Kitabı oku: «The Forge in the Forest», sayfa 8
Chapter XV
Grûl's Hour
Though we were in a hot haste to get away, it was absolutely necessary first to bury the dead Indian, lest a hue and cry should be raised that might involve and delay us. With my paddle, therefore, I dug him a shallow grave in the soft mud at the edge of the tide, which was then on the ebb. This meagre inhumation completed, I smoothed the surface as best I could with my paddle; and then we set off, resting easy in the knowledge that the next tide would smooth down all traces of the work.
It was by this close upon sunset, and I felt a little hesitation as to what we had best do. I had no wish to run through the settlement till after dark, nor was I anxious to push on against the furious ebb of the des Saumons, against which the strongest paddlers could make slow headway. But it was necessary to get out of the creek before the water should quite forsake us; and, moreover, Mizpah was in a fever of haste to be gone. She kept gazing about as if she expected the savage to rise from his muddy grave and point at her. We ran out of the creek, therefore, and were instantly caught in the great current of the river. I suffered it to sweep us down for half a mile, having noted on the way up a cluster of haystacks in an angle of the dyke. Coming to these, I pushed ashore at once, carried the canoe up, and found that the place was one where we might rest secure. Here we ate our black bread and drank new milk, for there were many cattle pasturing on the aftermath, and some of the cows had not yet gone home to milking. Then, hiding the canoe behind the dyke, and ourselves between the stacks, in great weariness we sought our sleep.
There was no hint of dawn in the sky when I awoke with a start; but the constellations had swung so wide an arc that I knew morning was close at hand. There was a hissing clamour in the river-bed which told me the tide was coming in. That, doubtless, was the change which had so swiftly aroused me. I went to the other side of the stack, where Mizpah lay with her cheek upon her arm, her hair fallen adorably about her neck. Touching her forehead softly with my hand, I whispered: —
"Come, comrade, the tide has turned!" Whereupon she sat up quietly, as if this were for her the most usual of awakenings, and began to arrange her hair. I went out upon the shadowy marsh and soon accomplished a second theft of new milk, driving the tranquil cow which furnished it into the corner behind the stacks, that our dairy might be the more conveniently at hand. Our fast broken (and though I hinted nought of it to Mizpah, I found black bread growing monotonous), I carried the canoe down to the edge of the tide. But Mistress Mizpah's daintiness revolted at the mud, whereupon she took off her moccasins and stockings before she came to it, and I caught a gleam of slim white feet at the dewy edge of the grass. When I had carried down the paddles, pole, and baggage, I found her standing in a quandary. She could not get into the canoe with that sticky clay clinging to her feet, and there was no place where she could sit down to wash them. Carelessly enough (though my heart the while trembled within me), I stretched out my hand to her, saying: —
"Lean on me, comrade, and then you can manage it all right."
And so it was that she managed it; and so indifferently did I cast my eyes about, now at the breaking dawn, now at the swelling tide, that I am sure she must have deemed that I saw not or cared not at all how white and slender and shapely were her feet!
In few minutes we were afloat, going swiftly on the tide. The sky was all saffron as we slipped through the settlement, and a fairy glow lay upon the white cottages. The banks on either hand took on the ineffable hues of polished nacre. To the door of one cottage, close by the water, came a man yawning, and hailed us. But I flung back a mere "Bon jour," and sped on. Not till the settlement was out of sight behind us, not till the cross on the spire of the village was quite cut off from view, did I drop to the even pace of our day-long journeying. When at length we got beyond the influence of the tide, des Saumons was a shallow, sparkling, singing stream, its bed aglow with ruddy-coloured rocks. Here I laid aside my paddle and thrust the canoe onwards by means of my long pole of white spruce, while Mizpah had nought to do but lean back and watch the shores creep by.
At the head of tide we had stopped to drink and to breathe a little. And there, seeing an old man working in front of a solitary cabin, I had deemed it safe to approach him and purchase a few eggs. After this we kept on till an hour past noon, when I stopped in a bend of the river, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff of red rock some seventy or eighty feet in height. Here was a thicket wherein we might hide both the canoe and ourselves if necessary. The canoe I hid at once, that – being a matter of the more time. Then we both set ourselves to gathering dry sticks, for it seemed to me we might here risk the luxury of a fire, with a dinner of roasted eggs.
We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in the underbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah by the hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark and drooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff, – and I noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that I had forgotten to release Mizpah's hand.
The crashing noise, mingled with some sharp outcries of rage and fear, continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw at the brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of a black and yellow cloak.
"Grûl!" I whispered, in astonishment; and I felt an answering surprise in the tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand.
A moment more and Grûl peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upper and lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end of which he had made fast to a stout birch tree which leaned well out over the edge.
"What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes.
"We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily.
The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappeared close to the brink. He carried, as lightly as if it had been a bundle of straw, the body of a man, so bound about with many cords as to remind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of some black and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim was dressed in black, – and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest.
"It is the Black Abbé, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; while Mizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies. "Grûl has come to his revenge!" I added.
In a business fashion Grûl knotted the end of his coil of rope about the prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile, nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathed and helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink, governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a jutting stump. There was something indescribably terrifying in the sight of the fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings and twistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied him in spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she might not see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in a fascination.
For some moments Grûl gazed down in silence upon his victim.
I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but this was doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of my vision. Suddenly the victim, his fortitude giving way with the sense of the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition of that gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperate entreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it, and Mizpah covered her ears.
"Oh, stop it! save him!" she whispered to me, with white lips. But I shook my head. I could not reach the top of the cliff. And moreover, I had small doubt that Grûl's vengeance was just. Nevertheless, had I been at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, I had certainly put a stop to it.
After listening for some moments, with a sort of pleasant attention, to the victim's ravings, Grûl lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out over the brink, and reached down a long arm. I saw the gleam of a knife in his darting hand; and I drew a quick breath of relief.
"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had not done, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming had ceased before the knife touched him.
But I was vastly mistaken in thinking it the end.
"He has not killed him," muttered Mizpah.
And then I saw that Grûl had merely cut the cord which bound his captive's hands. The Abbé was swiftly freeing himself; and Grûl, meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When the unhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentor secured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shoulders leaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.
The Abbé, with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, and the cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the cliff foot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, he clutched at the smooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. It was pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face above looking down upon them with unimpassioned interest; till at last, exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at his persecutor with the silence of despair.
Presently Grûl spoke, – for the first time, as far as we knew.
"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbé, I suppose," he remarked, in tone of placid courtesy.
"I know you, François de Grûl," came the reply, gasped from a dry mouth.
"Then further explanation, I think you will allow, is not needed. I will bid you farewell, and a pleasant journey," went on the same civil modulations of Grûl's voice. At the same moment he reached down with his shining blade as if to sever the rope.
"I did not do it! I did not do it!" screamed the Abbé, once more clutching convulsively at the smooth rock. "I swear to you by all the saints!"
Grûl examined the edge of his knife. He tested it with his thumb. I saw him glance along it critically. Then he touched it, ever so lightly, to the rope, so that a single strand parted.
"Swear to me," he said, in the mildest voice, "swear to me, Monsieur l'Abbé, that you had no part in it. Swear by the Holy Ghost, Monsieur l'Abbé!"
But the Abbé was silent.
"Swear me that oath now, good Abbé," repeated the voice, with a kind of courteous insistence.
"I will not swear!" came the ghastly whisper in reply.
At this an astonishing change passed over the face that peered down from the brink. Its sane tranquillity became a very paroxysm of rage. The grotesque cap was dashed aside, and Grûl sprang to his feet, waving his arms, stamping and leaping, his gaudy cloak a-flutter, his long white hair and beard twisting as if with a sentient fury of their own. He was so close upon the brink that I held my breath, expecting him to be plunged headlong. But all at once the paroxysm died out as suddenly as it had begun; and throwing himself down in his former position, Grûl once more touched the knife edge to the rope, severing fibre by fibre, slowly, slowly.
With the first touch upon the rope rose the Abbé's voice again, but no longer in vain entreaty and coward wailings. I listened with a great awe, and a sob broke from Mizpah's lips. It was the prayer for the passing soul. We heard it poured forth in steady tones but swift, against the blank face of the cliff. And we waited to see the rope divided at a stroke.
But to our astonishment, Grûl sprang to his feet again, in another fury, and flung aside his knife. With twitching hands he loosened the rope and began lowering his victim rapidly, till, within some twenty feet of the bottom, the Abbé found a footing, and stopped. Then Grûl tossed the whole rope down upon him.
"Go!" he cried in his chanting, bell-like tones. "The cup of your iniquity is not yet full. You shall not die till your soul is so black in every part that you will go down straight into hell!" And turning abruptly, he vanished.
The Black Abbé, as if seized with a faintness, leaned against the rock for some minutes. Then, freeing himself from the rope, he climbed down to the foot of the cliff, and moved off slowly by the water's edge toward Cobequid. We trembled lest he should see us, or the canoe, – I having no stomach for an attack upon one who had just gone through so dreadful a torment. But his face, neck, ears, were like a sweating candle; and his contracted eyes seemed scarce to see the ground before his feet.
"Seemed," I say. Yet even in this supreme moment, he tricked me.
Chapter XVI
I Cool My Adversaries' Courage
We now, having been so long delayed, gave up our purpose of a fire, and contented ourselves with the eggs raw. I also cut some very thin slices of the smoked and salted bacon, to eat with our black bread, for I knew that, working as we did, we needed strong food. But Mizpah would not touch the uncooked bacon, though its savour, I assured her, was excellent. We had but well begun our meal, and I was stooping over the hard loaf, when a startled exclamation from Mizpah made me look up. Close behind us stood Grûl, impatiently twisting his little white rod with the scarlet head. His eyes were somewhat more piercing, more like blue flame, than ordinarily, but otherwise he looked as usual. So little mark remained upon him of the scene just enacted. Both wise and mad! I thought.
It struck me that he was pleased with the impression he so plainly made on us both, and for a moment he looked upon us in silence. Then swiftly pointing his stick at us, he said sharply: —
"Fools! Do you wait here? But the hound is on the trail. Do you dream he did not see you?"
Then he turned to go. But Mizpah was at his side instantly, catching him by the wrist, and imploring him to tell us which way her child had been carried.
Grûl stopped and looked down upon her with austere dignity, but without replying. Passionately Mizpah entreated him, not to be denied; and at last, lightly but swiftly removing her fingers from his wrist, he muttered oracularly: —
"They will take him to the sea that is within the heart of the land! But go!" he repeated with energy, "or you will not go far!" and with steps so smooth that they seemed not to touch the ground, he went past the cliff foot. His gaudy mantle shone for a moment, and he was gone.
The ominous urgency of his warning rang in our ears, and we were not slow in making our own departure.
"What does he mean by 'the sea that is within the heart of the land'?" asked Mizpah, as we hurriedly launched the canoe.
"He means the Bras d'Or lakes," I said, "those wonderful reaches of land-locked sea that traverse the heart of He Royale. It is a likely enough way for the savages to go. There are villages both of Acadians and of Indians on the island."
As we were to learn afterwards, however, Grûl had told us falsely. The child was not destined for Ile Royale. Whether the strange being really thought he was directing us aright, or, his vanity not permitting him to confess that he did not know, trusted to a guess with the hope that it might prove a prophecy, I have never been able to determine. As a matter of fact, Fate did presently so take our affairs into her own hands, that Grûl's misinformation affected the end not at all. But his warning and his exhortation to speed we had to thank for our escape from the perils that soon came upon us. Had we not been thus warned, without doubt we should have been taken unawares and perished miserably.
On the incidents of our journey for the rest of that day, and up to something past noon of the day following, I need not particularly dwell. Suffice to say that we accomplished prodigious things, and that Mizpah showed incredible endurance. It was as if she saw her child ever a little way before her, and hoped to come up with him the next minute. When the stream became hopelessly shallow, we got out and waded, dragging the canoe. The long portage to the head of the Pictook waters we made in the night, the trail being a clear one, and not overly rough. At the further end of the carry, when I set down the canoe at the stream's edge, I could have dropped for weariness, yet from Mizpah I heard no complaint; and her silent heroism stirred my soul to a deepening passion of worship. Over and over I told myself that night that I would never rest or count the cost till I had given the child back to her arms.
Not till we had gone perhaps a mile down the Pictook did I order a halt, thrusting the canoe into a secure hiding-place. We snatched an hour of sleep, lying where we stepped ashore. Then, rising in the redness of daybreak, we hurried on, eating as we journeyed. And now, conceiving that it was necessary to keep up her strength, Mizpah ate of the uncooked bacon; though she wore a face of great aversion as she did so.
When, after hours of unmitigated toil, we reached the head of tide and the spacious open reaches of the lower river, I insisted on an hour of rest. Mizpah vowed that she was not exhausted, – but she slept instantly, falling by the side of the canoe as she stepped out. For myself I durst not sleep, but I rested, and watched, and sucked an egg, and chewed strips of bacon. When we pushed off again I felt that we must have put a good space between us and our pursuers; and as the ebb tide was helping me I made Mizpah go on sleeping, in her place in the bow.
"I will need your help more by and by," said I when she protested, "and then you must have all your strength to give me!"
The river soon became a wide estuary, with arms and indentations, – a harbour fit to hold a hundred fleets. Straight down mid-channel I steered, the shortest course to the mouth. But by and by there sprang up a light head-wind, delaying me.
"Wake up, comrade," I cried. "I need your good arm now, against this breeze!"
She had slept there an hour, and she woke now with a childlike flush in her cheeks.
"How good of you to let me sleep so," she exclaimed, turning to give me a grateful glance. But the expression upon her face changed instantly to one of fear, and the colour all went out.
"Oh, look behind us!" she gasped. I had not indeed waited for her words. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught sight of a large canoe, with four savages paddling furiously. The one glimpse was enough.
"Now, comrade, work!" said I. "But steady! not too hard! This is a long chase, remember!" and I bent mightily to the paddle.
Our pursuers were a good half-mile behind; and had we not been already wearied, I believe we could have held our own with them all day. Our canoe was light and swift, Mizpah paddled rarely, and for myself, I have never yet been beaten, by red man or white, in a fair canoe-race. But as it was, I felt that we must win by stratagem, if the saints should so favour us as to let us win at all. Half a mile ahead, on our right, was a high point. Behind it, as I knew, was a winding estuary of several branches, each the debouchement of a small stream. It was an excellent place in which to evade pursuers. I steered for the high point.
As we darted behind its shelter, a backward glance told me that our enemies had not gained upon us. The moment we were hidden from their view I put across to the other side of the channel, ran the canoe behind a jutting boulder, and leapt out. Not till we were concealed, canoe and all, behind a safe screen of rocks and underbrush, did Mizpah ask my purpose, though she plainly marvelled that I should hide so close to the entrance.
"A poor and something public hiding-place is often the most secret," said I. "The Indians know that up this water there are a score of turns, and backwaters, and brook-mouths, wherein we might long evade them. As soon as they saw us turn in here, they doubtless concluded that the water was well known to me, and that I would hope to baffle them in the inner labyrinths and escape up one of the streams. They will never dream of us stopping here."
"I see!" she exclaimed eagerly. "When they have passed in to look for us, we will slip out, and push on." It was haste she thought of rather than escape. No moment passed, I think, when her whole will, her whole being, were not focussed upon the finding of the child. And the more I realized the intensity of her love and her pain, the more I marvelled at the heroic self-control which forbade her to waste her strength in tears and wailings. The conclusion at which she had now arrived, as to my plan, was one I had not thought of, and I considered it before replying.
"No," said I, presently; "that is not quite my purpose, though I confess it is a good one. But, comrade, this is a safe ambush! They must pass within close gunshot of us!"
"Oh," she cried, paling, and clasping her hands, "must there be more blood? But yes, they bring it on themselves," she went on with a sudden fierceness, flushing again, and her mouth growing cruel. "They would keep us from finding him. Their blood be on their own heads!"
"I am glad you think of that," said I. "They would have no mercy for us if they should take us now. But indeed, if it will please you to have it so, we need not shoot them down. We can treat them to such a medicine as they had before of me, sink their canoe, and leave them like drowned rats on the other shore."
"Yes," said Mizpah, quietly; "if that will do as well, it will please me much better."
And so it was agreed. A very few minutes later the canoe appeared, rounding into the estuary. The savages scanned both shores minutely, but rather from the habit of caution than from any thought that we might have gone to land. If, however, I had not taken care to make my landing behind a boulder, those keen eyes would have marked some splashed spots on the shingle, and we would have been discovered.
But no such evil fortune came about. The four paddles flashed onward swiftly. The four fierce, painted and feathered heads thrust forward angrily, expecting to overtake us in one of the inner reaches. I took up Mizpah's musket (which was loaded with slugs, while my own carried a bullet, in case I should be called upon for a long and delicate shot), and waited until the canoe was just a little more than abreast of us. Then, aiming at the waterline, just in front of the bow paddle, I fired.
The effect was instant and complete. The savage in the bow threw up his paddle with a scream and sprang overboard. He was doubtless wounded, and feared a second shot. We saw him swimming lustily toward the opposite shore. The others paddled desperately in the same direction, but before they had gone half-way the canoe was so deep in the water that she moved like a log. Then they, too, seized with the fear of a second shot, sprang overboard. By this time I had the musket reloaded.
"If they get the canoe ashore, with their weapons aboard her," said I, "they will soon get her patched up, and we will have it all to do over again. Here goes for another try, whatever heads may be in the way!"
Mizpah averted her face, but made no protest, and I fired at the stern of the canoe, which was directly toward me. A swimmer's head, close by, went down; and in a minute more the canoe did likewise. Three feathered heads remained in sight; and presently three dark figures dragged themselves ashore – one of them limping badly – and plunged into the woods.
"Without canoe or guns," said I, "they are fairly harmless for a while." But Mizpah, as we re-embarked and headed again for the sea, said nothing. I think that in her bosom, at this time, womanly compassion was striving, and at some disadvantage, with the vindictiveness of outraged motherhood. I think – and I loved her the better for it – she was glad I had killed one more of her child's enemies; but I think, too, she was filled with shame at her gladness.
