Paul Heyse - "Die Einsamen"

Various - "Chatterbox, 1905."

William Tyler Olcott - "A Field Book of the Stars"

Robert H. Wilson - "Out Around Rigel"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Lords of the North

A >> A. C. Laut >> Lords of the North




As for Hamilton, I can hardly call his life at Fort Douglas anything
more than a mere existence. A blow stuns, but one may recover. Repeated
failure gradually benumbs hope and willpower and effort, like some
ghoulish vampire sucking away a man's life-blood till he faint and die
from very inanition. The blow, poor Eric had suffered, when he lost
Miriam; the repeated failure, when we could not restore her; and I saw
this strong, athletic man slowly succumb as to some insidious,
paralyzing disease. The thought of effort seemed to burden him. He
would silently mope by the hour in some dark corner of Fort Douglas, or
wander aimlessly about the courtyard, muttering and talking to himself.
He was weary and fatigued without a stroke of work; and what little
sleep he snatched from wakeful vigils seemed to give him no rest. His
food, he thrust from him with the petulance of a child; and at every
suggestion I could make, he sneered with a quiet, gentle insistence that
was utterly discomfiting. To be sure, I had Father Holland's boisterous
good cheer as a counter-irritant; for the priest had remained at Fort
Douglas, and was ministering to the tribes of the Red and Assiniboine.
But it was on her, who had been my guiding star and hope and inspiration
from the first, that I mainly depended. As hard, merciless winter closed
in, I could not think of those shelterless colonists driven to the lake,
without shuddering at the distress I knew they must suffer; and I
despatched a runner, urging them to return to Red River, and giving
personal guarantee for their safety. Among those, who came back, were
the Sutherlands; and if my quest had entailed far greater hardship than
it did, that quiet interval with leisure to spend much time at the
Selkirk settlement would have repaid all suffering. After sundown, I was
free from fort duties. Tying on snow-shoes after the manner of the
natives, I would speed over the whitened drifts of billowy snow. The
surface, melted by the sun-glare of mid-day and encrusted with brittle,
glistening ice, never gave under my weight; and, oddly enough, my way
always led to the Sutherland homestead. After the coming of the De
Meurons, Frances used to expostulate against what she called my
foolhardiness in making these evening visits; but their presence made no
difference to me.

"I don't believe those drones intend doing anything very dreadful, after
all, sir," I remarked one night to Frances Sutherland's father,
referring to the soldiers.

Following his daughter's directions I had been coming very early, also
very often, with the object of accustoming the dour Scotchman to my
staying late; and he had softened enough towards me to take part in
occasional argument.

"Don't believe they intend doing a thing, sir," I reiterated.

Pushing his spectacles up on his forehead, he closed the book of
sermons, which he had been reading, and puckered his brows as if he were
compromising a hard point with conscience, which, indeed, I afterwards
knew, was exactly what he had been doing.

"Aye," said he, "aye, aye, young man. But I'm thinking ye'll no do y'r
company ony harm by speerin' after the designs o' fightin' men who make
ladders."

"Oh!" I cried, all alert for information. "Have they been making
ladders?"

He pulled the spectacles down on his nose and deliberately reopened the
book of sermons.

"Of that, I canna say," he replied.

Only once again did he emerge from his readings. I had risen to go.
Frances usually accompanied me to the outer door, where I tied my
snow-shoes and took a farewell unobserved by the father; but when I
opened the door, such a blast of wind and snow drove in, I instantly
clapped it shut again and began tying the racquets on inside.

"O Rufus!" exclaimed Frances, "you can't go back to Fort Douglas in that
storm!"

Then we both noticed for the first time that a hurricane of wind was
rocking the little house to its foundations.

"Did that spring up all of a sudden?" I cried. "I never saw a blizzard
do that before."

"I'm afraid, Rufus, we were not noticing."

"No, we were otherwise interested," said I, innocently enough; but she
laughed.

"You can't go," she declared.

"The wind will be on my back," I assured her. "I'll be all right," and I
went on lacing the snow-shoe thongs about my ankle.

The book of sermons shut with a snap and the father turned towards us.

"Let no one say any man left the Sutherland hearth on such a night! Put
by those senseless things," and he pointed to the snow-shoes.

"But those ladders," I interposed. "Let no one say when the enemy came
Rufus Gillespie was absent from his citadel!"

The wind roared round the house corners like a storm at sea; and the
father looked down at me with a strange, quizzical expression.

"Ye're a headstrong young man, Rufus Gillespie," said the hard-set
mouth. "Ye maun knock a hole in the head, or the wall! Will ye go?"

"Knock the hole in the wall," I laughed back. "Of course I go."

"Then, tak' the dogs," said he, with a sparkle of kindliness in the cold
eyes. So it came that I set out in the Sutherlands' dog-sled with a
supply of robes to defy biting frost.

And I needed them every one. Old settlers, describing winter storms,
have been accused of an imagination as expansive as the prairie; but I
affirm no man could exaggerate the fury of a blizzard on the unbroken
prairie. To one thing only may it be likened--a hurricane at sea. People
in lands boxed off at short compass by mountain ridges forget with what
violence a wind sweeping half a continent can disport itself. In the
boisterous roar of the gale, my shouts to the dogs were a feeble whisper
caught from my lips and lost in the shrieking wind. The fine snowy
particles were a powdered ice that drove through seams of clothing and
cut one's skin like a whip lash. Without the fringe of woods along the
river bank to guide me, it would have been madness to set out by day,
and worse than madness by night; but I kept the dogs close to the woods.
The trees broke the wind and prevented me losing all sense of direction
in the tornado whirl of open prairie. Not enough snow had fallen on the
hard-crusted drifts to impede the dogs. They scarcely sank and with the
wind on their backs dashed ahead till the woods were passed and we were
on the bare plains. No light could be seen through the storm, but I knew
I was within a short distance of the fort gate and wheeled the dogs
toward the river flats of the left. The creatures seemed to scent human
presence. They leaped forward and brought the sleigh against the wall
with a knock that rolled me out.

"Good fellows;" I cried, springing up, uncertain where I was.

The huskies crouched around my feet almost tripping me and I felt
through the snowy darkness against the stockades, stake by stake.

Ah! There was a post! Here were close-fitted boards--here,
iron-lining--this must be the gate; but where was the lantern that hung
behind? A gust of wind might have extinguished the light; so I drubbed
loudly on the gate and shouted to the sentry, who should have been
inside.

The wind lulled for a moment and up burst wild shouting from the
courtyard intermingled with the jeers of Frenchmen and cries of terror
from our people. Then I knew judgment had come for the deeds at Seven
Oaks. The gale broke again with a hissing of serpents, or red irons, and
the howling wind rose in shrill, angry bursts. Hugging the wall, while
the dogs whined behind, I ran towards the rear. Men jostled through the
snowy dark, and I was among the De Meurons. They were too busy scaling
the stockade on the ladders of which I had heard to notice an intruder.
Taking advantage of the storm, I mounted a ladder, vaulted over the
pickets and alighted in the courtyard. Here all was noise, flight,
pursuit and confusion. I made for the main hall, where valuable papers
were kept, and at the door, cannoned against one of our men, who
shrieked with fright and begged for mercy.

"Coward!" said I, giving him a cuff. "What has happened?"

A flare fell on us both, and he recognized me.

"The De Meurons!" he gasped. "The De Meurons!"

I left him bawling out his fear and rushed inside.

"What has happened?" I asked, tripping up a clerk who was flying through
the hallway.

"The De Meurons!" he gasped. "The De Meurons!"

"Stop!" I commanded, grasping the lap of his coat.
"What--_has_--happened?"

"The De Meurons!" This was fairly screamed.

I shook him till he sputtered something more.

"They've captured the fort--our people didn't want to shed blood----"

"And threw down their guns," I interjected, disgusted beyond word.

"Threw down their guns," he repeated, as though that were a praiseworthy
action. "The s-s-sentinels--saw the court--full--full--full of
s-soldiers!"

"Full of soldiers!" I thundered. "There are not a hundred in the gang."

Thereupon I gave the caitiff a toss that sent him reeling against the
wall, and dashed up-stairs for the papers. All was darkness, and I nigh
broke my neck over a coffin-shaped rough box made for one of the
trappers, who had died in the fort. Why was the thing lying there,
anyway? The man should have been put into it and buried at once without
any drinking bout and dead wake, I reflected with some sharpness, as I
rubbed my bruised shins and shoved the box aside. Shouts rang up from
the courtyard. Heavy feet trampled in the hall below. Hamilton, as a
Hudson's Bay man, and Father Holland, I knew, were perfectly safe. But I
was far from safe. Why were they not there to help me, I wondered, with
the sort of rage we all vent on our friends when we are cornered and
they at ease. I fumbled across the apartment, found the right desk,
pried the drawer open with my knife, and was in the very act of seizing
the documents when I saw my own shadow on the floor. Lantern light burst
with a glare through the gloom of the doorway.




CHAPTER XXVI

FATHER HOLLAND AND I IN THE TOILS


Behind the lantern was a face with terrified eyes and gaping mouth. It
was the priest, his genial countenance a very picture of fear.

"What's wrong, Father?" I asked. "You needn't be alarmed; you're all
right."

"But I am alarmed, for you're all wrong! Lord, boy, why didn't ye stay
with that peppery Scotchman? What did Frances mane by lettin' you out
to-night?" and he shaded the light of the lantern with his hand.

"I wanted these things," I explained.

"Ye want a broad thumpin', I'm thinkin', ye rattle-pate, to risk y'r
precious noodle here to-night," he whispered, coming forward and fussing
about me with all the maternal anxiety of a hen over her only chicken.

"Listen," said I. "The whole mob's coming in."

"Go!" he urged, pushing me from the desk over which I still fumbled.

"Run for those dogs of mercenaries!" I protested.

"Ye swash-buckler! Ye stiff-necked braggart!" bawled the priest. "Out
wid y'r nonsense, and what good are y' thinkin' ye'll do--? Stir your
stumps, y' stoopid spalpeen!"

"Listen," I urged, undisturbed by the tongue-thrashing that stormed
about my ears. In the babel of voices I thought I had heard some one
call my name.

"Run, Rufus! Run for y'r life, boy!" urged Father Holland, apparently
thinking the ruffians had come solely for me.

"Run yourself, Father; run yourself, and see how you like it," and I
tucked the documents inside my coat.

"Divil a bit I'll run," returned the priest.

"Hark!"

The De Meurons' leaders were shouting orders to their men. Above the
screams of people fleeing in terror through passage-ways, came a shrill
bugle-call.

"Go--go--go--Rufus!" begged Father Holland in a paroxysm of fear. "Go!"
he pleaded, pushing me towards the door.

"I won't!" and I jerked away from him. "There, now." I caught up a club
and loaded pistol.

The Nor'-Westers had no time to defend themselves. Almost before my
stubborn defiance was uttered, the building was filled with a mob of
intoxicated De Meurons. Rushing everywhere with fixed bayonets and
cursing at the top of their voices, they threatened death to all
Nor'-Westers. There was a loud scuffling of men forcing their way
through the defended hall downstairs.

"Go, Rufus, go! Think of Frances! Save yourself," urged the priest.

It was too late. I could not escape by the hall. Noisy feet were already
trampling up the stairs and the clank of armed men filled every passage.

"Jee-les-pee! Jee-les-pee! Seven Oaks!" bawled a French voice from the
half-way landing, and a multitude of men with torches dashed up the
stairs. I took a stand to defend myself; for I thought I might be
charged with implication in the massacre.

"Jee-les-pee," roared the voices. "Where is Gillespie?" thundered a
leader.

"That's you, Rufus, lad! Down with you!" muttered the priest. Before I
knew his purpose, he had tripped my feet from under me and knocked me
flat on the floor. Overturning the empty coffin-box, he clapped it above
my whole length, imprisoning me with the snap and celerity of a
mouse-trap. Then I heard the thud of two hundred avoirdupois seating
itself on top of the case. The man above my person had whisked out a
book of prayers, and with lantern on the desk was conning over
devotions, which, I am sure, must have been read with the manual upside
down; for bits of the _pater noster_, service of the mass, and vesper
psalms were uttered in a disconnected jumble, though I could not but
apply the words to my own case.

"_Libera nos a malo--ora pro nobis, peccatoribus--ab hoste maligno
defende me--ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me--peccator videbit et
irascetur--desiderium peccatorum peribit_----" came from the priest with
torrent speed.

"Jee-les-pee! Jee-les-pee!" roared a dozen throats above the half-way
landing. Then came the stamp of many feet to the door.

"Wait, men!" Hamilton's voice commanded. "I'll see if he's here!"

"_Simulacra gentium argentum et aurum, opera manuum hominum_," like
hailstones rattled the Latin words down on my prison.

"One moment, men," came Eric's voice; but he could not hold them back.
In burst the door with a rush, and immediately the room was crowded with
vociferating French soldiers.

"_Manus habent, et non palpabunt; pedes_----"

"Is Gillespie here?" interrupted Hamilton, without the slightest
recognition of the priest in his tones.

"_Pedes habent et non ambulabunt; non clamabunt in gutture suo_,"
muttered the priest, finishing his verse; then to the men with a
stiffness which I did not think Father Holland could ever assume--

"How often must I be disturbed by men seeking that young scoundrel? Look
at this place, fairly topsy-turvy with their hunt! Faith! The room is
before you. Look and see!" and with a great indifference he went on with
his devotions.

"_Similes illis fiant qui faciunt ea_----"

"Some one here before us?" interrupted an Englishman with some
suspicion.

"Two parties here before ye," answered the priest, icily, as if these
repeated questions rumpled ecclesiastical dignity, and he gabbled on
with the psalm, "_similes illis fiant qui faciunt ea, et omnes_----"

"If we lifted that box," interrupted the persistent Englishman, "what
might there be?"

"If ye lift that box," answered Father Holland with massive
solemnity--and I confess every hair on my body bristled as he rose--"If
ye lift that box there might be a powr--dead--body," which was very
true; for I still held the cocked pistol in hand and would have shot the
first man daring to molest me.

But the priest's indifference was not so great as it appeared. I could
tell from a tremor in his voice that he was greatly disturbed; and he
certainly lost his place altogether in the vesper psalm.

"_Requiescat in pace_," were his next words, uttered in funereal
gravity. Singularly enough, they seemed to fit the situation.

Father Holland's prompt offer to have the rough box examined satisfied
the searchers, and there were no further demands.

"Oh," said the Englishman, taken aback, "I beg your pardon, sir! No
offence meant."

"No offence," replied the priest, reseating himself. "_Benedicite_----"

"Sittin' on the coffin!" blurted out the voice of an English youth as
the weight of the priest again came down heavily on my prison; and again
I breathed easily.

"Come on, men!" shouted Hamilton, apprehensive of more curiosity. "We're
wasting time! He may be escaping by the basement window!"

"_Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit; surge, amica mea, et
veni!_" droned the priest, and the whole company clattered downstairs.

"Quick!--Out with you!" commanded Father Holland. "Speed to y'r heels,
and blessing on the last o' ye!"

I dashed down the stairs and was bolting through the doorway when some
one shouted, "There he is!"

"Run, Gillespie!" cried some one else--one of our men, I suppose--and I
had plunged into the storm and raced for the ladders at the rear
stockades with a pack of pursuers at my heels. The snow drifts were in
my favor, for with my moccasins, I leaped lightly forward, while the
booted soldiers floundered deep. I eluded my pursuers and was half-way
up a ladder when a soldier's head suddenly appeared above the wall on
the other side. Then a bayonet prodded me in the chest and I fell
heavily backwards to the ground.

* * * * *

I was captured.

That is all there is to say. No man dilates with pleasure over that part
of his life when he was vanquished. It is not pleasant to have weapons
of defence wrested from one's hands, to feel soldiers standing upon
one's wrists and rifling pockets.

It is hard to feel every inch the man on the horizontal.

In truth, when the soldiers picked me up without ceremony, or
gentleness, and bundling me up the stairs of the main hall, flung me
into a miserable pen, with windows iron-barred to mid-sash, I was but a
sorry hero. My tormentors did not shackle me; I was spared that
humiliation.

"There!" exclaimed a Hudson's Bay man, throwing lantern-light across the
dismal low roof as I fell sprawling into the room. "That'll cool the
young hot-head," and all the French soldiers laughed at my discomfiture.

They chained and locked the door on the outside. I heard the soldiers'
steps reverberating through the empty passages, and was alone in a sort
of prison-room, used during the regime of the petty tyrant McDonell. It
was cold enough to cool any hot-head, and mine was very hot indeed. I
knew the apartment well. Nor'-Westers had used it as a fur storeroom.
The wind came through the crevices of the board walls and piled
miniature drifts on the floor-cracks, all the while rattling loose
timbers like a saw-mill. The roof was but a few feet high, and I crept
to the window, finding all the small panes coated with two inches of
hoar-frost. Whether the iron bars outside ran across, or up and down, I
could not remember; but the fact would make a difference to a man
trying to escape. Much as I disliked to break the glass letting in more
cold, there was only one way of finding out about those bars. I raised
my foot for an outward kick, but remembering I wore only the moccasins
with which I had been snowshoeing, I struck my fist through instead, and
shattered the whole upper half of the window. I broke away cross-pieces
that might obstruct outward passage, and leaning down put my hand on the
sharp points of upright spikes. So intense was the frost, the skin of my
finger tips stuck to the iron, and I drew my hand in, with the sting of
a fresh burn.

It was unfortunate about those bars. I could not possibly get past them
down to the ground without making a ladder from my great-coat. I groped
round the room hoping that some of the canvas in which we tied the
peltries, might be lying about. There was nothing of the sort, or I
missed it in the dark. Quickly tearing my coat into strips, I knotted
triple plies together and fastened the upper end to the crosspiece of
the lower window. Feet first, I poked myself out, caught the strands
with both hands, and like a flash struck ground below with badly skinned
palms. That reminded me I had left my mits in the prison room.

The storm had driven the soldiers inside. I did not encounter a soul in
the courtyard, and had no difficulty in letting myself out by the main
gate.

I whistled for the dogs. They came huddling from the ladders where I
had left them, the sleigh still trailing at their heels. One poor animal
was so benumbed I cut him from the traces and left him to die. Gathering
up the robes, I shook them free of snow, replaced them in the sleigh and
led the string of dogs down to the river. It would be bitterly cold
facing that sweep of unbroken wind in mid-river; but the trail over ice
would permit greater speed, and with the high banks on each side the
dogs could not go astray.

To an overruling Providence, and to the instincts of the dogs, I owe my
life. The creatures had not gone ten sleigh-lengths when I felt the loss
of my coat, and giving one final shout to them, I lay back on the sleigh
and covered myself, head and all, under the robes, trusting the huskies
to find their way home.

I do not like to recall that return to the Sutherlands. The man, who is
frozen to death, knows nothing of the cruelties of northern cold. The
icy hand, that takes his life, does not torture, but deadens the victim
into an everlasting, easy, painless sleep. This I know, for I felt the
deadly frost-slumber, and fought against it. Aching hands and feet
stopped paining and became utterly feelingless; and the deadening thing
began creeping inch by inch up the stiffening limbs the life centres,
till a great drowsiness began to overpower body and mind. Realizing what
this meant, I sprang from the sleigh and stopped the dogs. I tried to
grip the empty traces of the dead one, but my hands were too feeble; so
I twisted the rope round my arm, gave the word, and raced off abreast
the dog train. The creatures went faster with lightened sleigh, but
every step I took was a knife-thrust through half-frozen awakening
limbs. Not the man who is frozen to death, but the man who is
half-frozen and thawed back to life, knows the cruelties of northern
cold.

In a stupefied way, I was aware the dogs had taken a sudden turn to the
left and were scrambling up the bank. Here my strength failed or I
tripped; for I only remember being dragged through the snow, rolling
over and over, to a doorway, where the huskies stopped and set up a
great whining. Somehow, I floundered to my feet. With a blaze of light
that blinded me, the door flew open and I fell across the threshold
unconscious.

* * * * *

Need I say what door opened, what hands drew me in and chafed life into
the benumbed being?

"What was the matter, Rufus Gillespie?" asked a bluff voice the next
morning. I had awakened from what seemed a long, troubled sleep and
vaguely wondered where I was.

"What happened to ye, Rufus Gillespie?" and the man's hand took hold of
my wrist to feel my pulse.

"Don't, father! you'll hurt him!" said a voice that was music to my
ears, and a woman's hand, whose touch was healing, began bathing my
blistered palms.

At once I knew where I was and forgot pain. In few and confused words I
tried to relate what had happened.

"The country's yours, Mr. Sutherland," said I, too weak, thick-tongued
and deliriously happy for speech.

"Much to be thankful for," was the Scotchman's comment. "Seven Oaks is
avenged. It would ill 'a' become a Sutherland to give his daughter's
hand to a conqueror, but I would na' say I'd refuse a wife to a man
beaten as you were, Rufus Gillespie," and he strode off to attend to
outdoor work.

And what next took place, I refrain from relating; for lovers' eloquence
is only eloquent to lovers.




CHAPTER XXVII

UNDER ONE ROOF


Nature is not unlike a bank. When drafts exceed deposits comes a
protest, and not infrequently, after the protest, bankruptcy. From the
buffalo hunt to the recapture of Fort Douglas by the Hudson's Bay
soldiers, drafts on that essential part of a human being called stamina
had been very heavy with me. Now came the casting-up of accounts, and my
bill was minus reserve strength, with a balance of debt on the wrong
side.

The morning after the escape from Fort Douglas, when Mr. Sutherland
strode off, leaving his daughter alone with me, I remember very well
that Frances abruptly began putting my pillow to rights. Instead of
keeping wide awake, as I should by all the codes of romance and common
sense, I--poor fool--at once swooned, with a vague, glimmering
consciousness that I was dying and this, perhaps, was the first blissful
glimpse into paradise. When I came to my senses, Mr. Sutherland was
again standing by the bedside with a half-shamed look of compassion
under his shaggy brows.

"How far," I began, with a curious inability to use my wits and tongue,
"how far--I mean how long have I been asleep, sir?"

"Hoots, mon! Dinna claver in that feckless fashion! It's months, lad,
sin' ye opened y'r mouth wi' onything but daft gab."

"Months!" I gasped out. "Have I been here for months?"

"Aye, months. The plain was snaw-white when ye began y'r bit nappie.
Noo, d'ye no hear the clack o' the geese through yon open window?"

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