'o'P''"' ^°^' " y°" ^'^ afraid of he Hudson's Bay Company ships attacking you, I d be glad to loan you enough young fire-eaters to garrison the fort here! " re eaters till th?'"''''" 'T ^'"' '^''""^ ^'« mustaches w 5Y were mgh jerked out. "but how long would they stay? " ^ _ "Till you sent them away," says M. de Rad^^on. with the lights at play Lder hi! be ""laul Tr'I/ ^T ^°'' '°"^ '^^' would Ihh he^F ? '"!' ''^"-P"^^'«d, half-pleased with the Frenchman's darting wits ruffl7cT rnf'^'"' ^- ^''^'''°"' *"PP'"& the lace thot guns r '" ^ '^^^\"^- --t "ot fire " No? " questions Gillam. "My ofiicers are swashing young blades! ^37 t!i! HERALDS OF EMPIRE What with the marines and the common soldiers and my own guard, 'tis all I can manage to keep the rascals m hand! They must not know you are here!" ^ Gillam muttered something of a treaty of truce for the winter. M. Radisson shook his head. "I have scarce the support to do as I will " he protests. ' Young Gillam swore such coolness was scurvy treatment for an old friend. " ni^.u ^"^J!^'" ^^"^''"^ ^^'^^^so" afterward. Did the cub s hangdog of a father not offer a pike"staff?"°""''* ^°' "^ ^^^'^ °" *•"" ^""^ °' * But with Ben he played the game out. The season is too far advanced for you to escape, says he with soft emphasis. sailor'^'' "^^^ ^ "^^"^ * ^"^^^•" ^"'*"'' *''«= " Come, then." laughs the Frenchman, " now —as to terms- — " " Name them," says Gillam. " If you don't wish to be discovered » I don't wish to be discovered! " "If you don't wish to be discovered don't run up a flag!" " One," says Gillam. 138 THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING " If you don't wish to be discovered don't let your people leave the islandl " "They haven't." says Gillam. Iv at Zl ^ " "'^' ^- ^^'^'^^°"' «'«""ng sharp- ly at^jne; for we were both thinking of thf t nigh"; ^^ J They haven't left the island." repeats Gil- ' If you don't wish the Fur Company to dis- cover you, don't fire guns! " " Three," says Gillam. " T''** 's to keep 'em from connecting with those mlanders," whisoereH Cr^A t ^'^ ."^ w'*" One," counts Gillam shipsr ''"" "'*' ^°" ^^^'"^* '^- English Young Gillam laughed derisively "* 139 HERALDS OF EMPIRE "My father commands the Hudson's Bay ship," says he. " Egad, yes I " retorts M. Radisson noncha- lantly, " but your father doesn't command the governor of the Fur Company, who sailed out in his ship." "The governor does not know that I am here," flouts Ben. " But he would know if I told him," adds M. de Radisson, " and if I told him the Company's captain owned half the ship poaching on the Company's preserve, the Company's captain and the captain's son might go hang for all the furs they'd get! By the Lord, youngster, I rather suspect both the captain and the captain's son would be whipped and hanged for the theft! " Ben gave a start and looked hard at Radis- son. 'Twas the first time, I think, the cub real- ized that the pawn in so soft-spoken a game was his own neck. " Go on," he said, with haste and fear in his look. " I promised three terms. You will keep your people from knowing I am here and join me against the English— go onl What next? " " I'll defend you against the Indians," coolly capped M. Radisson. Godefroy whispered in my ear that he would not give a pin's purchase for all the furs the New 140 THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING Englander would get; and Ben Gillam looked like a man whose shoe pinches. He hung his head hesitating. * " But if you run up a flag, or fire a gun. or let your people leave the island," warned M. Ra- disson, I may let my men come, or tell the Eng- lish, or jom the Indians against you." Gillam put out his hand. " It's a treaty," said he. There and then he would have been glad to see the last of us; but M. Radisson was not the man to miss the chance of seeing a rival's ship. How about that Canary taken from the for- eign ship? A galleon, did you say. tall and slim? Did you sink her or sell her? Send down your inen to my fellows! Let us go aboard for the 141 CHAPTER XI MORE OF M. RADISSON'S RIVALS So Ben Gillam must take M. Radisson aboard the Susan, or Gar^on, as she was called when she sailed different colours, the young fel- low with a wry face, the Frenchman, all gaiety. As the two leaders mounted the companion-lad- der, hostages came towards the beach to join us. I had scarce noticed them when one tugged at my sleeve, and I turned to look full in the faith- ful shy face of little Jack Battle. "Jack!" I shouted, but he only wrung and wrung and wrung at ray hand, emitting little gurgling laughs. Then we linked arms and walked along the beach, where others could not hear. " Where did you come from? " I demanded. " Master Ben fished me up on the Grand Banks. I was with the fleet. It was after he met you ofif the straits; and here I be, Ram- say." " After he met us off the straits." I was try- 142 MORE OF M. RADISSON'S RIVALS mg to piece some connection between r.ii, . sh.p and the inland assailants. "Jack ml] How njany days have you been here? " ' "" ^^wev?b::nr/a;tre,::'^"^"'^^--^^'* It was four since that night in the bush, days," '°"''' "°' •'"'''• a fort in three Who d,d that? Is Captain Gillam steahnir the Company's furs for Ben? " sealing aren7t°ha7'"lf""''' ^"' thoughtfully, "it --nghis;i;.---^-«^ ;;The Indians with the pelts," I suggested No-o-o." answered Jack. " Solit ml r" and aff if ;t'^ t j- J""-"^- apnt me fore -nu ait If Its Indians he want^F H^ ij send up river for them t!- ^ *'°"''^ -asthead^knd ; , „g L a L'h '"""'"^ *'^ Cfarsi^^'"^^-'^ '' ^"''^ *° '^^^P appointment as he'd shoot a 143 HERALDS OF EMPIRE dog, if he has to track him inland a thousand leagues. Split me fore and aft if he don't! " " Who shoot what? " I demanded, trying to extract some meaning from the jumbled narra- tive. " That's what I don't know," says Jack. I fetched a sigh of despair. " What's the matter with your hand? Does it hurt? " he asked quickly. Poor Jack! I looked into his faithful blue eyes. There was not a shadow of deception there — only the affection that gives without wishing to comprehend. Should I tell him of the adven'.ure? But a loud halloo from Godefroy notified me that M. de Radisson was on the beach ready to launch. "Almost waste work to go on fortifying," he was warning Ben. " You forget the danger from your own crews," pleaded young Gillam. " Pardieu! We can easily arrange that. I promise you never to approach with more than thirty of a guard." (We were twenty-nine all told.) " But remember, don't hoist a flag, don't fire, don't let your people leave the island." Then we launched out, and I heard Ben muttering under his breath that he was cursed if he had ever known such impudence. In roid- 144 MORE OF M. RADISSON'S RIVALS current our leader laid his pole crosswise and laughed long. " Tis a pretty prize. 'Twill fetch the price of a thousand beaver-skins! Captain Gillam reckoned short when he furnished young Ben to defraud the Company. He would give a thou" sand pounds for my head-would he? Pardieul He shall g,ve five thousand pounds and leave my S T'l n ' ^"*^ '^^^' '^ ^« behaves too badj. he shall pay hush-money, or the governor Shan know! When we've taken him. ifds. who -thmk you-dare complain.? " A„d he laughed agam; but at a bend in the river he turned sud- den y with his eyes snapping-" Who a' deuce could that have been playing pranks in the woods the other night? Mark my words, Stan- hope, whoever 'twas will prove the brains and the mamspnng and the driving-wheel and the rudder of this cub's venture! " And he began to dip in quick vigorous strokes hke the thoughts ferreting through his bram We had made bare a dozen miles^when paddles clapped athwart as if petrified Up the wide river, like a great white bird came ^stately ship. It was the Prince Ruoert of the Hudson's Bay Company, which claimed sole nght to trade in all that north land. Young Gillam, with guns mounted, to the H5 HERALDS OF EMPIRE rear! A hostile ship, with fighting men and ord- nance, to the fore! An unknown enemy inland! And for our leader a man on whose head Eng- land and New England set a price! Do you wonder that our hearts stopped al- most as suddenly as the paddles? But it was not fear that gave pause to M. Radisson. " If those ships get together, the game is lost," says he hurriedly. "May the devil fly away with us, if we haven't wit to stop that ship! " ^ Act jumping with thought, he shot the canoe under cover of the wooded shore. In a twink- ling we had such ^ fire roaring as the natives use for signals. Between the fire and the river he stationed our Indian, as hunters place a decoy. The ruse succeeded. Lowering sail, the Prince Rupert cast anchor opposite our fire; but darkness had gathered, and the English sent no" boat ashore till morn- ing. Posting us against the woods, M. Radisson went forward alone to meet the company of sol- diers rowing ashore. The man standing amid- ships, Godefroy said, was Captain Gillam, Ben's father; but the gentleman with gold-laced doub- let and ruffled sleeves sitting back in the sheets was Governor Brigdar, of the Hudson's Bay 146 MORE OF M. RADISSON'S RIVALS Fur Company, a courtier of Prince Rupert's choice. The clumsy boat grounded in the shallows, and a soldier got both feet in the water to wade. Instantly M. Radisson roared out such a sten- torian " Halt! " you would have thought that he had an army at his back. Indeed, that is what the party thought, for the fellow got his fe^* back m the boat monstrous quick. And there was a vast bandying of words, each asking other who they were, and bidding each other m no very polite terms to mind their own affairs. Of a sudden M. Radisson wheeled to us standing guard. "OfScers," he shouted, "first brigade!— forward!" From the manner of him we might have had an army under cover behind that bush. All at once Governor Brigdar's lace handker- chief was aflutter at the end of a sword, and the representative of King Charies begged leave to ^nd and salute the representative of His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France. And land they did, pompously peaceful, though their swords clanked so oft every man must have had a hand ready a. his baldrick i'l-rre Radisson receiving them with the lofty '47 1 HERALDS OF EMPIRE air of a gracious monarch, the others bowing and unhatting and bending and crooking their spines supple as courtiers with a king. Presently came the soldiers back to us as hostages, while Radisson stepped into the boat to go aboard the Prince Rupert with the captain and governor. Godefroy called out against such rashness, and Pierre Radisson shouted back that threat about the nippers pulling the end off the fellow's tongue. Serving under the French flag, I was not supposed to know English; but when one soldier said he had seen " Mr. What-d'y-call-'im before," pointing at me, I recognised the mate from whom I had hired passage to England for M Picot on Captain Gillam's ship. Like enough," says the other, " 'tis a land where no man brings his back history." "See here, fellow," -said i, whipping out a crown, " here's for you to tell me of the New Amsterdam gentleman who sailed from Boston last spring! " " No New Amsterdam gentleman sailed from Boston," answered both in one breath. " I am not paying for lies," and I returned the crown to my pocket. Then Radisson came back, urging Captain trillam against proceeding up the river. 148 MORE OF M. RADISSON'S RIVALS ct, n ^''^.u""" ^"P"* "'Sht ground on the shallows," he warned. "That will keep them apart till we trap one or both." he told us. as we set off in our canoe. But we had not gone out of range before we were ordered ashore. Picking our way back overland we spied through the bush for two days, till we saw that Governor Brigdar was taking Radisson's advice, going no farther up- stream, but erecting a fort on the shore where ne had anchored. "And now." said Radisson. " we must act." While we were spying through the woods, watching the English build their fort, I thought that I saw a figure flitting through the bush to the rear I dared not fire. One shot would have betrayed us to the English. But I pointed my gun. The thing came gliding noiselessly nearer. 1 clicked the gun-butt without firing. The thine paused. Then I called M. Radisson, who said it was Le Borgne, the wall-eyed Indian. Godefroy vowed twas a spy from Ben Gillam's fort. The Indian mumbled some superstition of a manitou To me It seemed like a caribou; for it faded to nothing the way those fleet creatures have of skimming into distance. 149 CHAPTER XII M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME M. Radisson had reckoned well. His nam- ing to prepare for instant siege set all the younff fire-eaters of our Habitation working like bea vers to complete the French fort. The marquis took a hand at squaring timbers shoulder to shoulder with Allemand, the pilot; and La Ches- naye, the merchant prince, forgot to strut while digging up earthworks for a parapet The leaven of the New World was working. Hon- our was for him only whose brawn won the place; and our young fellows of the birth and the pride were keenest to gird for the task On our return from the upper river to the fort, the palisaded wafls were finished, guns were mounted on all bastions, the two ships beached under shelter of cannon, sentinels on parade at the mam gate, and a long barracks built mid- way across the courtyard. Here we passed many a merry hour of a lone wmter night, the green timbers cracking like 150 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME pistol-shots to the tightening frost-grip, and the hall sending up a roar that set the red shadows dancng among ceiling joists. After ward-room mess w.th fare that kings might have envied-!^ ted and partndge and venison and a steak of »T1-^ ''A'"' "^^^^ "°^« -« ^ ^trie, with L.t ,°J 'f^° ''""P ^''^^ ™«'t«d in your mouth hke flakes-the commonalty, as La Chesnaye designated those who sat below the salt, would draw off to the far hearth. Here >ng jokes popping com, and toasting wits ands. At the other hearth sat M. de Radisson bs Sr ^° ?^ ''■^' ^ '°"^ P'P« betwtrhS Ws L^^s "" "" °^ ^°""^ ''•^^^^ ^^^^^ f°^ «„ " °'j:? ™°^ '^ow ^e got away from the Iro- quois Chouart?" Radisson asks Groseille«. Tn ^hf..'" ';'''"■ '•^"erh-hewn from a stump on the other side of the fire. Chouart Groseillers smiles quietly and strokes his black beard. Jean strelhes'ac'ss us? Tel'usr" '"^ '"' ^'°"^^ °"*' "T«« "We had been captives six months. The Iroquo's w.re beginning to let us wander about HERALDS OF EMPIRE alone. Chouart there had sewed his thumb up where an old squaw had hacked at it with a dull shell. The padre's nails, which the Indians tore off m torture, had grown well enough for him to handle a gun. One day we were allowed out to hunt. Chouart brought down three deer, the padre two moose, and I a couple of bear. That night the warriors came back from a raid on Orange with not a thing to eat but one miser- able, httle, thin, squealing pig. Pardieu! men, twas our chance; and the chance is always hid- ing round a corner for the man who goes ahead. Radisson paused to whiff his pipe, all the lights m his eyes laughing and his mouth ex- pressionless as steel. " Tis an insult among Iroquois to leave food at a feast. There wefe we with food enou 'h to stuff the tnbe torpid as winter toads. The padre was sent round to the lodges with a tom-tom to beat every soul to the feast. Chouart and a Dutch prisoner and I cooked like kings' scul- hons for four mortal hours! " "We wanted to delay the feast till mid- night, explains Groseillers. "And at midnight in trooped every man woman, and brat of the encampment The padre takes a tom-tom and stands at one end IS2 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME of the lodge beating a very knav^«» and shouting at the toS^ „? k ° .™*^'-*^"'' brother., eat I Bulee the " ^°'"-" '^*' loose the belt! E^ bt^h '''' '^'" ^'''^ «=°^*' stands at the boileMln. "' '*'' ' ^^''^"^rt an a™, co^'dirbr^-rhr^^^^^^^^ riors'he"eagr^'„7"^^^^^^^ From the war^ keeps ladlingTt 't '/"e^rS' ^T '^''^"^'^ man grabs up a dnl T!i ^^" ^^^ ^"t«=h- 'o%e^„d b?g,4tTeaTa^d\:^r/b^ %' caper, of a fiend ^ ^oU Sj':'"'" ."^"'^ ** Still the drums beat! Still ^h^ '''"^°" '=^*' Radisson laughed. "Do you mind, Chouart," he asked "h« the padre wanted to put poison ,^ .1 "^ and the Dutchman wouldn't ^e T- , 1? ™'^*' Dutchman wanted to n^'^dV; th ™ a,,'^''^"^^^^^ ^ieep, and the padre wouldn't lefhTmf"" *'"'" 151 HERALDS OF EMPIRE Both men laughed. "And the end?" asked Jean. " We tied the squealing pig at the door for sentmel. broke ice with our muskets, launched the canoe, and never stopped paddling till we reached Three Rivers." * At that comes a loud sally of laughter from the sailors at the far end of the hall. Godefroy, the English trader, is singing a rhyme of All Souls' Day, and Allemand, the French pilot, protests. "Soul! Soul! For a soul-cake I One for Peter, two for Paul, Three for ." But La Chesnaye shouts out for the knaves to hold quiet. Godefroy bobs his tipstaff, and bawls on: "Soul! Soul! For an apple or two ! If you've got no apples, nuts will do I Out with your raisins, down with your gin ! Give me plenty and I'll begin." ^^ M. Radisson looks down the hall and laughs By the saints," says he softly, "a man loses the Christian calendar in this land! 'Tis All Souls' Night! Give the men a treat, U Ches- naye." * See Radisson's own account. 154 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME r,^.f^\^ S^'^'^y^' ^^^« governor, must needs show his authority, and vows to flog the knave for .mpudence. Turning over benches .n h,s haste, the .ierchant falls on Godefroy Stnu-^r^-'^-^-^-enow-j The door blows open, and with a gust of wind a silent figure blows in. Tis Le lorgne the one-eyed, who has taken to joining our men of a merry night, which M. de Radisson encour- ages, for he would have all the Indians come "Hal " says Radisson, " I thought 'twas the men I sent to spy if the marsh were safe cross- ing. Give Le Borgne tobacco, La Chesnaye , If once the fellow gets drunk," he adds to me m an undertone, " that silent tongue of his mav stirnng, Ramsay! Ten days past! Egad, a m^ might as well be a fish-worm burrowing unJe^ ground as such a snail! We must stir-stir! th? n^ -i:?^'""^ ""« t° the table apart from InH h T ?'" ^' '^^ °" '^' >°*«='- river," and he marked the letter X on a line indicating the flow of our nver to the bay. " Here is the upper river," and he drew another river meeting IT 'f r. T? f ^''- " ^''^ '« <^°^^'"°^ Brig dar of the Hudson's Bay Company," marking " 155 HERALDS OF EMPIRE another X on the upper river, " Here is Ben Gillaml We are half-way between them on the south. I sent two men to see if the marsh be- tween the rivers is fit crossing." " Fit crossing? " "When 'tis safe, we might plan a surprise. The only doubt is how many of those pirates are there who attacked you in the woods? " And he sat back whiffing his pipe and gaz- ing in space. By this, La Chesnaye had distrib- uted so generous a treat that half the sailors were roaring out hilarious mirth. Godefroy astride a bench played big drum on the wrong- end-up of the cook's dish-pan. Allemand at- tempted to fiddle a poker across the tongs. Voyageurs tried to shoot the big canoe over a waterfall; for when Jean tilted one end of the IS6 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME long bench, they landed as cleanly on the floor as if their craft had plunged. But the copper- faced Le Borgne remained taciturn and toneue- tied. " "Be curse to that walUjccl ! nav. ' mtit- tered Radisson. "He"} tor !«■) n .aa.i tu t-t go! We must capture him or win hir-,'" "Perhaps when he b< -omc m.^r. K.ctiuly we may track him back to tne inl .. :.er-,," I swg- gested. M. de Radisson closed one .\c ,ind locked at me attentively. " La Chesnaye," he called, " treat that fel- low like a king! " And the rafters rang so loud with the merri- ment that we none of us noticed the door flung open, nor saw two figures stamping off the snow till they had thrown a third man bound at M. de Radisson's feet. The messengers sent to spy out the marsh had returned with a half-frozen prisoner. " We found him where the ice is soft. He was half dead," explained one scout. Silence fell. Through the half-dark the In- dian glided towards the door. The unconscious prisoner lay face down. "Turn him over," ordered Radisson. As our men rolled him roughly over, the IS7 HERALDS OF EMPIRE captive uttered a heavy groan. His arms fell away from his face revealing little Jack Battle, the castaway, in a haven as strange as of old. " Search him before he wakes," commanded Radisson roughly. " Let me," I asked. In the pouches of the caribou coat was only pemmican; but my hand crushed against a soft- ness in the inner waistcoat. I pulled it out — a little, old glove, the colour Hortense had dangled the day that Ben Gillam fell into the sea. " Pish! " says Radisson. " Anything else? " There crumpled out a yellow paper. M. Ra- disson snatched it up. " Pish! " says he, " nothing— put it back! " It was a page of my copy-book, when I used to take lessons with Rebecca. Replacing paper and glove, I closed up the sailor lad's coat. " Search his cap and moccasins! " I was mighty thankful, as you may guess, that other hands than mine found the tell-tale missive— a badly writ letter addressed to " Cap- tain Zechariah Gillium." Tearing it open, M. Radisson read with stormy lights agleam in his eyes. "Sir, this sailor lad is an old comrade," I pleaded. 158 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME " Then'a God's name take care of him," he flashed out. But long before I had Jack Battle thawed back to consciousness in my own quarters, Jean came running with orders for me to report to M. Radisson. " I'll take care of the sailor for you," prof- fered Jean. ■ And I hastened to the main hall. " Get ready," ordered Radisson. " We must stir! That young hop-o'-my-thumb suspects his father has arrived. He has sent this fellow with word of me. Things will be doing. We must stir— we must stir. Read those for news," and he handed me the letter. The letter was addressed to Ben's father, of the Hudson's Bay ship. Prince Rupert. In 4ri- tmg which was scarcely legible, it ran: french viper Who deserted You at ye fort of ye bay lo Years ago hath come here for France Threatening us. he Must Be Stopped. Will i Do It ? have Bin Here Come Six weekes All Souls' day and Not Heard a Word of Him that went inland to Catch ye Furs from ye Savages before they Mett Governor B If He Proves False ' There the crushed missive was torn, but the purport was plain. Ben Gillam and his father '59 HERALDS OF EMPIRE were in collusion with the inland pirates to get peltries from the Indians before Governor Brig- dar came; and the inlanders, whoever" they . were, had concealed both themselves and the furs.^ I handed the paper back to M. Ra.iisson. "We mu&t itir, lad— we must stir," he re- peated. " But the marsh is soft yet. It is unsafe to cross." "The river is not frozen in mid-current," retorted M. Radisson impatiently. " Get ready! I am taking different men to impress the young spark with our numbers— you and La Chesnaye and the marquis and Allemand. But where a' devil is that Indian? " Le Borgne had slipped away. " Is he a spy? " I asked. "Get ready! Why do you ask questions? The thing is — to do! — do!! — do^!!!" But Allemand, who had been hauling out the big canoe, came up sullenly. " Sir," he complained, " the river's running ice the size of a raft, and the wind's a-blowine a gale." ^ " Man," retorted M. de Radisson with the quiet precision of steel, " if the river were run- ning live fire and the gale blew from the inferno, I— would— go! Stay home and go to bed, AI- l6o M. R/^DISSON BEGINS THE GAME lemand." And he chose one of the common sailors mstead. And when we walked out to the thick edge of the shorc-,ce and launched the canoe among a whirhng dnft of ice-pans, we had small hop! hadTot Tit r^" ^°"'"^°" ^^^•"- The ice had not the thickness of the spring jam, bvt it was sharp enough to cut our canoe, and we poled our way far oftener than we paddled. Where the currents of the two rivers joined, the wmd had whipped the waters to a maelst;om not J* ' "='^e are two things I dont excuse a fool for-not minding hi oL busmess and not holding his tongue"^ thei". '''^"eh La Chesnaye's money paid for in P ^' J^ ^"^ '""^"'^ had wagged twice m Radasson's hearing he would have torn the ^houTouT'" °"^- °°'"^ - - -- ^d without question, we al! filed down to the canoe thel'?;""'"^' *'" "PP- current. .S by EnX"tr^^^^°^^°^^^^^-^"'-'«New' tridl^' ^''""'^''. '"'^ ^°'^' ^"J «hoot par- ng them on the far side of the river, he bade the What was our surprise to see every bastion call o«, ,a„„n,k. Down ,a„ Be„ Gi, J td ^ 166 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME second officer, aniied cap-a-pie, with swagger- ing insolence that they took no pains to con- ceal. " Congratulate you on coming in the nick of time," cned Ben. " Now what in the Old Nick does he mean bythatP-s^MRadisson. " Does the cub S to cower me with his threats? " "I trust your welcome includes my four offi- cers, he responded. "Two are with me and two have gone for partridges." Ben bellowed a jeering laugh, and his sec- ond man took the cue. "Ymu- four officers may be forty devils," yelled the lieutenant; "we've finished our fort Come m. Monsieur Radissonl Two can play at he game of big talk! You're welcome in if you leave your forty officers out! " For the space of a second M. Radisson's eyes swept the cannon pointing from the bastion embrasures. We were safe enough. The full hull of their own ship was between the guns and us. ^ " Young man," said M. Radisson, addressing "Friendship!" flouted Ben, twirling his mustache and showing both rows of teeth. 167 HERALDS OF EMPIRE You are not talk- "Pooh, pooh, M. Radjsson! ing to a stripling! " " I had thought I was— and a very fool of a *>°oby, too," answered M. Radisson coolly. " SirJ " roared young Gillam with a rumbling of oaths, and he fumbled his sword. But his sword had not left the scabbard be- fore M. de Radisson sent it spinning through mid-air into the sea. " I must ask your forgiveness for that, boy," said the Frenchman to Ben, " but a gentleman fights only his equals." Ben Gillam went white and red by turns, his nose flushing and paling like the wattle of an angry turkey; and he stammered out that he hoped M. de Radisson did not take umbrage at the building of a fort. " We must protect ourselves from the Eng- lish," pleaded Ben. "Pardieu, yes," agreed M. de Radisson, proflfering his own sword with a gesture in place of the one that had gone i.ito the sea, " and I had come to offer you twotily men to hold the fort! " Ben glanced questioningly to his second officer. "Bid that fellow draw off!" ordered M. Radisson. i68 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME Dazed like a man struck between the eyes, Ben did as he was commanded. " I told you that I came in friendship," be- gan Radisson. Gillam waited. " Have you lost a man, Ben? " " No," boldly lied Gillam. " Has one run away from the island against orders? " " No, devil take me, if I've lost a hand but the supercargo that I killed." " I had thought that was yours," said Radis- son, with contempt for the ruffian's boast; and he handed out the paper taken from Jack. Ben staggered back with a gieat oath, vow- ing he would have the scalp of the traitor who lost that letter. Both stood silent, each contemplating the other. Then M. Radisson spoke. " Ben," said he, never taking his glance from the young fellow's face, " what will you give me if I guide you to your father this afternoon? I have just come from Captain Gillam. He and his crew are ill of the scurvy. Dress as a cou- reur and I pass you for a Frenchman." " My father I " cried Ben with his jaws agape and his wits at sea. " Pardieu— yes, I said your father! " 169 MKROCOTY RBOUJTKM TBI CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) jS /APPLIED V^MGE I S^^ 16S3 East Main Strevt S^S RochBster. New York 14609 USA •■^S (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon« ^S (^16) 288 - 5989 - Fax HERALDS OF EMPIRE " What do you want in return? " stammered Ben. Radisson uttered a laugh that had the sound of sword-play. " Egad, 'tis a hot supper I'd like better than anything else just now! If you feed us well and disguise yourself as a coureur, I'll take you at sundown! " And in spite of his second officer's signals, Ben Gillam hailed us forthwith to the fort, where M. Radisson's keen eyes took in every feature of door and gate and sally-port and gun. While the cook was preparing our supper and Ben dis- guising as a French wood-runner, we wandered at will, M. Radisson all the while uttering low laughs and words as of thoughts. It was — "Caught — neat as a mouse in a trap! Don't let him spill the canoe when we're running the traverse, Ramsay! May the fiends blast La Chesnaye if he opens his foolish mouth in Gillam's hearing! Where, think you, may we best secure him? Are the timbers of your room sound? " Or else—" Faith, a stout timber would hold those main gates open! Egad, now, an a man were standing in this doorway, he might jam a musket in the hinge so the thing would keep open! Those guns in the bastions though — 170 M. RADISSON BEGINS THE GAME think you those cannon are not pushed too far through the' windows to be slued round quickly? " And much more to the same purpose, which told why M. Radisson stooped to beg supper from rivals. At sundown all was ready for departure. La Chesnaye and the marquis had come back with the partridges that were to make pretence for our quick return to the Prince Rupert. Ben Gillam had disguised as a bush-runner, and the canoe lay ready to launch. Fools and children unconsciously do wise things by mistake, as you know; and 'twas such an unwitting act sprung M. Radisson's plans and let the prize out of the trap. " Sink me an you didn't promise the loan of twenty men to hold the fort!" exclaimed Ben, stepping down. "Twenty — and more — and welcome," cried Radisson eagerly. " Then send Ramsay and Monsieur La Ches- naye back," put in Ben quickly. " I like not the fort without one head while I'm away." " Willingly," and M. Radisson's eyes glinted triumph. " Hold a minute! " cried Ben before sitting down. " The river is rough. Let two of my men take their places in the canoe! " » 171 HERALDS OF EMPIRE M. Radisson's breath drew sharp through his teeth. But the trap was sprung, and he yielded gracefully enough to hide design. "A curse on the blundering cub! " he mut- tered, drawing apart to give me instructions. " Pardieu — you must profit on this, Ramsay! Keep your eyes open. Spoil a door-lock or two! Plug the cannon if you can! Mix sand with their powder! Shift the sentinels! Get the devils insubordinate " " M. Radisson! " shouted Gillam. " Coming! "says Radisson; and he went ofif with his teeth gritting sand. 172 CHAPTER XIII THE WHITE DARKNESS How much of those instructions we carried out I leave untold. Certainly we could not have been less grateful as guests than Ben Gillam's men were inhospitable as hosts. A more sottish crew of rakes you never saw. Twas gin in the mornmg and rum in the afternoon and vile po- tions of mixed poisons half the night, with a crackmg of the cook's head for withholding fresh kegs and a continual scufHe of lighters over cheating at cards. No marvel the second officer flogged and carved at the knaves like an African slaver. The first night the whole crew set on us with drawn swords because we refused to gamble the doublets from our backs. La Chesnaye laid about with his sword and I with my rapier, till the cook rushed to our rescue with a kettle of lye. After that we escaped to the deck of the ship and locked ourselves inside Ben Gillam's cabin. Here we heard the weather- vanes of the fort bastions creaking for three days 173 I HERALDS OF EMPIRE to the shift of fickle winds. Shore-ice grew thicker and stretched farther to mid-current. Mock suns, or sun-dogs, as we called them, oft hung on each side of the sun. La Chesnaye said these boded ill weather. Sea-birds caught the first breath of storm and wheeled landward with shrill calls, and once La Chesnaye and I made out through the ship's glass a vast herd of caribou running to sniff the gale from the crest of an inland hill. " If Radisson comes not back soon we are storm-bound here for the winter. As you live, we are," grumbled the merchant. But prompt as the ring of a bell to the clap- per came Pierre Radisson on the thirrl day, well pleased with what he had done andalert to keep two of us outside the fort in spite of Ben's ur- gings to bring the French in for refreshments. The wind was shifting in a way that por- tended a nor'easter, and the weather would pres- ently be too inclement for us to remain outside. That hastened M. Radisson's departure, though sun-dogs and the long, shrill whistUng of con- trary winds foretold what was brewing. " Sink me, after such kindness, I'll see you part way home! By the Lord Harry, I will! " swore Ben. M. Radisson screwed his eyes nigh shut and 174 THE WHITE DARKNESS protested he could not permit young Captain Gillam to take such trouble. " The young villain," mutters La Chesnaye. " he wants to spy which way we go." " Come! Come! " cries Ben. " If you say another word I go all the way with you! " " To spy on our fort," whispers La Chesnaye. M. Radisson responds that nothing would give greater pleasure. " I've half a mind to do it," hesitates Ben, looking doubtfully at us. "To be sure," urges M. Radisson, "come along and have a Christmas with our merrv blades!" ' "Why, then, by the Lord, I will!" decides Gillam. " That is," he added, " if you'll send the marquis and his man, there, back to my fort as hostages." M. Radisson twiried his mustaches thought- fully, gave the marquis the same instructions in French as he had given us when we were left in the New Englander's fort, and turning with a calm face to Ben, bade him get into our canoe. But when we launched out M. Radisson headed the craft up-stream in the wrong direc- tion, whither we paddled till nightfall. It was cold enough in all conscience to afford Ben Gil- 175 HERALDS OF EMPIRE lam excuse for tipping a flask from his jacket- pouch to his teeth every minute or two; but when we were rested and ready to launch again, the young captain's brain was so befuddled that he scarce knew whether he were in Boston or on Hudson Bay. This time we headed straight down-stream, Ben nodding and dozing from his place in the middle, M. Radisson, La Chesnaye, and I poling hard to keep the drift-ice oflf. We avoided the New Englander's fort by going on the other side of the island, and when we shot past Governor Brigdar's stockades with the lights of the Prince Rupert blinking through the dark, Ben was fast asleep. And all the while the winds were piping over- head with a roar as from the wings of the great ' storm bird which broods over all that north- land. Then the blore of the trumpeting wind was answered by a counter fugue from the sea, with a roll and pound of breakers across the sand of the traverse. Carried by the swift current, we had shot into the bay. It was morning, but the black of night had given place to the white darkness of northern storm. Ben Gillam jerked up sober and grasped an idle pole to lend a hand. Through the whirl of spray M. Radisson's figure " loomed black at the bow, and above the boom of 176 THE WHITE DARKNESS tumbling waves came the grinding as of an earth- quake. " We are lost ! We are lost ! " shrieked Gil- lam in panic, cowering back to the stern. " The storm's drifted down polar ice from the north and we're caught ! We're caught ! " he cried. He sprang to his feet as if to leap into that white waste of seething ice foam. 'Twas the frenzy of terror, which oft seizes men adrift on ice. In another moment he would have swamped us under the pitching crest of a mountain sea. But M. Radisson turned. One blow of his pole and the foolish youth fell senseless to the bottom of the canoe. "Look, sir, look!" screamed La Chesnaye, " the canoe's getting ice-logged 1 She's sunk to the gun'ales!" But at the moment when M. Radisson turned to save young Gillam, the unguided canoe had darted between two rolling seas. Walls of ice rose on either side. A white whirl— a mighty rush — a. tumult of roaring waters—the ice walls pitched down— the canoe was caught— tossed up— nipped — crushed like a card-box— and we four flung on the drenching ice-pans to a roll of the seas like to sweep us under, with a footing slippery as glass. " Keep hold of Gillam! Lock hands! " came i;; HERALDS OF EMPIRE a clarion voice through the storm. " Don't fear m rJ' "° '^^"«^''' T''^ K»'= will drive us ashore! Don't fearl Holdtir" I Hold tight! There s no danger if you have no fear! " ^^_^The ice heaved and flung to the roll of the " Hold fast and your wet F'eeves will freeze you to the ice! Steady! " he called, as the th"g leii and rose again. Then, with the hiss of the worid serpent that pursues man to his doom, we were scudding be- fore a mountain swell. There was the splinter- ing report of a cannon-shot. The ice split. We clung the closer. The rush of waves swept under us around us, above us. There came a crasS' Ihe thmg gave from below. The powers of darkness seemed to close over us. the jaws of the world serpent shut upon their prey, tie spir t o evil shrieked its triumph. h..?"']"* *°"'''''' ''°"°"- The waves fell trave'rse " "" "',°" '^'^ '''' ^^^'^^ ^^ ^S "Run! Run for your lives!" shouted Ra- brought to h,s senses. " Lock hands and run! " And run we did, like those spirits in the twi-- hght of the lost, with never a hope of rescue and never a resp.te from fear, hand gripping hand, 178 '„^J t-''W" I'lft"*!" '!&'•■ "^ THE WHITE DARKNESS tt *'**%* M "'' *^*'' ""'^ '^^ ^"^'"^ »>«* yelp- ing wofishly at our hc.lsl 'Twas the oH, old story of Man leaping u». lunted as a warrior to conquer his foes- >,me. backl-beateni-pur- sued by serpent and wolf, spirit of darkness and power of destruction, with the light of life flick- ering low and the endless frosts creeping close to a heart beating faint! Oh, those were giants that we set forth to conquer in that harsh northland-the giants of he warnng elements! And giants were needed tor the task. Think you of that when you hear the slight- ing scorn of the rough pioneer, because he mmceth not his speech, nr. weareth ruffs at his Sd^o"H;h:r'^°'°^"*''^'^"^^^^^°- The earth fell away from our feet. We all four tumbled forward. The storm whistled past overhead. And we lay at the bottom of a cliff that seemed to shelter a multitude of shadowy forms. We had fallei. to a ravine wnere the vast canbou herds had wandered from the storm which M. Radisson, with a depth of reverence "^hLT^", '\""°' '""' "^'"'" '^y~ he, thank God for this deliverance! " • . , So urused to man's presence were the'cari- 179 11 HERALDS OF EMPIRE bou or perhaps so stupefied by the storm, they wL ht? " V"' ""*'■" °^ '"^^ herd, ound wh.ch the great bucks had formed a cordon with h yount VV: "'r *° '''°'''' '"» ^- -' !« r ^: .' ''"' ''■°'" *•'« multitude of bod- cs warn^ed us back to life, and I make no doubt the findmg of that herd was God Almighty- provision for our safety. -^'mignty s «. l°[ ^^Z^^^y' *•= wandered with nothing to eat but wild birds done to death by the Je ° On the third day the storm abatedf bu if was t.ll snowmg too heavily for us to see a man" cngth away Two or three times the caribou tossed up their heads sniffing the air suspicious- ly, and La Chesnaye fell to cursing lest the wolf- pack should stampede the herd. At thi GiHam M-hose hulking body had wasted from £k Tf' bulky rations, began to whimper- „' 11^^^ wolf-pack come we are lost I " Man," says Radisson sternly, "say thv prayers and thank God we are alive!" timJ^.r'"^" '''^^" '° '■°^'^ ^•'"'"''Jy for a time, then they were off with a rush that bare hoofs" w"" '? r^P^ '''' ^™y °^ ^'-'''■"g hoofs. We were left unprotected in the falling iiili i8o THE WHITE DARKNESS The primal instincts come uppermost at such times, and like the wild creatures of the woods facing a foe, instantaneously we wheeled back to back, alert for the enemy that had frightened the caribou. " Hist! " whispers Radisson. " Look! " Ben Gillam leaped into the air as if he had been shot, shrieking out: " It's him! It's him! Shoot him! The thief! The traitor! It's him! " He dashed forward, followed by the rest of us, hardly sure whether Ben were sane. Three figures loomed through the snowy darkness, white and silent as the snow itself— vague as phantoms in mist — pointing at us :v.j wraiths of death— spirit hunters incarnate of t .it vast wilderness riding the riotous storm over land and sea. One swung a weapon aloft. There was the scream as of a woman's cry— and the shrieking wind had swept the snow-clouds about us in a blind fury that blotted all sight. And when the combing billows of drift passed, the apparition had faded. We four stood alone staring in space with strange questionings. "Egad I" gasped Radisson, "I don't mind when the wind howls like a wolf, but when it takes to the death-scream, with snow like the skirts of a shroud " l8i ':*aB-jr. f.'^-?mmmm~san^r'r^mr imriiim iiiiior HERAtDS OF EMPIRE tered La Chesnaye. crossing himself. " It is si^ of death! That was a woman's figure It^ sJgn of death!" ^ " . " ^'8^" of death ! » raged Ben, stampine his .mpo ent fury, " 'tis him-'tis him! The Juda srtr;frs,^f'^'^^--°^^--HatheX^ _'HoId quiet!" ordered M. Radisson. Look, you rantipole-who is that? " Twas Le Borgne, the one-eyed, emernne from the gloom of the snow like a ghoT Bv guide us back to our Habitation We reached the fort that night, Le Borgne ZT^ ''' I ^'''°"' ^^ ''^ had come^ i.. ^f i ^ '' """^ ^^ ^'d was to hold a serv- •« of thanks to God Almighty for our delive^- 183 CHAPTER XIV A CHALLENGE Filling the air with ghost-shadows, silen- cing earth, muffling the sea, day after day fell the snow. Sho^e-ice barred out the pounding surf. The river had frozen to adamant. Brush- wood sank in the deepening drifts like a foun- dered ship, and all that remained visible of ever- greens was an occasional spar or snow mush- room on the crest of a branch. No east, no west, no day, no night; nothing but a white darkness, billowing snow, and a si- lence as of death. It was the cold, silent, mystic, white world of northern winter. At one moment the fort door flings wide with a rush of frost like smoke clouds, and in stamps Godefroy, shaking snow off with boisterous noise and vowing by the saints that the drifts are as high as the St. Pierre's deck. M. Groseillers orders the rascal to shut the door; but bare has the latch clicked when young Jean whisks in, tossing snow from cap and gauntlets like a clip- '83 HERALDS OF EMPIRE per shaking a reef to the spray, and declares that the snow is already level with the fort walls. .. ._ " ^^' "^P'^^w," exclaims Radisson sharply how are the cannon?" Ben Gillam, who has lugged himself from bed to the hearth for the first time since his freezmg, blurts out a taunting laugh. We had done better to build on the sheltered side of an island, he informs us. Now, the shivers take me!" cries Ben, "but where a deuce are all your land forces and ma- nnes and jack-tars and forty thousand officers? " He cast a scornful look down our long low- roofed barracks, counting the men gathered round the hearth and laughing as he counted. M. Radisson affected not to hear, telling Jean to hoist the cannon and puncture embrasures high to the bastion-roofs like Italian towers "Monsieur Radisson." impudently mouths Ben, who had taken more rum for his health than was good for his head, " I asked you to in- form me where your land forces are? " "Outside the fort constructing a breast- work of snow." •; Good! " sneers Ben. " And the marines? " Un the ships, where they ought to be " officlr^?"'^'" ''"^''' ^'""" "^"'"- "^"'I't'^^ 184 Ilii.i A CHALLENGE " Superintending the raising of the cannon. And I would have you to know, young man," adds Radisson, " that when a guest asks too many questions, a host may not answer." But Ben goes on unheeding. " Now I'll wager that dog of a runaway slave o' mine, that Jack Battle who's hidirtg hereabouts, I'll wager the hangdog slave and pawn my head you haven't a corporal's guard o' marines and land forces all told! " M. Radisson never allowed an enemy's taunt to hasten speech or act. He looked at Ben with a measuring glance which sized that fellow very small indeed. " Then I must decline your wager, Ben," says he. " In the first place. Jack Battle is mine al- ready. In the second, you would lose ten times over. In the third, you have few enough men already. And in the fourth, jour head isn't worth pawn for a wager; though I may take you, body and boots, all the same," adds he. With that he goes oflf, leaving Ben blowing curses into the fire like a bellows. The young rake bawled out for more gin, and with head sunk on ^is chest began muttering to him- self— "That black-eyed, false-hearted, slippery French eel! " he mumbles, rapping out an oath. i8S Hi 111 HERALDS OF EMPIRE knave and a thief and a cheat! By Cas i he doesn't turn up ,,h the furs, I',, do to h^l'j did to the supercargo last week anH k ! frosf fSi"' 'r. ""?' '"^"' »i'l> >he rush of irost clouds, and m the midst of the white vi, Ma„?.t":keI""™°""-"°--"^r60d «.red &:,:S;s™ta: \' ^°'^''' ■"•-"•■• "■ u 'jroseiiiers, but who are these? " aHve":hrirhr/"— ^-'H-n Le Borgne's fo;ty eye took on a stoKd loot i86 A CHALLENGE ^White-men -lost -in the snow," said he. wh,te-man from the big white canoe-come wa kee - walkee _ one - two _ three sleep- watchee good Indian— friend— fort!" M. GroseiUers sprang to his feet muttering of treachery from Governor Brigdar of the Hud- son s Bay Company, and put himself in front of the mtruders so that Ben could not see. But the poor fellows were so frozen that they could only mumble out something about the Prince Rupert having foundered, carrying half the crew to the . nver bottom. Hurrying the two Englishmen to another part of the fort, M. GroseiUers bade me run for Radisson. I wish that you could have seen the trium- phant ghnt laughing in Pierre Radisson's eyes when I told him. them! This time the jade hath trumped her ^^T. l""l ^'' *'"' ^^'"^y-' We could J captured both father and son with a flip o' the finger! Now there's only need to hold the son! Governor Bngdar must beg passage from us to leave the bay; but who a deuce are those inland- ers that Ben GiUam keeps raving against for hiding the furs? " ^ ' And he flung the mess-room door open so forcibly that Ben GiUam waked with a jump. At '' 187 HERALDS OF EMPIRE sight of Le Borgne the young New Englander sprang over the benches with his teeth agleam and murder on his face. But the liquor had gone to h.s knees. He keeled head over like a top- heavy bng and when we dragged him up Le Borgne had bolted. '^ ^vot^t^*''"* "'^''' ^'" "^"'■'^ deliriously that he would do worse to Le Borgne's master than he haa done to tj,e supercargo; but he never by any ■ beT V^l t° ^' ^°^^"«'^ "-«^«r mighl be. though M. Radisson. Chouirt GroseiUers young Jean, and I kept watch by turns lest the drunken knave should run amuck of our French! men. I mmd once, when M. Radisson and I were Jttmg qu.et by the bunk where Ben was berthed! the young rake sat up with a fog-horn of a yel snn Tn u' """"'^ '"" '^^' P"^'^ °^ a Radis- son and all his cursed Fre ichies into meat for the «nH^' ?*;"'f " J^ol^ed through the candle-light and snnled. If you want to know your charL ter Ramsay,' says he, "get your enemy talk- ing in his cups! " ^ hJ?^^'I ""^ '°"'' '^ ''^ *^^^ •^^'"e to Ws fort bm to find out how strong the liar isl" cries pushmg the young fellow back to his fiHow and )88 A CHALLENGE fastening the fur robes close lest frost steam,.H through the ill-chinked logs. ^ t ^^ 5*""''"" ®*" G'"ani and Tack Battle o the New Englanders' fort and thl two spS ennS'w ''°"^' ^'^ ^^"'P^"^ ^^^ «" recovered enough from their freezing to go about. What w.th keeping the English and New Englanders ^ t':iste7r^ '' "- .' '''''"'' p^-"« - s J tw, ed a p,ece ot by-play as you could want. Ben Gillan, and Jack we dressed as bushrangers he Hudson's Bay spies as French marines N I' ther suspected the others were English, nor ever crossed words while with us. Ind whatever enemaes say of Pierre Radisson, I would have well Z:T- *'^* '^ '''^''^ •'•^ -Ptives so ba I to their'"' "°"'' "°* '^^' '"^^^^ *'^«='n oacK to their own masters. fnrf " ^7 T ^ ''*"'''" ^" ^''^ E"&"sh Ol both forts unless I wm some of ^hem tor friends? " he the? f ' "T '^^"^ -^^'^^ *° Ws soul for the kmdness that he practised "^g and the frost turned the land to a silent white paleocrystic world. Sap-frozen timbers sTof^'thl' tf 'r ' ^'"P ^"^PP^"^ °^ P^'^" Shots— then the white silence! The river ice spmtereo to the tightening grip of winter wh the grinding of an earthquake, and again the 189 ^1 HERALbS OF EMPIRE white silence 1 Or the heavy night air, lying thick with frost smoke like a pall over earth, would reverberate to the deep hayings of the wolf-pack, and over all would close the white silence! As if to defy the powers of that deathly realm, M. de Radisson had the more logs heaped on our hearth and doubled the men's rations. On Christmas morning he had us all out to fire a salute, Ben Gillam ind Jack and the two Fur Company spies disguised as usual, and the rest of us mufHed to our eyes. Jackets and tompions were torn from the cannon. Unfrosted priming was distributed. Flags vere run up on boats and bastions. Then the word was given to fire and cheer at the top of our voices. Ben Gillam was sober enough that morning but in the mood of a ruffian stale from over- night brawls. Hardly had the rocking echoes of cannonading died away when the rascal strode boldly forward in front of us all, up with" his musk it, took quick aim at the main flagstaff and fired. The pole splintered oflP at the top and the French flag fluttered to the ground. "There's for you — you Frenchies!" he shouted. "See the old rag tumble!" 'Twas the only time M. Radisson gave vent to wrath. 190 A CHALLENGE " Avast I Avast I " cries Ben " w« ,. u i- in glass-houses needs Tot to thfn ? '''? Mind that, ye pirate!" '^'°^ ''""''^ "Dog!" repeats M. Radisson, "dare to Show ^d.srespect to the Most c'hristn S "rnrn^:;^';^^-,f-Be„. whaf T'li „: ^1. l, "' ^ "en in show you What III g,ve He Most Chnslian of Ki„s,|' itr.s:iS„i:fBrr"*-"'- Ka£:„Tor„eT:;.;is„l„°:'^^rt"- ^™ay.„.p„,..,,J,'t;--;^=h,„. --c;;.^::js£„rs7TCtVtT men-" Form line-march! " *° *''" At the word we filed into the guard-room 191 HERALDS OF EMPIRE where the soldiers relieved Gillam of pistol and " Am I to be shot? Am I to be shot? " cried G. 11am, wh.te with terror at M. Radisson's order to load muskets. " Am I to be shot? " he whim- "Not unless you do it yourself, and 'twould De the most graceful act of your life. Ben I And now." said M. Radisson, dismissing all the men but one sentinel for the door. " and now, Ben ^ Merry Christmas to you, and may it be your Lt m Hudson Bay! " h.^^^^^"' ^'!'^' ^^" ^'"^^ prisoner; but he ordered special watch to be kept on the for bast.ons lest Ben's bravado portended attach wSLrstaT"'"" '^ ^^'^' "^" *° ^-«-* "The compliments of the morning to you Xour'"""^^'^'"^'""^-^^^'-^^^ Ben wished that he might be cursed if any man could rest well on bare boards rimed with frost like curdled milk. "Cheer up, man! Cheer up!" encourages Rad.sson. " There's to be a capture to-day! '' A capture!" reiterates Ben, glowerine b^^ck across the table and doffing his'cap wit? 192 I, &i'lf i:«r" '£' "'Kill' „*E;li! A CHALLENGE and onHhl '''*"'■" ^^"'^ 'ad. one fort and one ship are pnze enough for o.-e dayl " Sink my soul," flouts Gillam. lookine inso- lently down the table to the rows ^f ragged saT or, sitting beyond our officers. " if evj^ ma„ o' your rough-scuff had the nine lives of aTat tSe^ nine Inres would be shot down before hey reached our palisades! " ^ ;; Is it a wager? " demands M. Radisson. if you wb!-' '■■"'""■' '"' '°'* ^"'^ "-^-'^ ^° boot "Done! "cries La Chesnaye "Ah, well," calculates M. Radisson "th^ rne frenchman s slur " a i,„-j j !• .. •^ hundred men with ^eni M. Radisson rose " T»,r. ~ m the fort now, Pick me ouTrevenlTrerxS: will make nine, With those nine I own you fort by nightfall or I set you freel " ^ Donel " shouts Ben. " Everv m,„ i. witness!" ^very man here a " Choose!" insists M. Radisson. Sailors and soldiers were all on their feet ges- »93 18 HERALDS OF EMPIRE tlculating and laughing; for Godefroy v.as trarwhiting .nto French a, fast a, the leader. " Choose! " urges M. Radisson, leaning over to snuff out the great breakfast candle with bare fingers as if his hand weie iron. (S ^''Im ' "/ '°"'' **""'" '*"«»» Ben- in high feather, let the first be that little Jack Sprat of a half-frozen Battle! He's loyal to me! " " Good! " smiles M. Radisson. " Come over here, Jack Battle." " beh/nnlf ^o '^^'"'"P*'' °^" '^^ ***"« «nd stood behmd M. Radisson as second lieutenant, Ben's irSf^°'"J^'='''^^»^-°^^«''-ger who'm'';ou°:'i'n,"''"' ""• ^•'"^°"' "^--« The soldiers broke into ringing cheers. Devil take you, Radisson," ejaculates Ben thrNfcki'" '"'^ '°°' ''"Pudence would chill "cZ^f ?/' '' ""^^ ^''" '■'=*°'^« Radisson. Lhoose! We must be off! " Again the soldiers cheered. wi^Hv^l!' "'""'' '^^' '"™*^°a* °^ a Stanhope with his fine airs. I'd rather see him shot next than any one else! " " Thank you, Ben," said I. «94 A CHALLENGE • ^''**"*'*°- GoonI Five morel" The soldiers fell to laughing and Ben to pull- >ng at his mustache. "That money-bag of a La Chesnaye next " Sshot"'- ""^'^'^^^-ught/fainTit the'iimeT'""'"''''"''" «« " ^^^^ most of " ^°«'." counts M. Radisson. " Come ov r " Five," laughs M. Radisson. a scullion lad and a wretched little stowawav who had kept hidden under hatches till wTrie' too far out to send him back. At the last cZfcl our men shouted and Capped and sJatped a^^^^^ broke mto snatches of song about conquerors. '95 ■i ;! CHAPTER XV THE BATTLE NOT TO THE STRONG t;J^' ^°^^«°N t«"ied the sand-glass up to .me our preparations. Before the last ^ain fell we seven were out, led by M. Radisson rfh "! r"" '^' «"°w-drifted marsh through the thick frosty darkness that lies like a blanket ov.r that northland at dawn. The air hung ThtT r^'r«y t° the touch with ice-frost The hard-packed drifts crisped to our tread with httle noises which I can ca.l by no other name brea h. Endless reaches of frost were all that Frn, "^ *• J''-°«t-"«<^kling the only sound. Frost .n one's throat like a drink of water, and he tingle of the frost in the blood with a leap that was fulness of life. Up drifts with the help of our muskets! Down hills with a rush of snow-shoes that ...t the powdery snow flying! Skimming the leveis w h the silent speed of wings! Past the snow mushrooms topping underbrush and the snow 196 BATTLE NOT TO THE STRONG cones of the evergreens and the snow billows of under rocks and the snow-wreathed antlers of the naked forest in a world of snow! The morning stars paled to steel pin-pricks through a gray sky. Shadows took form in the frost. The slant rays of a southern sun struck through the frost clouds in spears. Then the frost smoke rose like mist, and the white glare shone as a sea. In another hour it would be high noon of the short shadow. Every coat— beaver and bear and otter and raccoon-hung open, every capote flung back, evc^y runner hot as in midsummer, though '-ost-rime edged the hair hke snow. When the sun lay like a fiery shield half-way across the southern horizon, M. Radis- son called a halt for nooning. " Now. remember, my brave lads," said he after he had outlined his plans, drawing figures of fort and ship and army of seven on the snow now, remember, if you do what I've told you not a shot will be fired, not a drop of blood spilled, not a grain of powder used, and to every man free tobacco for the winter " " If we succeed," interjects Godefroy sul- lenly. "If," repeats M. Radisson; " an I hear that word again there will be a carving! " Long before we came to the north river near 197 HERALDS OF EMPIRE - no obS r : "■-'"*-. ^«rHsh„.„ south end of fV. 1, " ^ ''"P '">"■ ">= «,»!„ '' '""" "> "»«"= them they »"« at our mercy. Hastening up ,he riZ before questions could be asked ^ ;; I don't see your ship," called Radisson. l greater risk to stay- An you L to obey I make you fear more to disobey! An you shirk the pain of toeing the scratch, I'll make it a deal more painful to lag behind i " betll" ll7'"" "'^'' '" '''^''' ^°^^f-^ the night ,s lighter than morning with the - th tL7'^ "'^''* "-^'^^^ -^t'^ a last drlv the night ,s same as day to man of spirit! Tis the sort of encouragement half the S needs to succeed," said M. Radisson thr^ down the cudgel. radisson, throwing for ^T ^°^'^''?' '^^ ''^"''^^^' ^^« ShT CHAPTER XVI WE SEEK THE INLANDERS In the matter of fighting, I find small diflfer- ence between white-men and red. Let the lust of conquest but burn, the justice of the quarrel receives small thought. Your fire-eating proph- et cares little for the right of the cause, pro- vided the fighter come out conqueror; and many a poet praises only that right which is might over-trampling weakness. I have heard the withered hag of an Indian camp chant as spirited war-song as your minstrels of butchery but the strange thing of it is, that the people' who have taken the sword in a wantonness of conquest, are the races that have been swept from the face of the earth like dead leaves before the winter blast; but the people, who have held immutably by the power of right, which our Lord Christ set up, the meek and the peace- makers and the children of God, these are they that inherit the earth. Where are the tribes with whom Godefroy and Jack Battle and I wandered in nomadic life 2IO WE SEEv THI. GLANDERS over the northern -.ar.s? Buried in oblivion black as n,ght, but for the lurid memories flashed down to you of later generations. Where are the Puritan folk, with their cast-iron narrow creeds damning all creation but them- , selves, with their foibles of snivelling to attest I sanctity with such a wolfish zeal to hound down devils that they hounded innocents for witch- w ,1 Spreading over the face of the New Worid, making the desert to bloom and the waste places fruitful gardens? And the reason or It all IS simply this: Your butchering Indian like your swashing cavalier, founded his nr/J upon mtght; your Puritan, grim but faithful, to the outermost bounds of his tragic errors, found- ed his mtght upon right. We learn our hardest lessons from unlikeli- est masters. This one came to me from the In- dians of the blood-dyed northern snows. " Don't show your faces till you have some- thing to report about those pirates, who led the Indians, was M. Radisson's last command, as we sallied from the New Engenders' fort with a hnng of cannon and beating of drums Godefroy, the trader, muttered under his breath that M. Radisson need never fear eternal torment. 211 .^i HERALDS OF EMPIRE "Why?" I asked. " Because, if he goes there," answered Gode- froy, " he'll get the better o' the Nick." I think the fellow was smarting from recent punishment. He and AUemand, the drunken pilot, had been draining gin kegs on the sly and replacing what they took with snow water. That last morning at prayers Godefroy, who was half-seas over, must yelp out a loud " Amen " in the wrong place. Without rising from his knees, or as much as changing his tone, M. de Radisson brought the drunken knrve such a cufT it flattened him to the floor. Then prayers went on as before. The Indians, whom we had nursed of their wounds, were to lead us to the tribe, one only being held by M. Radisson as hostage for safe conduct. In my mind, that trust to the Indians' honour was the single mistake M. Radisson made in the winter's campaign. In the first place, the Indian has no honour. Why should he have, when his only standard of right is con- quest? In the second place, kindness is re- garded as weakness by the Indian. Why should it not be, when his only god is victory? In the third place, the lust of blood, to kill, to butcher, to mutilate, still surged as hot in their veins as on the night when they had attempted to scale 212 .^.. ^ WE SEEK THE INLANDERS our walls. And again I ask why not, when the law of their life was to kill or to be killed? These questions I put to you because life put them to me. At the time my father died, the gentlemen of King Charles's court were already aflfecting that refinement of philosophy which justifies despotism. From justifying despotism, 'twas but a step to justifying the wicked acts of tyranny; and from that, but another step to thrusting God's laws aside as too obsolete for our clever courtiers. " Give your unbroken colt tether enough to pull itself up with one sharp fall," M. Radisson used to say, "and it will never run to the end of its line again." The mind of Europe spun the tissue of fool- ish philosophy. The savage of the wilderness went the full tether; and I leave you to judge whether the might that is right or the right that is might be the better creed for a people. But I do not mean to imply that M. Radis- son did not understand the savages better than any man of us in the fort. He risked three men as pawns in the game he was playing for mastery of the fur trade. Gamester of the wilderness as he was, Pierre Radisson was not the man to court a certain loss. The Indians led us to the lodges of the hos- tiles safely enough; and their return gave us en- 213 HERALDS OF EMPIRE trance if not welcome to the tepee village. We had entered a ravine and came on a cluster of wigwams to the lee side of a bluflF. Dusk hid our approach; and the absence of the dogs that usually infest Indian camps told us that these fellows were marauders. Smoke curled up from the poles crisscrossed at the tepee forks, but we could descry no figures against the tent- walls as in summer, for heavy skins of the chase overlaid the parchment. All was silence but in one wigwam. This was an enormous structure, built on poles long as a mast, with moose-hides' scattered so thickly upon it that not a glint of firelight came through except the red glow of smoke at the peak. There was a low hum of suppressed voices, then one voice alone in sol- emn tones, then guttural grunts of applause. "In council," whispered Godefroy, steering straight for the bearskin that hung flapping across the entrance. Bidding Jack Battle stand guard outside, we followed the Indians who had led us from the fort. Lifting the tent-flap, we found ourselves inside. A withered creature with snaky, tangled hair, toothless gums, eyes that burned like em- bers, and a haunched, shrivelled figure, stood gesticulating and crooning over a low monotone in the centre of the lodge. 314 WE SEEK THE INLANDERS As we entered,. the draught from the door sent a tongue of flame darting to mid-air from the central fire, and scores of tawny faces with glance intent on the speaker were etched against the dark. These were no camp families, but braves, deep in war council. The elder men sat with crossed feet to the fore of the circle. The young braves were behind, kneeling, standing, and stretched full length. All were smoking their long-stemmed pipes and listening to the medicine-man, or seer, who was crooning his low-toned chant. The air was black with smoke. Always audacious, Godefroy, the trader, ad- vanced boldly and sat down in the circle. I kept back in shadow, for directly behind the Indian wizard was a figure lying face downward, chin resting in hand, which somehow reminded me of Le Borgne. The fellow rolled lazily over, got to his knees, and stood up. Pushing the wizard aside, this Indian faced the audience. It was Le Borgne, his foxy eye yellow as flame, teeth snapping, and a tongue running at such a pace that we could scarce make out a word of his jargon. " What does he say, Godefroy? " "Sit down," whispered the trader, "you are safe." 215 HERALDS OF EMPIRE This was what the Indian was saying as Godefroy muttered it over to me: " Were the Indians fools and dogs to throw away two fish for the sake of one? The French were friends of the Indians. Let the Indians find out what the French would give them for k,lhng the English. He, Le Borgne th" one-eyed, was brave. He would go to the • Frenchman's fort and spy out how strong they were. If the French gave them muskets for k.lhng the English, after the ships left in the spring the Indians could at.ack the fort and kill the French. The great medicine-man, the white hunter, who hved under the earth, would supply them with muskets " fh. " ^1 •^^'. '!"' '""'*" ''""'^'" ^^° I'ves under the earth ,s gi.ing them muskets to make war " whispered Godefroy. "That must be the pi- late. "Listen!" A- "^f the braves prepare to meet the In- dians of the Land of Little White Sticks, who were coming with furs for the white men-" i-e Borgne went on. fh.\^^\''\^T^' '""'^ '^^'' ™""ers over the hills to the Little White Sticks sleeping i„ he sheltered valley. Let the braves creep through the mist of the morning like the lynx 216 WE SEEK THE INLANDERS seeking the ermine. And when the Little White Sticks were all asleep, the runners would shoot fire arrows mto the air and the braves would slay-slay-slay the men, who might fight, the women, who might run to the whites for aid and the children, who might live to tell tales." ' breath ''"'■'" '^^' ^""^'^'"^ ""^"'' ^'' n.- f JT ^1°^^ °" *^^ '^^^'^ ^'th a flare that S ^M r^""'' '"" ^"" '^^^y '■^d; and the fellow gabbled on, with figure crouching stealth- ily orward, foxy eye alight with evil, and teeth glistening. wi,".^c *'!^ ^"^""^^ '^'^^ ^^^ ^"""^ of the Little White Sticks, trade the furs to the white-man for muskets massacre the English, then when the great white chiefs big canoes left, kill the Frenchmen of the fort." "Ha," says Godefroy. " Jack's safe outside! We 11 have a care to serve you through the loop- holes, and trade you only broken muskets! " A guttural grunt applauded Le Borgne's advice, and the crafty scoundrel continued ' The great medicine-man, the white hunter, who lived under the earth, was their friend. Was he not here among them? Let the braves near what he advised." The Indians grunted their approbation. 217 HERALDS OF EMPIRE Some one stirred the f5rp f« a nsen to our fe«>f tt^ • , ""J' ^nd i had the firelight was a whr^'"^ ''°"' '''' ^"^"^ '° tunic of fcarlet with ^'k"' ^'"^"^ *^'°*''^d '" lace enough ra\X':::rH^- T' ^°^' hidden by Le R«. . ? ^'* ^^*^^ was pushed to^ .X'wTf^ tt^next^r^^ shout of rage rent the ent roof L. R "^' ' was stamping out the fire A red f '^u' averted face raced round he bd Je n™ """^ fronted „, ^^ ^,, ,„^ ^|| j;;'= "'* .„d „„. call your brave, nff ^' ^ '^ ^^^ ''o"'* to th'e French " ' ^°" '='" '^" "° "°^« Pelts dro'e^thfbrsb?cr-^--^^"^^Hat "We have no furs yet," said he. 218 -I'm WE SEEK THE INLANDERS " But you will have them when you raid the Littls White Sticks,' raged Godefroy, caring nothing for the harm his words might work if he saved his own scalp. Le Borgne drew oflf to confer with the braves. Then he came back and there was a treacherous smile of welcome on his bronze face. " The Indians thought the white-men spies from the Little White Sticks," he explained in the mellow, rhythmic tones of the redman. The Indians were in war council. The In- dians are friends of the French." '' Look out for him, Godefroy," said I. " If the French are friends to the Indians, let the white-men come to battle against the Little White Sticks," added Le Borgne. "Tell him no! We'll wait here till they come back! " "He says they are not coming back" an- swered Godefroy, "and hang me, Ramsay, an I d not face an Indian massacre before I go back empty-handed to M. Radisson. We're in for it," says he, speaking English too quick for Le Borgne's ear. " If we show the white feather now, they'll n.,ish us. They'll not harm us till they ve done for the English and got more mus- kegs. And that red pirate is after these sar e '5 219 HERALDS OF EMPIRE battle you d best not come to the wilderness." h„. .^''^"'''"•'-'"en will go with the Indians bu the whue-men w:il not fight with the Lit le ^t.cks announced Godefroy to Le Borene proffenng tobacco enough to pacify the tribT risk ortn'" "T '^V ^ ^'^P^^t^'^ted against the r sk of gomg far mland with hostiles, who had attacked the New England fort and were even now plann,ng the sla..,hter of white-n.en. In- offens.veness .s the most deadly of offences w.th savagery, whether the savagery be of wh he men or red Le Borgne had the^insolence t ask why the tribe could not as easily kSl us where we were as farther inland; and' we saw that remonstrances were working the evil thaT we wished to avoid-increasing th Tndilns' man who fears death should neither go to the -Iderness nor launch his canoe above a wh rl! pool unless he is prepared to run the rapid This New World had never been won f^om darkness .f men had hung back from fear of 1;^ fr. 7T^ ''"^ ^ moment's work for the braves with red°: "r"^"'"- ^^"^ "^- '^'-'^-ed " ca iou T '^^"^'"^ "°""^^= ''"dies clad m caribou skms or ermine-pelts white as the 220 WE SEEK THE INLANDERS snow to be crossed; quivers of barbed and poi- sonous arrows hanging over their backs in otter and beaver skins; powder in buffalo-horns for those who had muskets; shields of toughened hide on one arm, and such a number of scalp- locks fnnging every seam as told their own story of murderous foray. While the land still smoked under morning frost and the stars yet pricked through the gray darkness, the war- riors were far afield coasting the snow-billows as on tireless wings. Up the swelling drifts water-waved by wind like a rolling sea. down cliffs crumbling over with snowy cornices, across the icy marshes swept glare by the gales, the braves pressed relentlessly on. Godefroy, Jack Battle and I would have hung to the rear and slipped away if we could; but the fate of an old man was warning enough. Muttering against the braves for embroiling themselves in war without cause, he fell away from the marauders as if to leave. Le Borgne's foxy eye saw the move. Turning, he rushed at the old man with a hiss of air through his teeth like a whistling arrow. His musket swung up. It clubbed down. There was a groan; and as we rounded a bluff at a pace that brought the air cutting in our faces, I saw the old man's body lying mo- tionless on the snow. 221 HERALDS OF EMPIRE If this was the beginning, what was the end? IndS T.'T^ '^'' '^' '"»" ^»» only an Indian, and h.s death was no sin anyway. He wore a score o' scalps at his belt. Pah, an we could get furs without any Indians I d see an their skulls go! " snapped the trader nextp'-a'^krd'jLr'""'"'^'"^^'"^"-'"" And that gave Godefroy pause. 333 CHAPTER XVII A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE For what I now tell I oflFer no excuse I would but record what savagery meant. Then may you who are descended from the New World pioneers know that your lineage is from men as heroic as those crusaders who rescued our Saviour's grave from the pagans; for cru- saders of Old World and New carried the sword of destruction in one hand, but in the other, a cross that was light in darkness. Then may you. my lady-fingered sentimentalist, who go to bed of a winter night with a warming- pan and champion the rights of the savage from your soft place among cushions, realize what a fine hero your redman was, and realize too, what were the powers that the white-man crushed! For what I do not tell I offer no excuse It >s not permitted to relate all that savage warfare meant. Once I mar -.lied that a just God could order his chdser .le to exterminate any -*3 i.il ! ! HERALDS OF EMPIRE race. Now I marvel that a just God hath not exterminated many races long ago. Wc reached the crest of a swelling upland as the first sun-rays came through the frost mist m shafts of fire. A quick halt was called. One white-garbed scout went crawling stealthily down the snow-slope like a mountain-cat. Then the frost thinned to the rising sun and vague outlines of tepee lodges could be descried in the clouded valley. An arrow whistled through the air glancing into snow with a soft whirr at our feet. It was the signal. As with one thought, the warriors charged down the hill, leaping from side to side m a frenzy, dancing in a madness of slaughter, shrieking their long, shrill— " Ah— oh !— Ah— oh!"— yelping, howling, screaming their war- cry—" Ah— oh!— Ah— oh!— Ah— oh ! " — like demons incarnate. The medicine -man had stripped himself naked and was tossing his arms with maniacal fury, leaping up and down, yell- ing the war-cry, beating the tom-tom, rattling the death-gourd. Some of the warriors went down on hands and feet, sidling forward through the mist like the stealthy beasts of prey that they were. Godefroy, Jack Battle, and I were carried be- fore the charge helpless as leaves in a hurricane. 224 A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE All slid down the hillside to the bottom of a ravine. With the long bound of a tiger- spring, Le Borgne plunged through the frost cloud. The lodges of the victims were about us. We had evidently come upon the tribe when all were asleep. Then that dark under-woiM of which men dream in wild delirium became reality. Pande- monium broke its bounds. And had I once thought that Eli Kirke's fa- natic faith painted too lurid a hell? God knows if the realm of darkness be half as hideous as the deeds of this life, 'tis blacker than prophet may portray. Day or night, after fifty years, do I close my eyes to shut the memory out! But the shafts are still huriting through the gray gloom. Arrows rip against the skin shields. Running fugitives fall pierced. Men rush from their lodges in the daze of sleep and fight barehanded against mus- ket and battle-axe and lance till the snows are red and scalps steaming from the belts of con- querors. Women fall to the feet of the victors, kneeling, crouching, dumbly pleading for mercy; and the mercy is a spear-thrust that pinions the living body to earth. Maimed, helpless and liv- 225 11 'I. HERALDS OF EMPIRE Jng victims are thrown asirfp t^ - -. , Children are torn frZ ^ "^^'^ ''°^ ^^^^th. It was in vain for us to flee T,ir„ u 1cept^hrtintlC«fr-''f°^^^-^ They'll ki„ you by torturd"'"'^ " '°^ ^^"' the tor?::raXSrl s^T ^^^"^^ ^ Battle's feet with f Tc elm Tat "™" ^'^^ pleading n h^r "teve"''^' '^""^ °^ ''^'P'- stone. ^ ^* ^^'' ^' ^°"'d have moved touJh^:;! .'ttmed gT) ''''''' ''''■ °-'^ Jack free. ''TZ^^'"^' ^"'''"^ *° P"" ''erf They'll myL^J^^JT-f' °°"'^ ''^'^ horror^-TcSfheirh';' ^'"''^ "''^ ^^'-""^ upIifldsS:rr"'^'^"'"^''^-^^^%-ewith ^^^May God forgive it, but I struck that man It was a bootless sacrifice at the risk of three A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE lives. But so was Christ's a bootless sacrifice at the time, if you measure deeds by gain. And so has every sacrifice worthy of the name been a bootless sacrifice, if you stop to weigh life in a goldsmith's scale! Justice is blind; but praise be to God, so is mercy! And, indeed, I have but quoted our Lord and Saviour, not as an example, but as a prece- dent. For the act I merited no credit. Like Jack, I could not have helped helping her. The act was out before the thought. Then we were back to back fighting a horde of demons. Godefroy fought cursing our souls to all eter- nity for embroiling him in peril. Jack Bat- tle fought mumbling feverishly, deliriously, un- conscious of how he shot or what he said— " Might as well die here ?.s elsewhere! Might as well die here as elsewhere! Damn that Indian! Give it to him, Ramsay! Yc^ shoot while I prime! Might as well die here as else- where " And all fought resolute to die hard, when, where, or how the dying came ! To that desperate game there was but one possible end. It is only in story-books writ for sentimental maids that the good who are weak 2: HERALDS OF EMPIRE defeat the wicked who are strong gun on Jack's crown "" °^ '"^ ^i'cellribbt '"^"^ ""^ -- ^'^e snow such?:c"ent:s'llr°'^ '''''''' ^'^^ - know tharyou/inT T P''"'' ^°^ ^°" """^^ W". Like Teh " 1 ;: '"° '^ "°^ *=°"t«"t to ♦u T J. &noul. he must mutilate ni ,11 hi! back. The ihl™ ™ ""'"«"' '^>^ ened wi,H . *k X^rCrT "^'"- o' pain a, u,e ™« „,'„„'! I"" '"^ wrist. An tht ™il. I J "■' shattered cursed us in one CZfh f^°^^^'"°y' t^e trader, 228 A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE " You are the only man who can speak their language," I retorted. " Stop whimpering and warn these brutes what Radisson will do if they harm us! He will neither take their furs nor give them muskets! He will arm their enemies to destroy them! Tell them that! " But as well talk to tigers. Le Borgne alo: e listened, his foxy glance fastened on my face with a strange, watchful look, neither hostile nor friendly. To Godefroy's threats the Indian an- swered that " white-man talk— not true— of all," pointing to Jack Battle, " him no friend great white c»-ef— him captive " Then Godefroy burst out with <^^» unworthi- est answer that ever passed man's lip.. "Of course he's a captive," screamed the trader, " then take him and torture him and let us go! 'Twas him stopped the Indian getting the girl!" * " Le Borgne," I cut in sharply, " Le Borgne, it was I who stopped the Indian killing the girl! You need not torture the little white-man. He is a good man. He is the friend of the great white chief." But Le Borgne showed no interest. While the others stripped the dead and wreaked their ghoulish work, Le Borgne gathered up the furs of the Little Sticks and with cwo or three 229 Ip' f I I HERALDS OF EMPIRE young n>en stole away over the crest of the deaJt^t^'oter'^'^''^'^^'^"^^''^^^«- th/jl°^^'"^ ^°T'^ ^y lance-thrusts, we began ankTth™"' '"' '° '''' '-"^S"- The fun sank on the snowy wastes red as a shield of bood; and with the early dusk of the northe.^ night purphng th^ shadowy fields in mist came a south wind that filled the desolate siW whh restless wa.lmgs as of lament for eternal wrong moanmg and sighing and rustling past like S visible spirits that find no peace Some of the Indians laid hands to thin lins w,h a low "Hs-s-h." and the whole band tlTn TVr- ^''°'' ^-"^ht had deepened to the dark that precedes the silver glow of the moon and stars and northern lightf, we wire back where Le Borgne had kil Jth oTd m^n The very snow had been picked clean TnH through the purple gloom L back pr^w, L vague forms. F'uwiea Jack Battle and I looked at each other but the Indian fellow, who was our guard, em t''eS t harsh raspmg laugh. As for Godefr^y he was njarchmg abreast of the braves gabbling a mum ble-jumble of pleadings and threats, which I know veiy well, ignored poor Jack. Godefroy 230 A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE would make a scapegoat of the weak to save his own neck, and small good his cowardice did him! The moon was high in mid-heaven flooding a white world when we reached the lodges. We three were placed under guards, while the war- riors feasted their triumph and danced the scalp-dance to drive away the spirits of the dead. To beat of tom-tom and shriek of gourd-rattles, the whole terrible scene was re-enacted. Strip- ping himself naked, but for his moccasins, the old wizard pranced up and down like a fiend in the midst of the circling dancers. Flaming torches smoked from poles in front of the lodges, or were waved and tossed by the braves. Flaunting fresh scalps from lance-heads, with tomahawk in the other hand, each warrior went through all the fiendish moves and feints of attack— prowl- ing on knees, uttering the yelping, wolfish yells, crouching for the leap, springing through mid- air, brandishing the battle-axe, stamping upon the imaginary prostrate foe, stooping with a glint of the scalping knife, then up, with a shout of triumph and the scalp waving from the lance, all in time to the dull thum— thum— thum of the' tom-tom and the screaming chant of the wizard. Still the south wind moaned about the lodges; and the dancers shouted the louder to drown 231 t! ill ill i II I HERALDS OF EMPIRE b«r.f °i*"'"" ? '"' ^'^^- P«t" ^'"d faster beat the drum. Swifter and swifter darted the b aves hactang their own flesh in a frenzy of fear till their shrieks out-screamed the wind Then the spirits were deemed appeased. Ihe mad orgy of horrors was over, but the dancers were too exhausted for the torture of prisoners. The older men came to the lodge where we were guarded and Godefroy again be- gan his importunings. tr Jf'T ^^"^ ^""'^ ^''^'' '^'y bade the irader and me come out. " Better one be tortured than three," heart- lessly muttered Godefroy to Jack. " Now they'll warriors who had not been to the massacre S we hoped to escape torture the wizard bade us follow these men. They led us away with a sinis Z tT- r^" "^ "^'^•'^'^ the' crest oIX c e' G^Z''^ Tr '''' '°'^^^ ^"^ '"^^ ""assa- cre. Godefroy took alarm. This was not the tttTp°l °"'' ''"''■ ^'^ ''''''' shouted out that M Radisson would punish them well if they ttrned T? ^' ^I'f °"' °' '''' *^"*"™ f«»°ws turned. They would take care to do us no harm, 232 A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE he said, with an evil laugh. On the ridge of the hill they paused, as if seeking a mark. Two spindly wind-stripped trees stood straight as mast-poles above the snow. The leader went forward to examine the bark for Indian signal, motioning Godefroy and me closer as he exam- med the trees. With the whistle of a whip-lash through air the thongs were about us, round and round ankle, neck, and arms, binding us fast. Gode- froy shouted out a blasphemous oath and strug- gled till the deer sinew cut his buckskin. I had only succeeded in wheeling to face our treacher- ous tormentors when the strands tightened. In the struggle the trader had somehow got his face to the bark. The coils circled round him. The thongs drew close. The Indians stood back. They had done what they came to do. They would not harm us, they taunted, pointing to the frost-silvered valley, where lay the dead of their morning crime. Then with harsh gibes, the warriors ran down the hillside, leaving us bound. Wl 233 CHAPTER XVIII FACING THE END Below the hill on one side flickered the moving torches of the hostiles. On the other side where the cliff fell sheer away, lay the red- dyed snows with misty shapes moving through the frosty valley. A wind of sighs swept across the white wastes. Short, sharp barkings rose from the shadowy depth of the ravine. Then the silence of desolation . . . then the moaning night-wind • • . then the shivering cry of the wolf-pack scouring on nightly hunt. For a moment neither Godefroy nor I spoke. Then the sinews, cutting deep, wakened con- sciousness. '• Are they gone? " asked Godefroy hoarsely. Ves, said I, glancing to the valley Can't you break through the thongs and get a hand free? " s « •" " My back is to the tree. We'll have to face It, Gode roy-don't break down, man ! We must tace It ! 234 FACING THE END " P»« what? " he shuddered out. " Is any- thing there? Face what? ■' he half screamed. The end I" He strained at the thongs till he had strength to strain no more. Then he broke out in a vol- ey of maledictions at Jack Battle and me for in- terfering with the massacre, to which I could answer never a word; for the motives that merit greatest applause when they succeed, win bitter est curses when they fail. The northern lights swung low. Once those hghts seemed censers of flame to an invisible God. Now they shot across the steel sky like fie y serpents, and the rustling of their fire was as the hiss when a fang strikes. A shooting star into the eternal darkness. ^^^^J'Godefroy." I asked, "how long will this '' Till the wolves come," said he huskily. A man must die some time," I called back- but my voice belied the braveiy of the words, fo; something gray loomed from the ravine and weltrrmyl-r"""'^ ' ^"^^' "'''''■" "What's that?" shouted Godefroy. "Is anything there? " ' 23S i6 i HERALDS OF EMPIRE " I am cold," said I. And on top of that lie I prayed-prayed with turned towards us-praycd as I have never prayed before or sinceJ trader'^^.r T" u'"'' "''*'''"«^" <="'^d the ^ngr"'^"''"'''^''"' In. sure I feel Another crouching form emerged from the gloom-then another and anothef-silen" and »t.Il as spectres. With a sidling motion they rov A ^^~^ *° '"'^' ^'■°™ •"«= to Code- S:Th!nTk;a.^'^''"''"--^''-«''the The wolves had come. thin?''''^^ '"'u"''^ °"* '^^' ♦>« heard some- th^Wn '^"" '''' '"^ '""'^ °" ^°'^ -des of f~,r ^"P ''"'''* *'" ^ '"'" s^'d I; but I never took my gaze from the green eyes of I Zll brute^otheforeofthega^herin;^:,^^^^^' shoutfdGoH r '^'""-^-^ I hear themi" wt? °^' '" ^" ^fi^°"y °f terror. StilS- ^"u u° ''"P "P P''^*^"" longer' i>till holdmg the beast back with nn nth-, than the power of the manC e tt Z^ I called out the truth to the trader. ' 236 )m: '«. ':m FACING THE END outl pXr;',,„°-'' ^Peak, Don't cry light comcsl " " ''"'"' "'«'" back till day! l«der of the pack H. . ,''"'" P""'^^ 'he *'th angry snaris and InLfrf '''. ^'■'^^' ""^ evade the human eye evert t "'*' *° ^'^« '° "'•ng- Then he threw un hT °^ ''''' ^"^ '>"^- ?0"g howl, answer db7th fir '"1 """^'^ ^ '"&• pack. Sniffine the I /"^ °^ "'^ '=°'n- ciin.-~c,osingi„:^,:t|°;j:^He began cir- Then there was a shout-a^ro.n - "P as of teeth-f.on, Code' ^^^^Vce^ '^ ^S^::tf3r:f::5i-'t"^ Of comets f «t a ship of fire bii,:X"f j^^f ' r." 'r"^"' the northern hVhts wift, f^ ° '''^ ^^me of - sea. blinding^ deaS?"f^'"^ *"•='•"«'' -^ engulfment oUh'^Zt^lTE "^ *° *"« this life! «ernal~l lost knowledge of 237 CHAPTER XIX AFTERWARD A LONG shudder, and I had awakened in sti- fling darkness. Was I dreaming, or were there voices, English voices, talking about me? " It was too late! He will die! " " Draw back the curtain! Give him plenty Ci air! " In the daze of a misty dream, M. Picot was there with the foils in his hands; and Hortense had cried out as she did that night when the button touched home. A sweet, fresh gust blew across my face with a faint odour of the pungent flames that used to flicker under the crucibles of the dispensary. How came I to be lying in Boston Town? Was M. Radisson a myth? Was the northland a dream? I tried to rise, but whelming shadows pushed me down; and through the dark shifted phan- tom faces. Now it was M. Radisson quelling mutiny, tossed on plunging ice-drift, scouring before the 238 AFTERWARD hurricane, leaping through red flame over the fort wall, while wind and sea crooned a chorus like the hum of soldiers singing and marching to battle. " Storm and cold, man and beast, pow- ers of darkness and devil— he must fight them all," sang the gale. "Who?" asked a voice. In the dark was a lone figure clinging to the spars of a wre v. "jhe victor," shrieked the wmd. Then the waves washed over the cast- away, leaving naught bat the screaming gale and the pounding seas and the eternal dark Or it was M. Picot, fencing in mid-room. Of a sudden, foils turn to swords, M. Picot to a masked man, and Boston to the northland for- est. I fall, and when I awaken M. Picot is standing, candle in hand, tincturing my wounds. Or the dark is filled with a multitude— men and beasts; and the beasts wear a crown of vic- tory and the men are drunk with the blood of the slain. Or stealthy, crouching, wolfish forms steal through the frost mist, closer and closer till there comes a shout— a groan— a rip as of teeth —then I am up, struggling with Le Borgne, the one-eyed, who pushes me back to a couch iii the dark. Like the faces that hover above battle in sol- diers' dreams was a white face framed in curls 239 ' 1 l! iil! HERALDS OF EMPIRE with lustrous eyes full of lights. Always when he darkness thickened and I began slipping!! shpping ,„to the folds of bottomfess deeps^^al- of hope; and the hope drew me back. There is nothing-nothing-nothing at all to fear," says the face. And I laugh at the absurdity of the dream. be h J^ ,. u '^"'"^ '^^' ^°^^"«^ would ?h. rir''° '^ ^' '" '^^ "orthland-Hortense. thejmie queen, who never would let me tell "Tell her what? "asks the face. nn. .?^'- ^^^' ^ *J"''*'°"-' There is only one thmg m all this world to tell her! " . And I laughed again till I thought there Tthat ' 'T '" """''""^ ^"°"^ *^« -fte " to TMT/"" ""'"^- ^* ^^^•"^d ^o absurd to be thnlled with love of Hortense with the breath of the wolves yet hot in one's face! .on '. ., Z°^^' f * Godefroy," I would rea- son, how didn't they get me? How did I get away? What was that smell of fur " tt:pXw ^'^^ P^-^- Hortense kneeled at rob;7shTsa;;^ "° ^°'^^^''^ -^' -'^ *^ 240 AFTERWARD " And I suppose you will be telling me there are no Indians up there among the rafters? " " Give me the candle. Go away. Le Borgnel Leave me alone with him," says the face in the gloom " Look," says the shadow, " I am Hor- tense! A torch was in her hand and the light fell on her face. T was as certain that she knelt bes Je me as I was that I lay helpless to rise. But the trouble was, I was equally certain there were wolves skulking through the dark and Indians skippmg among the rafters. "Ghosts haven't hands," says Hortense, touchmg mme lightly; and the touch brought the memory of those old mocking airs from the spmet. Was it flood of memory or a sick man's dream? The presence -seemed so real that mus- tenng all strength, I turned— turned to see Le Borgiie, the one-eyed, sitting on a log-end with a stolid, watchful, unreadable look on his craftv face. ■' Bluish shafts of light struck athwart the dark. A fire burned against the far wall The smoke had the pungent bark smell of the flame that used to burn in M. Picofs dispensary. lh.i, then, had brought the dreams of Hortense now so far away. Skins hung everywhere; but 241 I H pi If HERALDS OF EMPIRE in places the earth showed through. Like a thought-th.s was a cave, the cave of the pi- rates whose voices I had heard from the ground me th?nl'" ''1'°"^*' °"^ P'^^^'"^ ^^"ve me the other sending Le Borgne to trap me Leaning on my elbow. I looked from the apartment %'"f " P"'''°" ^'-^'"^ -o^^' peIt?ofTv: n, ^°T' *"'' "^'''^ *he stolen pelts of the massacred tribe to the inland pirates The pirates had sent him back for me And Hortense was a dream. Ah, well, men in their senses might have done worse than dream of a Hortense! But the voice and the hand were real Le Borgne," I ask, " was any one here? " bron/. ?w r ' '^'^^' ""^^'^ '" crinkles of bronze that leer an evil laugh, and he pretends not to understand. fcicnas " Le Borgne, was any one here with you? " Le Borgne shifts his spread feet, mutters a shafted flame reveals his shadow. I can still h^r him beside me in the dark. friend" r^°'^' J' '^' i^^at white chiefs friend, I say; "and the white-man is the gre^white chief's friend. Where are we. t 242 AFTERWARD Le Borgne grunts out a low huflf-huff of a laugh. " Here; white-man is here," says Le Borgne; and he shuffles away to the bearskin partition hiding another apartment. Ah well as I said, one might do worse than dream of Hortense. But in spite of all your phi- losophers say about there being no world but the world we spin in our brains, I could not woo my lady back to it. Like the wind that bloweth where it listeth was my love. Try as I might to call up that pretty deceit of a Hortense about me m spirit, my perverse lady came not to the call. Then, thoughts would race back to the mu- tiny on the stormy sea, to the roar of the break- ers crashing over decks, to M. Radisson leaping up from dripping wreckage, muttering between his teeth— "Blind god o' chance, they may crush, but they shall not conquer; they may kill, but I snap my fingers in their faces to the death! " Then, uncalled, through the darkness comes her face. " God is love," says she. If I lie there like a log, never moving, she seems to stay; but if I feel out through the dark- ness for the grip of a living hand, for the sub- 243 r'i HERALDS OF EMPIRE stance of a reality on which souls anchor like the shadow of a dream she is gone deliir^, h"" '" '^' '""*y ^«=&'°" between dehnum and consciousness, when the face love hL^ I ' ""'' ' P^""'""' ^°'- her God of ove had left me to the blind gods that crush, to the storm and the dark and the ravening wolves Like a hght flaming from dark, the face shone through the gloom. voic7o7tl'- ^'''"'°'"'" ''"^''^ "'«= '"O'^king voice of the imperious Hortense I knew lon^ rraiest phantom life can know den^tSr '^" "'"'' "°'''"^^ *'^<=«'"« o^ a sud- den the grown woman, grave and sweet with eyes m the dark hke stars, and strange brolen thoughts I had not dared to hope sSbi„g t„" spoken on her face. ^ "Life, a phantom-substance, the shadow sTi'' %''''" *'^ '^^^^"-^-^ «-s to t: ST u '''"*' "' ^^'^ thoughts-storms and darkness and prey are his puppets X nd gods, his slave^God is lovef foTyo'u IJ whhmei"'^^""^'^^^'---^--''- When I feel through the dark this time is the gnp of a living hand. 244 AFTERWARD Then we lock arms and sweep throueh pace the northern hghts curtaining^overheat l^raSiir"'^"^^''^''-^"^^^'"- ^srS:uZT ^" ''-' ^°"^^^^ '^'^ '- And I with an earthy intellect groping be- hind the wmged love of the woman tWnk^hat she^refers to some of M. Picot's mystic astltl- InJ^lTl^"'" "^^^ *'*' dream-face, with the love that divmes without speech, "do you not btau'Ji!:^" ^'^ ''''' '''' ^- us-beSus^ "Because God is love," catching the gleam of the thought; and the stars that ffght !n S courses for mortals sweep to a noonday splen- And all the while I was but a crazy dreamer Img capt.ve. wounded and weak in a pirate cave Oh, yes, I know very well what mv fine gendemen dabbler, in the new sciences Z ly -the fellow was daft and delirious-he had lost tumble "t/' r ''^ ^^^^™^ -^^ ™^ed a own adventures. But before you reduce all this crucible, I pray you to think twice whether the 245 I- f HERALDS OF EMPIRE mind that fashioned the crucible be not greater than the crucible; whether the Master-mind that shaped the laws of the universe be not greater than the universe; whether when man's mind loses gnp_^s you call it-of the little, nag- ging, msistent realities it may not leap free like the jagged lightnings from peak to peak of a con- sciousness that overtowers life's commoner lev- els! Spite of our boastings, each knows neither more nor less than life hath taught him. For me I know what the dream-voice spoke proved true- ife, the shadow of a great reality; love, the all; the blind gods of storm and dark and prey the ^T.Trl^"c ^""^ °^ ^°^'' ^°^^'"g Ws will; and the God of gods a God of love, realest when love is near. Once, I mind, the dark seemed alive with wolfish shades, sniffing, prowling, circling, creeping nearer like that monster wolf rf fable set on by the powers of evil to hunt Man to his doom A nightmare of fear bound me down. The death-frosts settled and tightened and closed-but suddenly, rfortense took cold hands in her palms, calling and calling and call- ing me back to life and hope and her. Then I waked. Though I peopled the mist with many shad- ows, Le Borgne alone stood there. 246 CHAPTER XX WHO THE PIRATES WERE How long I lay in the pirates' cave I could not tell; for day and night were alike with the pale-blue flame quivering against the earth-wall gusts of cold air sweeping through the door, low- whispered talks from the inner cave. At last I surprised Le Borgne mightily by sitting bolt upright and bidding him bring me a meal of buffalo-tongue or teal. With the stolid repartee of the Indian he grunted back that I had tongue enough; but he brought the stuff with no ill grace. After that he had much ado to keep me off my feet. Finally. I promised by the soul of his grandfather neither to spy nor lis- ten about the doors of the inner cave, and he let me up for an hour at a time to practise walking with the aid of a lance-pole. As he found that I kept my word, he trusted me alone in the cave sitting crouched on the log-end with a buckskin sling round my shattered sword-arm, which the wolves had not helped that night at the stake 247 least e air HERALDS OF EMPIRE In the food Le Borgne brought was a flavour of simples or drugs. One night- I supposed it was night from the chill of blowmg past the bearskin-just as Le borgne stooped to serve me. his torch flickered out. Before he could relight. I had poured the broth out and handed back an empty bowl. Then I lay with eyes tight shut and senses wide awake. The Indian sat on the log-end watching. I did not stir. Neither did I fall asleep as usual. The Indian cautiously passed a candle across my face. I lay motionless as I had been drugged. At that he stalked of!. Voices began m the other apartment. Two or three forms went tip-toeing about the cave. Shadows r half-closed eyes I saw three men vanish- through the outer doorway over fields no longer snow-clad. * th.^!^ >^"« ^ '°'"'^ "°^ '°"e •'^d I lain in ,T.! »^'^°'' ^ 8^"^"*=^ strength to escape wouW M Radisson have left for Quebec? Th'en BaTl .r T' °^ '"•^'"^^-thought of Jack Battle, the sailor lad. awaiting our return to rescue him. From the first Jack and I had held together as aliens in Boston Town. Should I lie hke a stranded hull while he perished? Risking spies on the watch. I struggled up and staggered 248 li'''ic:,^"'JI ''i*'*?^''M-?'v''''W 'Jii WHO THE PIRATES WERE across the cave to that blue flame quivering so 2;tcnously. As I neared, the mystery van- ished, for It was nothing more than one of those northern beds of combustibles-gas, tar, or coal —set burnmg by the ingenious pirates * h„f 1.?%'^^'* ""*' ""'""^ '"°"fi^'» *° help Jack, but the flesh was weak. Presently I sank on the heaped pelts all atremble. I had promised not to spy nor eavesdrop, but that did not prohibit escape. But how could one forage for food with a right arm in bands and a left unsteady as aim of a girl? Le Borgne had befriended me twice— once in the storm, again on the hill. Perhaps he might know of Jack. I would wait the Indian's return Meanwhile I could practise my strength by walking up and down the cave. The walls were hung with pelts. Where 'the dry clay crumbled, the roof had been timbered A nvulet of spring water bubbled in one dark comer. At the same end an archway led to inner recesses. Behind the skin doorway sound- ed heavy breathing, as of sleepers. I had prom- ised not to spy. Turning, I retraced the way to the outer door. Here another p elt swayed hcav- «.rj°,K'°°*T"°" °' "'• Stanhope's record it m.y be w!l ! "f"" "" "" """^ •" *""» '"at are known to J»ve been burning continuously for nearly two cen.urie, 249 HERALDS OF EMPIRE ily in the wind. Dank, earthy smells of spring, odours of leaves water-soaked by melting snows, the famt perfume of flowers pushing up through mats of verdure, blew in on the night breeze. Pushing aside the flap, I looked out. The spur of a steep declivity cut athwart the cave Now I could guess where I was. This was the hill down which I had stumbled that night the voices had come from the ground. Here the masked man had sprung from the thicket. Not far off M. Radisson had first met the Indians. To reach the French Habitation I had but to follow the river. That hope set me pacing again for exer- cise; and the faster I walked the faster raced thoughts over the events of the crowded years. Again the Prince Rupert careened seaward, bearing little Hortense to England. Once more Ben Gillam swaggered on the water-front of Boston Town, boasting all that he would do when he had ship of his own. Then Jack Bat- tle, building his castles of fortune for love of Hortense, and all unconsciously letting slip the secret of good Boston men deep involved in pirate schemes. The scene shifted to the far north, and a masked man had leaped from the forest dark only to throw down his weapon when the firelight shone on my face. Again the white 250 WHO THE PIRATES WERE darkness of the storm, the three shadowy figures and Le Borgne sent to guide us back to the fort. Again, to beat of drum and sb ivl of fife, M Radisson was holding his ov,, an^ai- st ' the swarming savages that assailt.' ci e \\w u a. landers' fort. Then I v/ar ,vnit r.y.r the . ,- speakable horror of the Ind.ar •.uisiacic ending in that awful wait on the ^rest o' ;ne i.lil. The memory brought a chill ,- < j! vir^cr cold With my back to both doors I .r^ HOW THE PIRATES CAME ing and the aspens aquiver with music of flower legend and new birth and the joy of life. There was a long silence; and in that silence the pulsing of the mighty forces that lift mortals to immortality. Then a voice which only speaks when love speaks through the voice was saying, " Do you remember your dreams? " "What?" stooping to cull some violets that had looked well against the green of her hunting-suit. '"Blind gods of chance— blind gods of chance'— you used to say that over and over! " "Ah, M. Radisson taught me that! God bless the blind gods of chance— Hortense teach- es me that; for"— giving her back her own words — you are here— you are here— you are here with me! God bless the gods of chance! " "Oh," she cried, "were you not asleep? Monsieur let me watch after you had taken the sleeping drug." "The stars fight for us in their courses," said I, handing up the violets. "Ramsay," she asked with a sudden look straight through my eyes, "what did he make you promise when— when— he was dying? " The question brought me up like a sail hauled 271 HERALDS OF EMPIRE short. And when I told her, she uttered strange reproaches. "Why— why did you promise that?" she asked. "It has always been his mad dream. And when I told him I did not want to be re- stored, that I wanted to be like Rebecca and Jack and you and the rest, he called me a little fool and bade me understand that he had not poisoned me as he was paid to do because it was to his advantage to keep me alive. Cour- tiers would not assassinate a stray waif, he said; there was wealth for the court's ward some- where; and when I was restored, I was to re- member who had slaved for me. Indeed, in- deed, I think that he would have married me, but that he feared it would bar him from any property as a king's ward " " Is that all you know? " "That is all. Why— why— did you prom- ise?" "What else was there to do, Hortense? You can't stay in this wilderness." " Oh, yes," says Hortense wearily, and she let the violets fall. " What— what else was there to do? " She led the way back to the cave. "You have not asked me how we came here," she began with visible effort. 272 HOW THE PIRATES CAME "Tell me no more than you wisi; me to know! " " Perhaps you remember a New Amsterdam gentleman and a page boy leaving Boston on the Prince Rupert?" " Perhaps," said I. " Captain Gillam of the Prince Rupert sig- nalled to his son outside the harbour. Monsieur had been bargaining with Ben all winter. Ben took us to the north with Le Borgne for inter- preter " " Does Ben know you are here? " " Not as Hortensel I was dressed ar a page. Then Le Borgne told us of this cave and mon- sieur plotted to lead the Indians against Ben, • capture the fort and ship, and sail away with ell the furs for himself. Oh, how I have hated him!" she exclaimed with a sudden impetuous stamp. Leaving her with the slaves, I took Le Borgne with me to the Habitation. Here, I told all to M. Radisson. And his quick mind seized this, too, for advantage. " Precious pearls," he exclaims, " but 'tis a gift of the gods! ' " Sir? " "Pardieu, Chouart; listen to this," and he tells his kinsman, Groseillers. 273 HERALDS OF EMPIRE " Why not? " asks Groseillers. " You mean to send her to Mary Kirke? " Mary Kirke was Pierre Radisson's wife, who would not leave the English to go to him when he had deserted England for France. " Sir John Kirke is director of the English Company now. He hath been knighted by King Charles. Mary and Sir John will present I. 's little maid at the English court. An she be not a nine days' wonder there, my name is not Pierre Radisson. If she's a court ward, some of the crew must take care of her." Groseillers smiled. " An the French reward us not well for this winter's work, that little maid may open a door back to England; eh, kinsman? " 'Twas the same gamestering spirit carrying them through all hazard that now led them to prepare for fresh partnership, lest France played false. And as history tells, France played very false indeed. 274 CHAPTER XXII WE LEAVE THE NORTH SEA So Sieur Radisson must fit out a royal flotilla to carry Mistress Hortense to the French Habi- tation. And gracious acts are like the gift horse : you must not look them in the mouth. For the same flotilla that brought Hortense brought all M. Picot's hoard of furs. Coming down the river, lying languidly back among the peltries of the loaded canoe, Hortense, I mind, turned to me with that honest look of hers and asked why Sieur Radisson sent to fetch her in such royal state. " I am but a poor beggar like your little Jack Battle," she protested. I told her of M. Radisson's plans for entrance to the English court, and the fire that flashed to her eyes was like his own. " Must a woman ever be a cat's-paw to man's ambitions? " she asked, with a gleam of the dark lights. " Oh, the wilderness is different," says Hortense with a sigh. " In the wild land, each 2/S HERALDS OF EMPIRE is for its own! Oh, I love it! " she adds, with a sudden lighting of the depths in her eyes. " Love— what? " "The wilderness," says Hortense. "It is hard, but it's free and it's pure and it's true and it's strong! " And she sat back among the pillows. When we shot through racing rapids—" sau- ter les rapides," as our French voyageurs say- she sat up all alert and laughed as the spray splashed athwart. Old Allemand. the pilot, who was steersman on this canoe, forgot the ill- humour of his gin thirst, and proffered her a paddle. " Here, pretty thing," says he, " try a stroke yourself! " And to the old curmudgeon's surprise she took it with a joyous laugh, and paddled half that day. Bethink you who know what warm hearts beat inside rough buckskin whether those voy- ageurs were her slaves or no! The wind was blowmg; Mistress Hortense's hair tossed in a way to make a man swear (vows, not oaths) and Allemand said that I paddled worse than' any green hand of a first week. At the Habitation we disembarked after nightfall to conceal onr movements from the English. After her arrival, 276 WE LEAVE THE NORTH SEA none of us caught a glimpse of Mistress Hor- tense except of a Sunday at noon, but of her presence there was proof enough. Did voices grow loud in the mess-room? A hand was raised. Some one pointed to the far door, and the voices fell. Did a fellow's tales slip an oath or two.? There was a hush. Some one's thumb jerked significantly shoulderwise to the door, and the story-teller leashed his oats for a more convenient season. " Oh, lordy," taunts an English prisoner out on parole one day, " any angels from kingdom come that you Frenchies keep meek as lambs? " Allemand, not being able to explain, knocked the fellow flat. It would scarce have been human nature had not some of the ruffians uttered slurs on the ori- gin of such an one as Hortense found in so strange a case. The mind that feedeth on car- non ever goeth with the large mouth, and for the cleansing of such natures I wot there is no bet- ter physic than our crew gave those gossips. What the sailors did I say not. Enough that broken heads were bound by our chirurgeon for the rest of the week. That same chirurgeon advised a walk outside the fort walls for Mistress Hillary's health. By the goodness of Providence, the duty of escort- 277 I . ! HERALDS OF EMPIRE and a soldier, with a musket across tny shoulder I led her out of a rear sally-port and so avo ded he scenes of drunkenness among the Indians at %rbjr ^^--^o'^'^ingofaS et, but boisterous shouting came from the In- was" !"rP"-^- I ^'-ced at Hortense. She St n?^.'" ' ?'"" hunting-suit, and by the hght of the settmg sun her face shone radiant, xou are not afraid?" cheet!'"''' °^ "'"'■ ^"^'^^' ^" '"^ «°°''^d he*- "Afraid?" she laughed. th.T°?"''' ^°''''"'"' Do you not hear mtnfrT: "'m- ""^ ^°" ''-^ -h^t i f"ar 'T J. r'" '' ''^" °' "^^* ^ -"^'d ™««t « „ ^^'' protects her." "Ah?" asks Hortense. cloat"''l''V''"'.'^ '^' tight-clasped hunting- .W folds. ''""' ''°"'"' '""^ ^^^-* ^'e "'Tis her courage must protect her. The wWemess teaches that," says Hortense "the wilderness and men like Picot " froJ^v r "'^'P'^ '^^'•ds and ran like children from thicket to rock and rock to the lon^ s retches of shingly shore. Behind came thf blackamoor and the soldier. The salt spray flew 278 WE LEAVE THE NORTH SEA in our faces, the wind through our hair; and in our hearts, a joy untold. Where a great obelisk of rock thrust across the way, Hortense halt- ed. She stood on the lee side of the rock fanning herself with her hat. " Now you are the old Hortense! " "I am older, hundreds of years older" laughed Hortense. The westering sun and the gold light of the sea and the caress of a spring wind be perilous setting for a fair face. I looked and looked again. •' Hortense, should an oath to the dead bind the living? " " If it was right to take the oath, yes," said Hortense. " Hortense, I may never see you alone again. I promised to treat you as I would treat a sister " " But — " interrupts Hortense. Footsteps were approaching along the sand, I thought only of the blackamoor and soldier. " I promised to treat you as I would a sister —but what — Hortense? " " But— but I didn't pr -tuse to treat you as I would a brother " Then a voice from the other side of the rock: " Devil sink my soul to the bottom of the sea if 279 HERALDS OF EMPIRE that viper Frenchman hasn't all our furs packed away in his holdl " i«*i-«u c. ^^*'"":"'^ P""" °" ^'"^ ^or a meddle- some—" the voice fell. Then Ben Gillam again: "Shiver my soul! Let ,m set sail, I say! Aren't you and me to be o' Say ? '' "■ ' '" *'' ^"^'"' '°'' '' '''' '°°' ^^ J' We'll send 'em all to the bottom o' hell rise!'^" ^°" ^""^ ^^^ '^°'^- ^" "y "«n wi« the'^^rhT" ''' '"'-'^' *'^^ ships-butcher Hortense raised her hand and pointed along the shore^ Our two guards were lumbering up and would presently betray our presence. Steal ng forward we motioned their silence. I sent both to hsten behind the rock, while Hortense tTe forr'"" '"'° "°"" °' '^' '^''^'' '° ^'S^^ kept the prisoners m hand. He will snuff this pretty conspiracy out before Brigdar and Ben get their heads apart." She gave that flitting look which laughs at fear and hastened on. We could not go b!ck as we had come without exposing ourselves to the 280 x WE LEAVE THE NORTH SEA two conspirators, and our course lay nearer the Indian revel. About a mile from the fort Hor- tense stopped short. Through the underbrush crawled two braves with their eyes leering at us " Hortense," I urged, " run for the rear gate! 1 11 deal with these two alone. There may be morel Run, my dear! " " Give me your musket," she said, never tak- mg her eyes from the savages. Wondering not a little at the request, I hand- ed her the weapon. "Now run," I begged, for a sand crane flapped up where the savages had prowled a pace nearer. Quick as it rose Hortense aimed. There was a puff of smoke. The bird fell shot at the sav- ages' feet, and the miscreants scudded off in terror. "That was better," said Hortense, would have killed a man." In vain I urged her to hasten back, walked. " You know it may be the last time," she laughed, mocking my grave air of the beach. " Hortense— Hortense— how am I to keep a promise? " But she did not answer a word till we reached the sally-port. There she turned with a brave 281 you She HERALDS OF EMPIRE enough look till her eyes met mine, when all was the confusion that men give their lives to win. Yes— yes — keep your promise. If you had not come, I had died; if I had not come, you had died. Let us keep faith with truth, for that's keeping faith with God— and— and— God bless you," she whispered brokenly, and she darted through the gate. • And the next morning we embarked, young Jean Groseillers remaining with ten Frenchmen to hold the fort; Brigdar and Ben aboard our ship instead of going to the English at the foot of the bay; half the prisoners under hatches in M. Groseillers's ship; the other half sent south on the raft— a plan which eflfectually stopped that conspiracy of Ben's. Not one glimpse of our fair passenger had we on all that voyage south, for what with Ben's oaths and Governor Brigdar's drinking, the cabin was no place for Hortense. At Isle Percee, entering the St. Lawrence, lay a messenger from La Chesnaye's father with a missive that bore ill news. M. de la Barre, the new governor, had or- dered our furs confiscated because we had gone north without a license, and La Chesnaye had thriftily rigged up this ship to send half our car- 382 WE LEAVE THE NORTH SEA go across to France before the Farmers of the Revenue could get their hands upon it. It was this gave rise to the slander that M. de Radisson ran off with ;idlf La Chesnaye's furs — which the records de la marine will disprove, if you search them. On this ship vvith her blackamoors sailed Mistress Hortense, bearing letters to Sir John Kirke, director of the Hudson's Bay Company and father of M. Radisson's wife. "Now praise be Heaven, that little ward will open the way for us in England, Chouart," said M. de Radisson, as he moodily listened to news of the trouble abrewing in Quebec. And all the way up the St. Lawrence, as the rolling tide lapped our keel, I was dreaming of a far, cold paleocrystic sea, mystic in the frost- clouds that lay over it like smoke. Then a figure emerged from the white darkness. I was snatched up, with the northern lights for char- iot, two blazing comets our steeds, and the north star a charioteer. 19 283 I ,.„ ..A CHAPTER XXm A CHANCE OF PARTNERS tions to march by AnH c^ t "^ ^^"^ genera- .o M over , ,^ ,™„ .,„„Mi„g.b,oeHta! " ■""" ' *'" W <" *o«« who wantoned « m 287 HERALDS OF EMPIRE thi lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life," who burned their lives out at a shrine of folly, and who held that the soul and all things spiritual had gone out of fashion ex- cept for the making of vows and pretty conceits in verse by a lover to his lady. For Pierre Radisson's fears of France play- ing false proved true. Bare had our keels bumped through that forest of sailing craft, which ever swung to the tide below Quebec fort, when a company of young cadets marches down from the Castle St. Louis to escort iis up to M. de la Barre, the new governor. " Hm," says M. Radisson, looking in his half-savage buckskins a wild enough figure among all those young jacks-in-a-box with their gold lace and steel breastplates. " Hm — ^let the governor come to us! An you will not go to a man, a man must come to you! " " I am indisposed," says he to the cadets. " Let the governor come to me." And come he did, with a company of troops fresh out from France and a roar of cannon from the ramparts that was more for the frighten- ing than welcoming of us. M. de Radisson bade us answer the salute by a firing of muskets in mid-air. Then we all let go a cheer for the Governor of New France. 288 A CHANGE OF PARTNERS " I must thank Your Excellency for the wel- come sent down by your cadets," says M. de Ra- disson, meeting the governor half-way across the gang-plank. M. de la Barre, an iron-gray man past the prime of life, gave spare smile in answer to that. " I bade my cadets request you to report at the castle," says he, with a hard wrinkling of the lines round his lips. " I bade your fellows report that I was indis- posed! " " Did the north not agree with Sieur Radis- son? " asks the governor dryly. " Pardieul— yes— better than the air of Que- bec," retorts M. Radisson. By this the eyes of the listeners were agape, M. Radisson not budging a pace to go ashore, the governor scarce courting rebuflf in sight of his soldiers. " Radisson," says M. de la Barre, motioning his soL!ers back and following to our captain's cabin, " a fellow was haltered and whipped for disrespect to the bishop yesterday! " " Fortunately," says M. Radisson, touching the hilt of his rapier, " gentlemen settle diflfer- ences in a simpler way! " They had entered the cabin, where Radisson 289 1 ^ HERALDS OF EMPIRE bade me stand guard at the door, and at our leader's bravado M. de la Barre saw fit to throw oflF all disguise. " Radisson," he said, " those who trade with- out license are sent to the galleys " " And those who go to the galleys get no more furs to divide with the Governor of New France, and the governor who gets no furs goes home a poor man." M. de la Barre's sallow face wrinkled again in a dry laugh. " La Chesnaye has told you? " " La Chesnaye's son " "Have the ships a good cargo? They must remain here till our officer examines them." Which meant till the governor's minions looted both vessels for His Excellency's profit. M. Radisson, who knew that the better part of the furs were already crossing the ocean, nodded his assent. " But about these English prisoners, of whom La Chesnaye sent word from Isle Percee? " con- tinues the governor. "The prisoners matter nothing— 'tis their ship has value " "She must go back," interjects M. de la Barre. 290 A CHANGE OF PARTNERS " Back? " exclaims M. Radisson. " Why didn't you sell her to some Spanish adventurer before you came here? " " Spanish adventurer— Your Excellency? I am no butcher! " " Eh— man!" says the governor, tapping the table with a document he pulled from his great- coat pocket and shrugging his shoulders with a deprecating gesture of the hands, " if her crew feared sharks, they should have defended her against capture. Now— your prize must go back to New England and we lose the profit! Here," says he, " are orders from the king and M. Colbert that nothing be done to offend the subjects of King Charles of England ' " Which means that Barillon, th" French am- bassador ? " M. de la Barre laid his finger on his lips. "Walls have ears! If one king be willing to buy and another to sell himself and his country, loyal subjects have no comment, Radisson." * "Loyal subjects!" sneers M. de Radis- son. "And that reminds me, M. Colbert orders Sieur Radisson to present himself in Paris and * The reference is evidently to the secret treaty by which King Charles of England received annual paymenf for com- pliance with King Louis's schemes for French aggression. 291 HERALDS OF EMPIRE report on the state of the fur-trade to the' king! " " Ramsay," said M. Radisson to me, after Governor la Barre had gone, " this is some new gamestering! " " Your court players are too deep for me, sir! " " Pish! " says he impatiently, " plain as day — we must sail on the frigate for France, or they imprison us here — in Paris we shall be kept dan- gling by promises, hangers-on and do-nothings till the moneys are all used — then " " Then— sir? " " Then, active men are dangerous men, and dangerous men may lie safe and quiet in the sponging-house ! " " Do we sail in that case? " "Egad, yes! Why not? Keep your colours flying and you may sail into hell, man, and con- quer, too! Yes — we sail! Man or devil, don't swerve, lad! Go your gait! Go your gait! Chouart here will look after the ships! Paris is near London, and praise be Providence for that little maid of thine! We shall presently have letters from her — and," he added, " from Sir John Kirke of the Hudson's Bay Company! " And it was even as he foretold. I find, on 292 i i' A CHANGE OF PARTNERS looking over the tattered pages of a handbook, these notes: Oct. 6. — Ben Gillam and Governor Brigdar this day sent back to New England. There will be great complaints against us in the English court before we can reach London. Nov. Ji.— Sailed for France in the French frigate. Dec. /*.— Reach Rochelle— hear of M. Col- bert's death. Jan. JO. — Paris — all our furs seized by the French Government in order to keep M. Radis- son powerless— Lord Preston, the English am- bassador, complaining against us on the one hand, and battering our doors down on the other, with spies offering M. Radisson safe pas- sage from Paris to London. I would that I had time to tell you of that hard winter in Paris, M. Radisson week by week, like a fort resisting siege, forced to take cheaper and cheaper lodgings, till we were housed be- tween an attic roof and creaking rat-ridden floor in the Faubourg St. Antoine. But not one jot did M. Radisson lose of his kingly bearing, though, he went to some fete in Versailles with beaded moccasins and frayed plushes and tat- tered laces and hair that one of the pretty wits declared the birds would be anesting in for hay- 293 HERALDS OF EMPIRE coils. In that Faubourg St. Antoine house) I mind, we took grand apartments on the ground floor, but up and up we went, till M. Radisson vowed we'd presently be under the stars— as the French say when they are homeless— unless my Lord Preston, the English ambassador, came to our terms. That starving of us for surrender was only another trick of the gamestering in which we were enmeshed. Had Captain Godey, Lord Preston's messenger, succeeded in luring us back to England without terms, what a pretty pickle had ours been! France would have set a price on us^ Then must we have accepted any kick-of- toe England chose to offer— and thanked our new masters for the same, else back to France they would have sent us. But attic dwellers stave off many a woe with empty stomachs and stout courage When April came, boats for the fur-trade should have been stirring, and my Lord Preston changes his tune. One night, when Pierre Radisson sat spin , ng his yarns of captivity with Iroquois to our attic neighbours, comes a rap at the door and in walks Captain Godey of the English Em- bassy. As soon as our neighbours had gone, he counts out one hundred gold pieces on the table 1 hen he hands us a letter signed by the Duke of 294 A CHANGE OF PARTNERS out r"! ^^ff' *"'°"'"' ^^° ^^' Governor Thereupon, Pierre Radisson asks leave of the French court to seek change of air; but the cofn! ni F aIV°"f J "" *''* °' ^"^'^"'l '" May, not i< ranee, as the court inferred. 29s IV CHAPTER XXIV UNDER THE ^GIS OF THE COURT • The roar of London was about us. Sign-boards creaked and swung to every puflf of wind. Great hackney-coaches, sunk at the waist like those old gallipot boats of ours, went ploughing past through the mud of mid- road, with bepowdered footmen clinging be- hind and saucy coachmen perched in front. These flunkeys thought it fine sport to splash us passers-by, or beguiled the time when there was stoppage across the narrow street by lashing rival drivers with their long whips and knocking cock-hats to the gutter. 'Prentices stood ring- ing their bells and shouting their wares at every shop-door. "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? What d'ye please to lack, good sirs? Walk this way for kcrseye, sayes, and perpetu- anoes! Bands and ruffs and piccadillies! Walk this way! Walk this way ! " " Pardieu, lad! " says M. Radisson, elbowing a saucy spark from the wall for the tenth time in 3S many paces, " Pardieu, you can't hear your- 296 UNDER THE ^GIS OF THE COURT self think! Shut up to you!" he called to a bawhng -prentice dressed in white velvet waist Shoi "\??"""'"'' ^""""^ '° ^'^hibit the tasliion. Shut up to you! " And I heard the fellow" telling his comrades my strange companion with the tangled hair was a pirate from the Barbary States. Another saucy vender caught at the chance "Perukes! Perukes! Newest French peri- wigs! he shouts, jangling h'is bell and putting himself across M. Radisson's course. "You'd please to lack a periwig, sir! Walk this way! Walk this way " ^ " Out of my way! " orders Radisson with a hiss o. his rapier round the fellow's fat calves. Tis a milhner's doll the town makes of a man! Out of my way!" And the 'prentice went skipping. We were to meet the directors of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany that night, and we had come out to re- furbish our scant, wild attire. But bare had we turned the corner for the linen-draper's shops of Fleet Street when M. Radisson's troubles be- gan. Idlers eyed us with strange looks. Huck- sters read our necessitous state and ran at heel shouting their wares. Shopmen saw needy cus- tomers in us and sent their 'prentices running. Chairmen splashed us as they passed; and i^- 2p7 HERALDS OF EMPIRE pudent dandies powdered and patched and laced and bewigged like any iizgig of a girl would have elbowed us from the wall to the gutter for the sport of seeing M. Radisson's moccasins slimed. "Egad," says M. Radisson, "an I 'spill not some sawdust out o' these dolls, or cut their stay-strings, may the gutter take us for good and a'!! Pardieu! An your wig's the latest fash- ion, the wits under 't don't matter " " Have a care, sir," I warned, " here comes a fellow! " 'Twas a dandy in pink of fashion with a three-cornered hat coming over his face like a waterspout, red-cheeked from carminative and with the high look in his eyes of one who saw common folk from the top of church stee- ple. His lips were parted enough to show his teeth; and I warrant you my fine spark had posed an hour at the looking-glass ere he got his neck at the angle that brought out the swell of his chest. He was dressed in red plush with silk hose ot the same colour and a square-cut, tailed coat out of whose pockets stuck a roll of paper missives. " Verse ready writ by some penny-a-liner for any wench with cheap smiles," says M. Radisson aloud. 298 UNDER THE iEGIS OF THE COURT But the fellow came on like a strutting pea- cock with his head in air. Behind followed his page with cloak and rapier. In one hand our dandy carried his white gloves, in the other a lace gewgaw heavy with musk, which he flut- tered in the face of every shopkeeper's daughter." "Give the wall! Give the wall!" cries the page. " Give the wall to Lieutenant Blood o' the Tower! " "S'blood," says M. Radisson insolently, "let us send that snipe sprawling! " At that was a mighty awakening on the part of my fine gentleman. " Blood is my name," says he. " Steo aside! " "An Blood is its name," retorts M. Ra- disson, "'jis bad blood; and I've a mind to let some of it, unless the thing gets out of mv way!" ^ With which M. Radisson whips out his sword, and my grand beau condescends to look at us. " Boy," he commands, " call an officer! " " Boy," shouts M. Radisson, " call a chirur- geon to mend its toes! " and his blade cut a swath across the dandy's shining pumps. At that was a jump! Whatever the beaux of King Charles's court 1 HERALDS OF EMPIRE may have been, they were not cowardsl Grasp- ing his sword from the page, the fellow made at us. What with the lashing of the coachmen nding post-haote to see the fray, the jostling chaim:-n calling out "A fight! A fight! " and the 'prentices yelling at the top of their voices for "A watch! A watch!" we had had it hot enough then and there for M. Radisson's sport; but above the melee sounded another shrill alarm, the " Gardez I'eau! Gardy loo! " of some French kitchen wench throwing her breakfast slops to mid-road from the dwelling overhead.* Only on the instant had I jerked M. Radis- son back; and down they came— dish-water— and coflfee leavings— and porridge scraps full on the crown of my fine young gentleman, drench- mg his gay attire as it had been soaked in soap- suds of a week old. Something burst from his lips a deal stronger than the modish French oaths then in vog e. There was a shout from the rabble. I dragged rather than led M. Ra- disson pell-mell into a shop from front to rear over a score of garden walls, and out again from' rear to front, so that we gave the slip to all those officers now running for the scene of the broil. " Egad's life," cried M. de Radisson, l augh- • The old expression which the law compelled before throwing slops in mid-street. UNDER THE ^GIS OF THE COURT ing and laughing, "'tis the narrowest escape I ve ever hadi Pardieu-to escape the north L and drown .n d.sh-waterl Lord-to b.at devils and be snuffed out by a wench in pettiest T.S the martyrdom of heroes! What a tale for the court! " "*^ And he laughed and laughed again till I must needs call a chair to get him fway from ". c^5 '^^' ^^^*- yo"ng blade was Blood' " ao he told you." "Did he? Son of the Blood who stole the crown ten years ago, and got your own Stan! hope lands m reward from the king! " h, i^''\^'"^"°"" ^"'^'^'^ words bringing me^rl rl ". *'^ '^-ting-room telHnf And th,?r ' ' ^'■"^°°'^'- ^"^ swordsman And that bnngs me to the real reason for our Plundenng the hnen-drapers' shops befo e pre jmmg ourselves at Sir John Kirke's manslS^ Drury Lane, where gentlemen with one eye SeinVoXr^^^^^^^^^^^-^-ntto ShfZv I '~r '" "'^^ ^'y'^'^ herself after he broke from the English-and I had not 301 HERALDS OF EMPIRE heard one word of Hortense for nigh as many months Say what you will of the dandified dolls who wasted half a day before the looking- glass in the reign of Charles Stuart, there are times when the bravest of men had best look twice m the glass ere he set himself to the task of conquering fair eyes. We did not drag our linen through a scent bath nor loll all morning m the hands of a man milliner charged with the duty of turning us into showmen's dummies— as was the way of young sparks in that age. But that was how I came to buy yon mon- strous wig costing forty guineas and weighing ten pounds and coming half-way to a man's waist. And you may set it down to M. Radis- son s credit that he went with his wiry hair fly- ing wild as a lion's mane. Nothing I could say would make him exchange his Indian moccasins for the high-heeled pumps with a buckle at the instep. ^^ " I suppose," he had conceded grudgingly we must have a brat to carry swords and cloaks for us, or we'll be taken for some o' your cheap-jack hucksters parading latest fashions," and he bade our host of the Star and Garter have some lad searched out for us by the time we should be coming home from Sir John Kirke's that night. 302 L UNDER THE JEGIS OF THE COURT A mighty personage with fat choos anrf ruddy cheeks and rounded waistcoat a„d pad ^i"^u::t^-j»^-sirC man'"'h-'tt'"^ "'"°"''-''^"^ •'''hen gent i- Z fi , ,?'' ^- ^^''''«°"' P"«hing in. ..Here 2 r^t:;:T,t:'VHi'"•°"- I have always held that the vulgar like inso lence n.gh as well as silver; and Sieur R.H °' ai^sent the feet of the kite Jlf^rd^irnV Confound h.m!" „,uttered RadissoJ. as we first Lh-.k'"^ "'PP'"^ '■" '^^ face, be the firsttodo,t,boyJ A man's a man by the meas- 303 ■St^ ■- ^ HERALDS OF EMPIRE ure of his stature in the wilderness. Here, 'tis by the measure of his clothes " But a great rustling of flounced petticoats down the hallway broke in on his speech, and a little lady had jumped at me with a cry of " Pierre, Pierre! " when M. Radisson's long arms caught her from her feet. " You don't even remember what your own husband looked like," said he. "Ah, Mary, Mary — don't dear me! I'm only dear when the court takes me up! But, egad," says he, setting her down on her feet, "you may wager these pretty ringlets of yours, I'm mighty dear for the gilded crew this time! " Madame Radisson said she was glad of it; for when Pierre was rich they could take a fine house in the West End like my Lord So-and-So; but I;i the next breath she begged him not to call the Royalists a gilded crew. " And who is this? " she asked, turning to me as the servants brought in candles. " Egad, and you might have asked that be- fore you tried to kiss him! Yoii always did have a pretty choice, Mary! I knew it when you took me! That," says he, pointing to me, " that is the kite's tail! " "But for convenience' sake, perhaps the kite's tail may have a name," retorts Madame Radisson. 304 UNDER THE iEGIS OF THE COURT "To be sure— to be sure— St ;r.hope, a young Royalist kinsman of yours " "Royalist?" reiterates Mary K>I