Fort Amity
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Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity
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"When I was a young man," answered Menehwehna, "in the days when I
went wooing after Meshu-kwa, I would often be jealous, and this
jealousy would seize me when we were alone together. 'She is loving
enough now,' I said; 'but how will it be when other young men are
around her?' This thought tormented me so that many times it drove
me to prove her, pretending to be cold and purposely throwing her in
the company of others who were glad enough--for she had many suitors.
Then I would watch with pain in my heart, but secretly, that my shame
and rage might be hidden."
John eyed him for a moment in wonder. "For what did you bring me
this long way from Michilimackinac?" he asked. "Was it not to speak
at need for you and your nation?"
"For that, but not for that only. Brother, have you never loved a
friend so that you felt his friendship worthless to you unless you
owned it all? Have you never felt the need on you to test him,
though the test lay a hundred leagues away? So far have I brought
you, O Netawis, to show you your countrymen. In a while the fort
yonder will wake, and you shall see them on the parapet in their red
coats, and if the longing come upon you to return to them, we will
cross over together and I will tell my tale. They will believe it.
Look! Will you be an Englishman again?"
"Let us turn back," answered John wearily. "That life is gone from
me for ever."
"Say to me that you have no wish to go."
"I had a wish once," said John, letting the words fall slowly as his
eyes travelled over the walls of the fort. "It seemed to me then
that no wish on earth could be dearer. Many things have helped to
kill it, I think." He passed a hand over his eyes and let it drop by
his side. "I have no wish to leave you, Menehwehna."
The Indian stood up with a short cry of joy and laid a hand on his
shoulder.
"No, my friend," John continued in the same dull voice; "I will say
to you only what is honest. If I return with you, it is not for your
sake."
"So that you return, Netawis, I will have patience. There was a time
when you set your face against me; and this I overcame. Again there
was a time when you pleaded with me that I should let you escape; and
still I waited, though with so small a hope that when my child Azoka
began to listen for your step I scolded her out of her folly."
"In that you did wisely, Menehwehna. It is not everything that I
have learned to forget."
"I told her," said Menehwehna simply, "that, as the snow melts and
slides from the face of a rock, so one day all thought of us would
slip from your heart and you would go from us, not once looking back.
Even so I believed. But the spring came, and the summer, and I began
to doubt; and, as I questioned you, a hope grew in my heart, and I
played with it as a bitch plays with her pups, trying its powers
little by little, yet still in play, until a day came when I
discovered it to be strong and the master of me. Then indeed, my
brother, I could not rest until I had put it to this proof."
He lit his pipe solemnly, drew a puff or two and handed it to John.
"Let us smoke together before we turn back. He that has a friend as
well as wife and children needs not fear to grow old."
John stretched out a hand and touched the earthen pipe bowl.
His fingers closed on it--but only to let it slip. It fell, struck
against the edge of the tree stump and was shivered in pieces.
Across the valley in Fort Niagara the British drums were sounding the
_reveille_.
He did not hear Menehwehna's voice lamenting the broken pipe.
He stood staring across at the fort. He saw the river-gate open, the
red-coats moving there, relieving guard. He saw the flagstaff
halliards shake out the red cross of England in the morning sunlight.
And still, like a river, rolled the music of British drums.
"Netawis!"
Menehwehna touched his arm. At first John did not seem to hear, then
his hand went up and began to unfasten the silver armlets there.
"Netawis! O my brother!"
But the ice had slipped from the rock and lay around its base in
ruin, and the music which had loosened it still sang across the
valley. He took a step down the slope towards it.
"You shall not go!" cried Menehwehna, and lifting his gun pointed it
full at John's back. And John knew that Menehwehna's finger was on
the trigger. He walked on unregarding.
But Menehwehna did not fire. He cast down his gun with a cry and ran
to clasp his friend's feet. What was he saying? Something about
"two years."
"Two years?" Had they passed so quickly? God! how long the minutes
were now! He must win across before the drums ceased . . .
He halted and began to talk to Menehwehna very patiently, this being
the easiest way to get rid of him. "Yes, yes," he heard himself
saying, "I go to them as an Indian and they will not know me.
I shall be safe. Return now back to my brothers and tell them that,
if need be, they will find me there and I will speak for them."
And his words must have prevailed, for he stood by the river's edge
alone, and Menehwehna was striding back towards the wood. A boat lay
chained by the farther shore and two soldiers came down from the fort
and pushed across to him.
They wore the uniform of the Forty-sixth, and one had been a private
in his company; but they did not recognise him. And he spoke to them
in the Ojibway speech, which they could not understand.
From the edge of the woods Menehwehna watched the three as they
landed. They climbed the slope and passed into the fort.
CHAPTER XXI.
FORT AMITIE LEARNS ITS FATE.
That Spring, three British generals sat at the three gates of Canada,
waiting for the signal to enter and end the last agony of New France.
But the snows melted, the days lengthened, and still the signal did
not come; for the general by the sea gate was himself besieged.
Through the winter he and his small army sat patiently in the city
they had ruined. Conquerors in lands more southerly may bury their
dead with speed, rebuild captured walls, set up a pillar and statue
of Victory, and in a month or two, the green grass helping them,
forget all but the glory of the battle. But here in the north the
same hand arrests them and for six months petrifies the memorials of
their rage. Until the Spring dissolves it, the image of war lives
face to face with them, white, with frozen eyes, sparing them only
the colour of its wounds.
General Murray, like many a soldier in his army, had dreams of
emulating Wolfe's glory. But Wolfe had snatched victory out of the
shadow of coming winter; and, almost before Murray's army could cut
wood for fuel, the cold was upon them. For two months Quebec had
been pounded with shot and shell. Her churches and hospitals stood
roofless; hundreds of houses had been fired, vaults and storehouses
pillaged, doors and windows riddled everywhere. There was no digging
entrenchments in the frozen earth. Walls six feet thick had been
breached by artillery; and the loose stones, so cold they were, could
hardly be handled.
Among these ruins, on the frozen cliff over the frozen river, Murray
and his seven thousand men settled down to wear the winter through.
They were short of food, short of fuel. Frost-bite maimed them at
first; then scurvy, dysentery, fever, began to kill. They laid their
dead out on the snow, to be buried when spring should return and thaw
the earth; and by the end of April their dead numbered six hundred
and fifty. Yet they kept up their spirits. Early in November there
had been rumours that the French under Levis meant to march on the
city and retake it. In December deserters brought word that he was
on his way--that he would storm the city on the twenty-second, and
dine within the citadel on Christmas Day. In January news arrived
that he was preparing scaling-ladders and training his men in the use
of them. Still the days dragged by. The ice on the river began to
break up and swirl past the ramparts on the tides. The end of April
came, and with it a furious midnight storm, and out of the storm a
feeble cry--the voice of a half-dead Frenchman clinging to a floe of
ice far out on the river. He was rescued, placed in a hammock, and
carried up Mountain Street to the General's quarters; and Murray,
roused from sleep at three o'clock in the morning, listened to his
story. He was an artillery-sergeant of Levis's army; and that army,
twelve thousand strong, was close to the gates of Quebec.
The storm had fallen to a cold drizzle of rain when at dawn Murray's
troops issued from the St. Louis gate and dragged their guns out
through the slush of the St. Foy road. On the ground where Wolfe had
given battle, or hard by, they unlimbered in face of the enemy and
opened fire. Two hours later, outflanked by numbers, having lost a
third of their three thousand in the short fight, they fell back on
the battered walls they had mistrusted. For a few hours the fate of
Quebec hung on a hair. But the garrison could build now; and, while
Levis dragged up his guns from the river, the English worked like
demons. They had guns, at any rate, in plenty; and, while the French
dug and entrenched themselves on the ground they had won, daily the
breaches closed and the English fire grew hotter.
April gave place to May, and the artillery fire continued on the
heights; but, as it grew noisier it grew also less important, for now
the eyes of both commanders were fastened on the river. Two fleets
were racing for Quebec, and she would belong to the first to drop
anchor within her now navigable river.
Then came a day when, as Murray sat brooding by the fire in his
quarters in St. Louis Street, an officer ran in with the news of a
ship of war in the Basin, beating up towards the city. "Whatever she
is," said the General, "we will hoist our colours." Weather had
frayed out the halliards on the flagstaff over Cape Diamond, but a
sailor climbed the pole and lashed the British colours beneath the
truck. By this time men and officers in a mob had gathered on the
ramparts of the Chateau St. Louis, all straining their eyes at a
frigate fetching up close-hauled against the wind.
Her colours ran aloft; but they were bent, sailor-fashion, in a tight
bundle, ready to be broken out when they reached the top-gallant
masthead.
An officer, looking through a glass, cried out nervously that the
bundle was white. But this they knew without telling. Only--what
would the flag carry on its white ground? The red cross? or the
golden fleurs-de-lys?
The halliards shook; the folds flew broad to the wind; and, with a
gasp, men leaped on the ramparts--flung their hats in the air and
cheered--dropped, sobbing, on their knees.
It was the red cross of England.
They were cheering yet and shouting themselves hoarse when the
_Lowestoffe_ frigate dropped anchor and saluted with all her
twenty-four guns. On the heights the French guns answered
spitefully. Levis would not believe. He had brought his
artillery at length into position, and began to knock the defences
vigorously. He lingered until the battleship _Vanguard_ and the
frigate _Diane_ came sailing up into harbour; until the _Vanguard_,
pressing on with the _Lowestoffe_, took or burned the vessels which
had brought his artillery down from Montreal. Then, in the night, he
decamped, leaving his siege-train, baggage, and sick men behind him.
News of his retreat reached Murray at nightfall, and soon the English
guns were bowling round-shot after him in the dusk across the Plains
of Abraham; but by daybreak, when Murray pushed out after him, to
fall on his rear, he had hurried his columns out of reach.
Three months had passed since the flying of the signal from the
_Lowestoffe_, and now in the early days of August three British
armies were moving slowly upon Montreal, where Levis and Governor
Vaudreuil had drawn the main French forces together for a last
resistance.
Murray came up the river from Quebec with twenty-four hundred men, in
thirty-two vessels and a fleet of boats in company; followed by Lord
Rollo with thirteen hundred men drawn off from dismantled
Louisbourg. As the ships tacked up the river, with their floating
batteries ranged in line to protect the advance, bodies of French
troops followed them along the shore--regiments of white-coated
infantry and horsemen in blue jackets faced with scarlet.
Bourlamaque watched from the southern shore, Dumas from the northern.
But neither dared to attack; and day after day through the lovely
weather, past fields and settlements and woodlands, between banks
which narrowed until from deck one could listen to the song of birds
on either hand and catch the wafted scent of wild flowers, the
British wound their way to Isle Sainte-Therese below Montreal,
encamped, and waited for their comrades.
From the south came Haviland. He brought thirty-four hundred
regulars, provincials, and Indians from Crown Point on Lake
Champlain, and moved down the Richelieu, driving Bougainville before
him.
Last, descending from the west by the gate of the Great Lakes, came
the Commander in Chief, the cautious Amherst, with eighteen hundred
soldiers and Indians and over eight hundred bateaux and whale-boats.
He had gathered them at Oswego in July, and now in the second week of
August had crossed the lake to its outlet, threaded the channels of
the Thousand Islands, and was bearing down on the broad river towards
Fort Amitie.
And how did it stand with Fort Amitie?
Well, to begin with, the Commandant was thoroughly perplexed.
The British must be near; by latest reports they had reached the
Thousand Islands; even hours were becoming precious, and yet most
unaccountably the reinforcements had not arrived!
What could M. de Vaudreuil be dreaming of? Already the great Indian
leader, Saint-Luc de la Come, had reached Coteau du Lac with a strong
force of militia. Dominique Guyon had been sent down with an urgent
message of inquiry. But what had been La Corne's answer? "I know
not what M. de Vaudreuil intends. My business is to stay here and
watch the rapids."
"Now what can be the meaning of that?" the Commandant demanded of his
brother.
M. Etienne shook his head pensively. "_Rusticus expectat_ . . .
I should have supposed the rapids to stand in no danger."
"Had the Governor sent word to abandon the Fort, I might have
understood. It would have been the bitterest blow of my life--"
"Yes, yes, brother," M. Etienne murmured in sympathy.
"But to leave us here without a word! No; it is impossible.
They _must_ be on their way!"
In the strength of this confidence Dominique and Bateese had been
dispatched down the river again to meet the reinforcements and hurry
them forward.
Dominique and Bateese had been absent for a week now on this errand.
Still no relief-boats hove in sight, and the British were coming down
through the Thousand Islands.
Save in one respect the appearance of the Fort had not changed since
the evening of John a Cleeve's dismissal. The garrison cows still
graced along the river-bank, and in the clearing under the eastern
wall the Indian corn was ripe for harvest (M. Etienne suggested
reaping it; the labour, he urged, would soothe everyone's nerves).
Only on Sans Quartier's cabbage-patch the lunette now stood complete.
All the _habitants_ of Boisveyrac had been brought up to labour in
its erection, building it to the height of ten feet, with an abattis
of trees in front and a raised platform within for the riflemen.
Day after day the garrison manned it and burned powder in defence
against imaginary assaults, and by this time the Commandant and
Sergeant Bedard between them had discussed and provided against every
possible mode of attack.
Diane stood in the dawn on the _terre-plein_ of the river-wall.
The latest news of the British had arrived but a few hours since,
with a boatload of fugitives from the upstream mission-house of La
Galette, off which an armed brig lay moored with ten cannon and one
hundred men to check the advance of the flotilla. It could do no
more.
The fugitives included Father Launoy, and he had landed and begged
Diane to take his place in the crowded boat. For himself (he said)
he would stay and help to serve out ammunition to Fort Amitie--that
was, if the Commandant meant to resist.
"Do you suppose, then, that I would retire?" the Commandant asked
with indignation.
"It may be possible to do neither," suggested Father Launoy.
But this the Commandant could by no means understand. It seemed to
him that either he must be losing his wits or the whole of New
France, from M. de Vaudreuil down, was banded in a league of folly.
"Resist? Of course I shall resist! My men are few enough, Father;
but I beg you to dismiss the notion that Fort Amitie is garrisoned by
cowards."
"I will stay with you then," said the Jesuit. "I may be useful, in
many ways. But mademoiselle will take my place in the boat and
escape to Montreal."
"I also stay," answered Diane simply.
"Excuse me, but there is like to be serious work. They bring the
Iroquois with them, besides Indians from the West." Father Launoy
spoke as one reasoning with a child.
Diane drew a small pistol from her bodice. "I have thought of that,
you see."
"But M. de Noel--" He swung round upon the Commandant,
expostulating.
"In a few hours," said the Commandant, meeting his eyes with a smile,
"New France will have ceased to be. I have no authority to force my
child to endure what I cannot endure myself. She has claimed a
promise of me, and I have given it."
The priest stepped back a pace, wondering. Swiftly before him passed
a vision of the Intendant's palace at Quebec, with its women and riot
and rottenness. His hand went up to his eyes, and under the shade of
it he looked upon father and daughter--this pair of the old
_noblesse_, clean, comely, ready for the sacrifice. What had New
France done for these that they were cheerful to die for her?
She had doled them out poverty, and now, in the end, betrayal; she
had neglected her children for aliens, she had taken their revenues
to feed extortioners and wantons, and now in the supreme act of
treachery, herself falling with them, she turned too late to read in
their eyes a divine and damning love. There all the while she had
lived--the true New France, loyally trusted, innocently worshipped.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." . . .
Father Launoy lowered his gaze to the floor. He had looked and
learned why some nations fall and others worthily endure.
All that night the garrison had slept by their arms, until with the
first streak of day the drums called them out to their alarm-post.
Diane stood on the _terre-plein_ watching the sunrise. As yet the
river lay indistinct, a broad wan-coloured band of light stretching
away across the darkness. The outwork on the slope beneath her was a
formless shadow astir with smaller shadows equally formless.
She heard the tread of feet on the wooden platform, the clink of
side-arms and accoutrements, the soft thud of ramrods, the voice of
old Bedard, peevish and grumbling as usual.
Her face, turned to the revealing dawn, was like and yet curiously
unlike the face into which John a Cleeve had looked and taken his
dismissal; a woman's face now, serener than of old and thoughtfuller.
These two years had lengthened it to a perfect oval, adding a touch
of strength to the brow, a touch of decision to the chin; and, lest
these should overweight it, had removed from the eyes their clouded
trouble and left them clear to the depths. The elfin Diane, the
small woodland-haunting Indian, no longer looked forth from those
windows; no search might find her captive shadow behind them.
She had died young, or had faded away perhaps and escaped back to her
native forests.
But she is not all forgotten, this lost playmate. Some trick of
gesture reappears as Diane lifts her face suddenly towards the
flagstaff tower. The watchman there has spied something on the
river, and is shouting the news from the summit.
His arm points down the river. What has he seen? "Canoes!"--the
relief is at hand then! No: there is only one canoe. It comes
swiftly and yet the day overtakes and passes it, spreading a causeway
of light along which it shoots to the landing-quay.
Two men paddle it--Dominique and Bateese Guyon. Their faces are
haggard, their eyes glassy with want of sleep, their limbs so stiff
that they have to be helped ashore.
The Commandant steps forward. "What news, my children?" he asks.
His voice is studiously cheerful.
Dominique shakes his head.
"There is no relief, Monseigneur."
"You have met none, you mean?"
"None is coming, Monseigneur. We have heard it in Montreal."
CHAPTER XXII.
DOMINIQUE.
"Montreal?"
While they stood wondering, a dull wave of sound broke on their ears
from the westward, and another, and yet another--the booming of
cannon far up the river.
"That will be at La Galette," said the Commandant, answering the
question in Dominique's eyes. "Come up to your quarters, my
children, and get some sleep. We have work before us." He motioned
the others to fall back out of hearing while he and Dominique mounted
the slope together. "You had audience, then, of the Governor?"
he asked.
"He declined to see us, Monseigneur, and I do not blame him, since he
could not send us back telling you to fight. Doubtless it does not
become one in M. de Vaudreuil's position to advise the other thing--
aloud."
"I do not understand you. Why could not M. de Vaudreuil order me to
fight?"
Dominique stared at his master. "Why, Monseigneur,--seeing that he
sends no troops, it would be a queer message. He could not have the
face."
"Yet he must be intending to strike at the English coming from
Quebec?"
"They are already arrived and encamped at Isle Sainte-Therese below
the city, and another army has come down the Richelieu from the south
and joined them."
"It is clear as daylight. M. de Vaudreuil must be meaning to attack
them instantly, and therefore he cannot spare a detachment--You
follow me?"
"It may be so, Monseigneur," Dominique assented doubtfully.
"'May be so'! It must be so! But unhappily he does not know of this
third army descending upon him; or, rather, he does not know how near
it is. Yet, to win time for him, we must hold up this army at all
costs."
"It is I, Monseigneur, who am puzzled. You cannot be intending--"
"Eh? Speak it out, man!"
"You cannot be intending to await these English!"
"Name of thunder! What else do you suppose? Pray, my dear
Dominique, use your wits. We have to gain time, I tell you--time for
our friends below at Montreal."
"With twenty odd men against as many hundreds? Oh, pardon me,
Monseigneur, but I cannot bring my mind to understand you."
"But since it gains time--"
"They will not stay to snap up such a mouthful. They will sail past
your guns, laughing; unless--great God, Monseigneur! If in truth you
intend this folly, where is Mademoiselle Diane? I did not see her in
any of the boats from La Galette. Whither have you sent her, and in
whose charge?"
"She is yonder on the wall, looking down on us. She will stay; I
have given her my promise."
Dominique came to a halt, white as a ghost. His tongue touched his
dry lips. "Monseigneur!"--the cry broke from him, and he put out a
hand and caught his seigneur by the coat sleeve.
"What is the matter with the man?" The Commandant plucked his arm
away and stood back, outraged by this breach of decorum.
But Dominique, having found his voice, continued heedless. "She must
go! She _shall_ go! It is a wickedness you are doing--do you hear
me, Monseigneur?--a wickedness, a wickedness! But you shall not keep
her here; I will not allow it!"
"Are you stark mad, Dominique Guyon?"
"I will not allow it. I love her, I tell you--there, I have said it!
Listen again, Monseigneur, if you do not understand: I love her, I
love her--oh, get that into your head! I love her, and will not
allow it!"
"Certainly your brain is turned. Go to your quarters, sir; it must
be sleep you want. Yes, yes, my poor fellow, you are pale as a
corpse! Go, get some sleep, and when you wake we will forget all
this."
"Before God, Monseigneur, I am telling you the truth. I need no
sleep but the sleep of death, and that is like to come soon enough.
But since we were children I have loved your daughter, and in the
strength of that love I forbid you to kill her."
The Commandant swung round on his heel.
"Follow me, if you please."
He led the way to his orderly-room, seated himself at the table, and
so confronted the young man, who stood humbly enough, though with his
pale face twitching.
"Dominique Guyon, once in my life I made a great mistake; and that
was when, to save my poor son's honour, I borrowed money of one of my
_censitaires_. I perceive now what hopes you have nursed, feeding
them on my embarrassments. You saw me impoverished, brought low,
bereaved by God's will of my only son; you guessed that I lay awake
of nights, troubled by the thought of my daughter, who must inherit
poverty; and on these foundations you laid your schemes. You dreamed
of becoming a _gentilhomme_, of marrying my daughter, of sitting in
my chair at Boisveyrac and dealing justice among the villagers.
And a fine dream it seemed to you, eh?" He paused.
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