Kitabı oku: «The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec», sayfa 16
A glow in that direction filled the sky, making the surroundings weird, and from time to time a red tongue of fire leapt up.
"'Tis a French ship bringing provisions," said the knight, pointing into the unfathomable mass. "She has signalled, and yonder fire burns to guide her in."
"Wreck her!" cried a Cornishman. "Let us build another fire on the cliff to the east. With fortune, she shall steer for our beacon instead of theirs."
"We should but make ourselves known," growled Upcliff.
A terrified shout broke upon his speech, and one of the men jumped against the huddled party, shrieking in fear.
"What ails you, Jacob Sadgrove?" cried the skipper.
"God save me! A foul spirit close at my side. She grinned out of the snow and floated away, her feet never touching ground. A warning – a death warning, and I a miserable sinner."
The man grovelled upon his knees up to his waist in snow, flapping his hands and groaning.
"Speak up, man!" said Sir Thomas. "What is that you saw?"
"He has seen a wyvern," spoke the master contemptuously. "Was always a man to see more than other folk."
"Stood at my side and grinned in a fearsome manner," whined the sailor. "The nose of her was slit like man yonder, and the ears of her were like a dog's, and she breathed fire out of her mouth."
"Stay!" cried Hough, stepping out. "Say you that her face was marked like mine?"
"The same," panted the man. "But dead and cold, and her eyes like fish – "
The Puritan drowned his wailings by a bitter cry.
"Forgive me, friends," he cried. "The Lord delivered me that woman to slay, and I, weak vessel that I am, drew back, and now am punished, and in my punishment you must share. We are discovered."
"The name of that woman?" demanded Sir Thomas.
"The sister of your wife."
"I knew it," groaned the knight. "The agent of my son's death. Which way went she?" he cried at the terrified sailor.
"She flew there – there," stuttered the man.
"Follow the tracks!"
"Nay, there are none. The snow already covers them."
"Her feet ne'er touched the snow," wailed the man. "Her feet were hot from the everlasting fire."
"Peace, fool," said Upcliff. He turned to Hough. "Are our lives in danger?"
"Never in greater. The woman is an Indian spy, who is now on her way to the settlement, where rules a hot-headed priest who has sworn to kill every Englishman in the land. They will be on us ere morning."
"There is only one way," said the master. "We must break the ice, release our barque, and put out. The sea is calm."
"She will not float."
"She shall float."
Upcliff gave his orders coolly, and the sailors hastened to obey through the muffling mists. The greater number attacked the ice with axe and saw, while the minority dismantled the shelter and reconveyed its contents to the ghostly ship. Every man worked his hardest, longing for the sea. The blow of axes and the snarl of a long saw sounded along the hidden coast.
Madeleine came down, all white with snow like a bride, and cheered them on, and presently brought each man a bowl of soup to renew his strength. A narrow lane opened through the ice, an ink-black passage in the colourless plain, but beyond stretched a long white field before the jagged edge where the snow wave curled in a monstrous lip.
The brigantine righted herself with a flutter and a plunge, casting the snow from her yards, and the grinding of her keel made joyful music. The toilers, sweating as though they had been reaping corn in summer, laboured to open the path to the stagnant sea.
"The rent in her hold is plugged by solid ice," called the skipper. "She shall carry that cargo bravely through this calm."
The big feathers of snow became spots of down, which lessened to the degree of frost points before morning. The country began to unroll, all padded with its monstrous coverlet; the trees masqueraded as wool-stuffed Falstaffs; the cliffs seemed to have increased in the night; the heavens were nearer the earth. The coast appalled in its cold virginity.
"One more hour, and then for the sea," sang Upcliff. "Is everything aboard?"
"All but the stove, captain. We wait for it to cool."
"Bring it out into the snow."
As Upcliff gave the order, a man crossed the brow of a western hill and floundered knee-deep towards the bay. It was Hough, and he shouted as he ran:
"The French are coming out!"
CHAPTER XXXI
IN THE FALL OF THE SNOW
Because the Father of Waters was frozen over and its track buried in snow, despatches from Quebec could only be conveyed by the hand of overland couriers. Winter had set in early that year, and with more than usual severity; and this was probably the reason why no messenger had lately arrived from the heights to inform the governor of Acadie as to what had taken place in and around the modest capital of New France.
The priest was not concerned by this silence. He had indeed lost much of his interest in the doings of the New World, since D'Archand had informed him of his popularity at home. He felt that he had made his advancement sure. During the weeks which followed autumn, when the maples were resigning their gorgeous vestments of red and gold, he had occupied himself in setting the affairs of his charge in order, looking to shortly receive a command to proceed to Rome, there to receive the reward of his stewardship. Onawa had passed out of his memory, and with her the brave young boy whom he had smitten in the forest by Couchicing. He sent no expedition out to search the land. He had done sufficient for glory. He was not the man to waste his energies upon works of supererogation. No slip could lose him that spiritual principality towards which he had pressed by word and act since the day of his ordination. As he strode through the snow the settlement seemed to shrink from him, and the trees to bow, as though foreseeing the power which was about to pass into his hands.
La Salle reached his chapel, recited vespers in the arrogant voice which made him feared, and returned to his quarters. A spirit of restlessness was over him, and when he could resist no longer he rose, and, taking his sword, lunged repeatedly at a knot in the wall, striking it full until his body began to sweat.
"No falling off," he muttered, as he examined the pricks in the wood. "No sign of weakness yet." He lowered the sword, and mechanically wiped the point in the tail of his skirt, then passed his firm hand caressingly down the blade, murmuring, with a self-conscious smile: "I have finished my fighting. Henceforth my wrist must stiffen and my arm rust, while the power which has controlled the sword shall pass into the use of tongue and pen."
A knock fell upon the door, and in response to his reply a personal attendant entered, and with a low reverence announced:
"A messenger to speak with you, Excellency."
At the governor's word a man was ushered in, clad in furs, his beard heavy with icicles, a pair of long snow-shoes slung upon his back. He made a profound genuflection and stood with bent head awaiting permission to speak.
"Come you from the upper fortress?" asked La Salle.
"Yes, Excellency, with despatches for France and a letter for your Holiness."
La Salle put out his hand for the communication, broke the thread, unfolded the sheet, and, holding it in the lamplight, bent over to read.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, his eyes lifting. "Laroche. What means this signature?"
"The noble commandant Roussilac has been stricken with sickness," hesitated the messenger.
"What ails him?" asked the priest.
The man faltered, but finally gained courage to reply: "It is said, Excellency, that the noble commandant acts strangely, as a man possessed by some unholy influence."
La Salle brought the letter again to his eyes, and hurriedly scanned the ill-written lines.
"It is explained here," he said indifferently. "La tête lui a tourné. Was never an able man," he muttered to himself. "Was ambitious, and thought himself strong enough to stand alone. 'Tis but justice." He looked across coldly, and sharply ordered the messenger to withdraw.
The emissary retired, bowing as he backed out, while La Salle ran his eyes over the remainder of the letter, muttering his comments aloud.
"Gaudriole hanged for murdering a soldier. So, so! Was but a brute. The little Frenchwoman dead of a fit, and her daughter escaped. A weeding-out, in faith. The traitorous Dutch gone beyond capture. The English spy also escaped. The men sent after him returned afoot, and swore that they had been set upon by demons among a range of white mountains. Would have hanged the fools. The Iroquois tribes gone into winter hunting-grounds. The country altogether clear. The Algonquins still friendly. This colony is now settled to France beyond question."
La Salle dropped the letter, and fell into musings. Once he put his hand to his brow, as though he could already feel a mitre pressing there; he fingered his ring, and moved his foot, to frown when his eyes sighted a rough boot instead of the scarlet shoe of his dreams. Then he was awakened by a noisy rattling and a shock.
The crucifix which had hung upon the log wall – more as a sign of profession, as the gauntlet outside the glove-maker's shop, than as a symbol he revered – lay broken upon the floor.
The priest rose, muttering a frightened imprecation, and as he nervously gathered up the shattered symbol his ears became opened to a hurrying of feet over the fresh snow. All the soldiers and settlers appeared to be rushing past afoot, shaking the ground and the walls of his house. It was doubtless this disturbance which had detached the crucifix from its nail. La Salle pulled a beaver cap over his forehead and made for the outer door, and there encountered a messenger who came to inform him that a ship's gun had been heard at sea.
"Bid them fire the beacon," said La Salle.
"It has been done, Excellency. There is not a breath over the water. But the snow pours down."
The priest's official bodyguard awaited him; and when he appeared every man saluted and fell into place, and so accompanied him to the cliff, where a huge fire was making the sky scarlet. This fire was a centre towards which all the settlers were hastening like flies towards a lantern. The coming of a ship from the Old World, with supplies, fresh faces, and news of friends, was a red-letter day in the monotonous calendar of their lives. The white figures hurried through the night like an inferno of chattering ghosts.
"She shall not be in till morning light," quoth a wiseacre. "There are rocks, see you, in the gulf, and her master shall run no risk after escaping the perils of the ocean."
"Will wager to-day's haul of fish that she lies up here before three hours are gone," cried another.
"And I my fishing-net that we shall not see her before day," retorted the confident first speaker.
"That net is mine. Didst not hear the gun?"
"Sounds carry far through the winter air."
"The snow muffles. She is scarce a mile out."
"Ah, that is indeed a fire! The light of it shall reach far out at sea."
The excitable folk laughed loudly whenever a fresh load of wood was flung upon the flames, and carried away by their feelings danced an ambulatory ballet in the red mist, a dance, like the Prosperity of the Arms of France to be given before Richelieu a few months later, not altogether without political significance. These settlers danced to the tune of their song; and their songs were Success to the Ships of France and Destruction to the English. While these revels lasted no one observed a soldier hurrying up behind, with a woman at his side. The woman was Onawa, breathing quickly as though she had been running at the top of her speed.
"Yonder stands his Holiness," said the man, stopping to point out La Salle surrounded by his little band of attendants.
Onawa abandoned her guide and rushed out, maddened and witless with her foolish passion, until she reached the side of the man she loved and was warmed by his dark eyes, which yet flashed angrily upon her, as he turned to shake off the parasite, ejaculating:
"Whom have we here?"
"It is I," she cried wildly in French, having at length acquired some little knowledge of that language. "Let me speak." More she would have said, but her store of the language failed in the time of need.
"Uncover her face," ordered La Salle. "Take her into the firelight that we may see with whom we have to deal."
"Let me speak to you here," prayed the girl, drawing back into the snow-lit gloom; but she was seized and dragged upward close to the dancing ring, and rough hands drew the covering from her face.
"Tête de mort!" exclaimed La Salle, and started back when he recognised the face that had once been handsome set towards him in the wild firelight, fearfully branded, the nostrils slit, the ears cropped, a letter seared upon each cheek. "Cover that horror, and drive her out lest she bewitch us."
"Hear me," the unhappy girl moaned, holding out her hands in an agony of supplication. "Yonder your enemy cover the shore. Many men and a ship held in the ice." She panted forth the syllables in the best French she could muster, throwing out her hands along the eastern shore.
La Salle's expression altered as he turned to his subordinates with the old fighting passion in his eye and heart.
"My men," he said, "this woman is but an Indian, but she is trustworthy, I know. An English vessel has been cast ashore, and the sailors seek to make shelter. What say you? Shall we warm our blood and relieve this tedious time of waiting by venturing out to exterminate the vermin?"
"Should we not first send out a spy?" suggested an old officer.
"It is well thought on. Choose you a man, and bid him take this woman for a guide. Let him stab her if she prove false. Do you gather together our fighters," went on the priest, turning to another, "and bid them make ready to sally out immediately."
"Shall you venture yourself, Excellency?"
"Shall I not!" cried La Salle, his hot blood afire for one more fight and one more triumph. "I fear we shall find but poor sport, but such as it is I shall take my share. Break up yonder circle of madmen, and order them to make ready. Hasten, so that we may have our hunt, and be ready to receive the ship when she sails out of the fog."
"I go not," cried Onawa, furiously resisting the soldiers who would have forced her away. She broke from them, ran to La Salle, and fell upon her knees, panting: "I go with you, that I may fight with you, and die for you."
"The woman has yet to learn a soldier's discipline," said La Salle coldly. "Secure a rope round her, and if she prove obstinate let her feel the end of it."
Onawa flung herself forward to grasp his feet, but two soldiers stepped out and dragged her away.
"Now, my brave comrades! To arms!" shouted the fighting priest.
CHAPTER XXXII
ARMS AND THE MAN
Silas Upcliff groaned bitterly when he heard the Puritan's shout. Being a brave man, his spirit inclined towards lending aid to his compatriots, but being honest also, his sense of duty impelled him to observe the oath which he had made to his niggardly owner. While he was thus halting between two opinions, the three venturers left him upon the shore, the blood tingling in their veins at the prospect of a glorious death.
Penfold led the way and took command, carrying his burden of years as lightly as any man upon that coast. Striking upward from the bay, where the sailors were fighting the ice, he brought his companions to a height of three hundred feet above the sea, where the cliffs were divided by a narrow defile down which in summer coursed a stream.
"I have kept this place in mind," said the old man, when they halted at the extremity of the pass. "Here we shall make our stand."
So contracted was the way that the snow, massed heavily upon the sides, in places nearly touched. Some pines clung to the rock, hanging over the defile, straining at their rope-like roots. At these the old yeoman pointed with the order:
"Fell me two trees so that they shall fall along the pass."
The others scrambled up the cliff and cut at the snaky roots, while Penfold occupied himself below in treading the snow into a firm bed. Soon the tough pines began to crack and sway. First one crashed down, then another, and after that Upcliff came running, short of breath, into the defile, having at length made up his mind that Master Grignion must lose his ship.
"The enemy show black against the snow yonder, a hundred men if there be one," he shouted. "Tell me now, how shall I dispose my men?"
"Return to your ship, Master Skipper, and cut her free with what speed you may," replied Penfold gruffly. "We stand here to hold back the enemy so long as life remains."
"Mayhap they shall not come this way?" suggested Upcliff.
"If they do not, then are ye doubly safe. Before they can pass round you shall be away, for I know of no easy path up yonder wall, and on the south the sea guards us. See you not that they must here advance singly, and that one good fighter may hold them all at bay?"
"They have guns," said Upcliff, cocking his ear to listen to the axes ringing keenly in the bay.
"They shall not use them. The snow must drench their priming."
The skipper made a step back, but halted again.
"I cannot desert you, comrades," he said hoarsely. "My owner is also an Englishman, an alderman of London town, and, close-minded though he be, I wot he would lose his venture and his ship rather than see England shamed. Bid me call my men to the far end of this pass, and there let us stand together until the end."
"See you not that this is our affair?" replied Penfold. "We are fighting for our own hands, having blood of comrades to avenge. Go, for you do but waste your time and ours."
"Away," added Hough, pushing the skipper gently back. "The Lord being on our side, how should we be afraid? They come about us like bees, and are extinct even as the fire among the thorns, for in the name of the Lord shall we destroy them. Go, good master, and while we smite these worshippers of idols do you release your ship."
Thus compelled to observe his oath, Upcliff gave way, though with great unwillingness, and ran to the end of the pass, where his eyes were gladdened by the sight of the Dartmouth riding in the black channel, dressed out in all her canvas. His sailor's heart warmed at the spectacle, but sank again when he contemplated the wide white field which still spread between the deep sea and his ship. He staggered down, blowing like a whale, and snatching an axe from the tired hands of one of his sailors wielded it furiously.
The men in the pass twisted the pine-boughs and snagged the trunks to form a rough chevaux-de-frise. Before an hour had passed they heard footfalls crushing the snow, and then Penfold smiled and rose to his feet. The old man had been resting beneath a tree.
"Comrades," he said, "I lead by the privilege of age. Not more than one can make a stand in this narrow pass. Do you ascend the cliff, one on either side, and as the enemy attempt to climb the barrier cast snow into their faces. The rest you shall leave to me."
"Out on you, old Simon," said Hough strongly. "I am younger than you by many years, and thus shall last the longer."
"You may fill this place after me," said Penfold. "But while I live I rule."
Hough was not satisfied, and the argument was only brought to an end by the sight of a cap lifting above the ridge.
"To your places," whispered Penfold, stepping quickly to the barrier.
The knight was already upon the cliff, sheltering his spare body behind a pine. He awaited the one man who, he felt assured, would not lose the opportunity of a fight, and he did not desire to risk his life until he and that man could meet.
"Captain!" called a French voice startlingly, "a barrier is thrown across the way."
"Over it," ordered the officer.
The man jumped upon the fallen trunk and threw up his hands to grasp the higher branches; but his fingers merely clutched the air, he gave a groan, and fell back, pierced through the heart by Penfold's sword, which had darted from the interlacing branches. A shout went up from the pass, which was now a struggling mass of soldiers.
"Information ever costs a man," said the officer coolly. "Storm the barrier."
Two soldiers rushed out and flung themselves upon the locked trees, jostling each other in the constricted space. A lump of snow hit the foremost between the eyes, he gasped, and would have turned, but a sword-thrust sent him to his doom, and his comrade, blinded in the self-same manner, shared his fate.
"There are men in hiding yonder," rang a voice. "The villains shelter behind the trees."
"Find me a way round," roared an angry voice, and La Salle pushed along the pass. "Are we to be held here by one man behind a fallen tree?"
"There is no way up, Excellency," said an officer, gazing up the face of the rock. "The heretics have well chosen their place."
"Send men round," shouted the priest.
A detachment was sent instantly to find a way over the cliff, while woodmen with axes went out and laid furiously upon the pines. Penfold disabled the first, but another advanced, and after him another, each unwilling to obey, but unable to hang back.
Three dead bodies were dragged out, and La Salle tried the expedient of sending his men in rapid succession against the barrier. The wet snow dashed upon their faces, one by one they dropped before that stinging sword, man after man fell back, but another always stood ready to rush into the gap, to make the attempt, and give way to someone more confident than he. Penfold's dogged old tongue counted off the strokes to the ringing of the ice-axes from the bay. The soldier-settlers came faster, each man more fierce than the last, because their blood was heated by the shame of this defeat. The old man's misty breath came streaming between the branches where his untiring sword flickered in and out.
Two at a time came the Frenchmen, until at length, profiting by a mis-stroke, a couple gained the summit of the barrier. The first to jump down fell a prey to the stout yeoman, but the second reached the ground unharmed. A shout of triumph went up, and the soldiers swarmed the obstacle.
"Excellency, the Indian woman has shown us a way over the cliff," exclaimed a voice beside La Salle. "That way, says she, we shall encounter no opposition."
"I will myself make the trial," La Salle answered. "Do you in the meantime win this pass."
"She says also that we must hasten, because these men are holding the pass while their comrades free the ship from the ice."
Penfold fought on, grim to the end, but his sword had lost its deadliness and his arm was growing numb. His comrades aided him as best they could, but they too were acting upon the defensive, because some of the more daring soldiers had scaled the slippery sides of the pass in a futile endeavour to drag them down. The old man groaned and tottered as the light failed gradually from his eyes.
"Let it be said of me," he gasped, "that I gave them half an hour."
Voices roared in his ears, like the waves of a stormy sea about to close over his head.
"Strike! He is spent. Strike him down."
There followed an onward rush. Over the old man's failing body sped the bitterness of death.
He felt a sword in his side, another in his shoulder, and at the pain he revived like an old lion, and roared and plunged forward, feeling his way with his point, until he found his striker's heart, and then he shouted with all the strength that was left:
"Stand up in my stead, comrade! I have made a good fight, and accounted for the best. They shall run before us yet. To me, comrade! Ha! St. Edward and St. George!"
With that last shout he fell, deep into the red snow, his old body spouting blood, and so died like a valiant man of Berks, with his sword fast held, and his grey head set towards the foe.
Hough hurled back a soldier, who had clambered up the cliff to dislodge him, and would have flung himself down to stop the way, when on a sudden a tall figure slid down the side opposite him, and stood immediately to defy the body of men sweeping through like an inundating wave, wielding his sword with calm, nervous strength, his keen eyes starting from a thin, brown face.
Then Hough's courage gave way, and sinking to his knees, while the enemy rushed through, he cried aloud. Death had no terror for him; but the spectacle of that cold man, whom for an instant he had seen, fighting in the raw light of the dawn, then thrown down and trodden under foot, made him shiver to the heart.
"The Lord encompasses us with the spirits of our friends," he cried, knowing that it was Jesse Woodfield who already lay hacked and bruised and buried in the snow of the defile.
