Editor In Chief Rossiter Johnson - "The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12"

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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.

Fort Amity

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity




Yes--she had made no mistake! The spare halliards were shaking; in a
second or two--but why did they drag so interminably?--the flag would
rise again.

And it rose. Before her eyes, before the eyes of the parleyers in
the gateway and of the British watching from their batteries, it rose
above the edge of the battlements and climbed half-way up the mast,
or a little short of half-way. There it stopped--climbed a few feet
higher--and stopped again--climbed yet another foot--and slowly, very
slowly, fluttered downward.

With a dreadful surmise Diane started to run across the courtyard
toward the door at the foot of the tower; and even as she started a
yell went up from the rear of the fort, followed by a random volley
of musketry and a second yell--a true Iroquois war-whoop.

In the gateway Captain Muspratt called promptly to his bugler.
The first yell had told him what was happening; that the men of the
Forty-sixth, sent round for the feint attack, had found the rear wall
defenceless and were escalading, in ignorance of the parley at the
gate.

Quick as thought the bugler sounded the British recall, and its notes
were taken up by bugle after bugle down the slope. The Major
commanding the feint attack heard, comprehended after a fashion, and
checked his men; and the Forty-sixth, as a well-disciplined regiment,
dropped off its scaling ladders and came to heel.

But he could not check his Indian guides. Once already on their
progress down the river they had been baulked of their lust to kill;
and this restraint had liked them so little that already
three-fourths of Sir William Johnson's Iroquois were marching back to
their homes in dudgeon. These dozen braves would not be cheated a
second time if they could help it. Disregarding the shouts and the
bugle-calls they swarmed up the ladders, dropped within the fort, and
swept through the Commandant's quarters into the courtyard.

In the doorway at the foot of the flagstaff tower a woman's skirt
fluttered for an instant and was gone. They raced after it like a
pack of mad dogs, and with them ran one, an Ojibway, whom neither
hate nor lust, but a terrible fear, made fleeter than any.

Six of them reached the narrow doorway together, snarling and
jostling in their rage. The Ojibway broke through first and led the
way up the winding stairway, taking it three steps at a time, with
death behind him now--though of this he recked nothing--since he had
clubbed an Oneida senseless in the doorway, and these Indians,
Oneidas all, had from the start resented his joining the party of
guides.

Never a yard separated him from the musket-butt of the Indian who
panted next after him; but above, at the last turning of the stair
under a trap-door through which the sunlight poured, he caught again
the flutter of a woman's skirt. A ladder led through the hatchway,
and--almost grasping her frock--he sprang up after Diane, flung
himself on the leads, reached out, and clutching the hatch, slammed
it down on the foremost Oneida's head.

As he slipped the bolt--thank God it had a bolt!--he heard the man
drop from the ladder with a muffled thud. Then, safe for a moment,
he ran to the battlements and shouted down at the pitch of his voice.

"Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

His voice sounded passing strange to him. Nor for two years had it
been lifted to pronounce an English word.

Having sent down his call he ran back swiftly to the closed hatchway;
and as he knelt, pressing upon it with both hands, his eyes met
Diane's.

She stood by the flagstaff with a pistol in her hand. But her hand
hung stiffly by her hip as it had dropped at the sound of his shout,
and her eyes stared on him. At her feet lay the Commandant, his hand
still rigid upon the halliards, his breast covered by the folds of
the fallen flag, and behind her, as the bursting shell had killed and
huddled it, the body of old Sergeant Bedard.

Why she stood there, pistol in hand, he could partly guess.
How these two corpses came here he could not guess at all.
The Commandant, mortally wounded, had grasped at the falling flag,
and with a dying effort had bent it upon the spare halliards and
tried to hoist. It lay now, covering a wound which had torn his
chest open, coat and flesh, and laid his ribs bare.

But John a Cleeve, kneeling upon the hatchway, understood nothing of
this. What beat on his brain was the vision of a face below--the
face of the officer commanding--turned upwards in blank astonishment
at his shout of "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

The Indians were battering the hatch with their musket-butts.
The bolt shook. He pressed his weight down on the edge, keeping his
head well back to be out of the way of bullets. Luckily the timbers
of the hatch were stout, and moreover it had a leaden casing, but
this would avail nothing when the Indians began to fire at the
hinges--as they surely would.

He found himself saying aloud in French, "Run, mademoiselle!--I won't
answer for the hinges. Call again to the red-coats! They will
help."

But still, while blow after blow shook the hatch, Diane crouched
motionless, staring at him with wild eyes.

"They will help," he repeated with the air of one striving to speak
lucidly; then with a change of tone, "Give me your pistol, please."

She held it out obediently, at arm's length; but as he took it she
seemed to remember, and crept close.

"Non--non!" she whispered. "C'est a moi-que tu le dois, enfin!"

From the staircase--not close beneath the hatch, but, as it seemed,
far below their feet--came the muffled sound of shots, and between
the shots hoarse cries of rage.

"Courage!" whispered John. He could hear that men were grappling and
fighting down there, and supposed the Forty-sixth to be at hand.
He could not know that the parleyers at the gate, appalled for an
instant by the vision of Diane with a dozen savages in chase, had
rallied at a yell from Dominique Guyon, pelted after him to the
rescue, and were now at grips with the rearmost Oneidas--a locked and
heaving mass choking the narrow spirals of the stairway.

"Courage!" he whispered again, and pressing a knee on the edge of the
hatch reached out a hand to steady her. What mattered it if they
died now--together--he and she? "_Tu dois_"--she loved him; her lips
had betrayed her. "_Tu dois_"--the words sang through him,
thrilling, bathing him in bliss.

"O my love! O my love!"

The blows beat upward against the hatch and ceased. He sprang erect,
slid an arm around her and dragged her back--not a second too soon.
A gun exploded against the hinges at their feet, blowing one loose.
John saw the crevice gaping and the muzzle of a gun pushed through to
prise it open. He leaped upon the hatch, pistol in hand.

"Forty-sixth! Forty-sixth!"

What was that? Through the open crevice a British cheer answered
him. The man levering against his weight lost hold of the gun,
leaving it jammed. John heard the slide and thud of his fall.

"Hallo!" hailed a cheerful voice from the foot of the ladder.
"You there!--open the trap-way and show us some light!"

John knelt, slipped back the bolt, and turned to Diane. She had
fallen on her knees--but what had happened to her? She was cowering
before the joy in his face, shrinking away from him and yet
beseeching.

"Le pistolet--donne-moi le pistolet!"--her voice hissed on the word,
her eyes petitioned him desperately. "Ah, de grace! tu n'a pas le
droit--"

He understood. With a passing bitter laugh he turned from her
entreaties and hurled the pistol across the battlements into air.
A hand flung open the hatch. A British officer--Etherington, Major
of the Forty-sixth--pushed his head and shoulders through he opening
and stared across the leads, panting, with triumphant jolly face.



CHAPTER XXIV.


THE FORT SURRENDERS.

The red-coats, who had forced their way up the tower by weight of
numbers and at the point of the bayonet, were now ordered to face
about and clear the stairway; which they did, driving the mixed
rabble of Canadians and Indians down before them, and collecting the
dead and wounded as they went. Five of the Oneidas had been
bayoneted or trampled to death in the struggle; two of the garrison
would never fight again, and scarcely a man had escaped cuts or
bruises.

But Diane, as she followed her father's body down the stairs, knew
nothing of this. The dead and wounded had been removed. The narrow
lancet windows let in a faint light, enough to reveal some ugly
stains and splashes on the walls; but she walked with fixed unseeing
eyes. Once only on the way down her foot slid on the edge of a
slippery step, and she shivered.

In the sunlight outside the doorway a group of men, mauled and
sullen, some wearing bandages, others with blood yet trickling down
their faces, stood listening to an altercation between M. Etienne and
a couple of spick-and-span British officers. As their Commandant's
body came through the doorway they drew together with a growl.
Love was in that sound, and sorrow, and helpless rage. One or two
broke into sobs.

The British officers--one of them was the General himself, the other
his messenger, Captain Muspratt--bared their heads. M. Etienne,
checked in the midst of an harangue, stepped to Diane and took her
hand tenderly.

She gazed slowly around on the group of battered men. There was no
reproach in her look--Had she not failed as miserably as they?--and
yet it held a word of injustice. She could not know that for her
sake they carried these wounds. And Dominique Guyon, the one man who
could have answered her thoughts, stared savagely at the ground,
offering no defence.

"Dominique Guyon," commanded M. Etienne, "four of you will relieve
these _messieurs_ of their burden. Carry your master to the chapel,
where you will find Father Launoy and Father Joly."

"But pardon me, monsieur," interposed Amherst politely, "my soldiers
will be proud to bear so gallant a foe."

"I thank you "--M. Etienne's bow was stiff and obstinate--"but I
assert again that I still command this fortress, and the bearers
shall be of my choosing."

Diane laid a hand on her uncle's arm. "He is dead," said she.
"What matters it?" She did not understand this dispute. "Perhaps if
I promise M. le General that these men shall return to him when they
have laid my father in the chapel--"

The General--a tall, lean, horse-faced man with a shrewd and not
unkindly eye--yielded the point at once. "Willingly, mademoiselle,
and with all the respect an enemy may pay to your sorrow."

He ordered the men to give place to the new bearers.

In the chapel Diane sank on her knees, but not to pray--rather to
escape the consolations of the two priests and be alone with her
thoughts. And her thoughts were not of her father. The stroke had
fallen; but not yet could she feel the pain. He was happy; he alone
of them all had kept his quiet vow, and died disdaining defeat;
whereas she--ah, there lay the terrible thought!--she had not merely
failed, had not been overpowered. In the crisis, beside her father's
corpse, she had played the traitress to her resolve.

The two priests moved about the body, arranging it, fetching
trestles, draperies, and candles for the _lit de parade_, always with
stealthy glances at the bowed figure in the shadow just within the
door. But she knelt on, nor lifted her face.

In the sunlit courtyard without the two commanders were still
disputing. M. Etienne flatly refused to yield up his sword,
maintaining that he had never surrendered, had agreed to no terms of
capitulation; that the redcoats had swarmed over his walls in the
temporary absence of their defenders, gathered at the gateway to
parley under a flag of truce, and should be drawn off at once.

The mischief was, he could not be gainsaid. Major Etherington
explained--at first in English, to his General, and again, at his
General's request, in the best French he could command, for the
benefit of all, that he had indeed heard the recall blown, and had
with difficulty drawn off his men from the scaling-ladders,
persuading them (as he himself was persuaded) that the fort had
surrendered. He knew nothing of the white flag at the gateway, but
had formed his conclusions from the bugle-calls and the bare
flagstaff above the tower.

"Nevertheless, we had not capitulated," persisted M. Etienne.

The Major continued that, albeit he had tried his best, the Indians
were not to be restrained. They had poured into the fort, and,
although he had obeyed the bugles and kept his men back, it had cost
him grave misgivings. But when the Ojibway called down so urgently
from the summit of the tower, he had risked disobedience, hoping to
prevent the massacre which he knew to be afoot. He appealed to his
General to approve, or at least condone, this breach of orders.
For undoubtedly massacre had been prevented. Witness the crowd he
had found jammed in the stairway, and fighting ferociously.
Witness the scene that had met him at the head of the stairs.
Here he swung round upon John and beckoned him to stand out from the
listening group of red-coats.

"It can be proved, sir," he went on, addressing M. Etienne, "that the
lady--your niece, is she not?--owes her life, and more than her life
perhaps, to this savage. I claim only that, answering his call, I
led my men with all possible speed to the rescue. Up there on the
leads I found your brother lying dead, with a sergeant dead beside
him; and their wounds again will prove to you that they had perished
by the bursting of a shell. But this man alone stood on the hatchway
and held it against a dozen Iroquois, as your niece will testify.
What you suppose yourself to owe him, I won't pretend to say; but I
tell you--and I tell you, General--that cleaner pluck I never saw in
my life."

John, the soldiers pushing him forward, stood out with bent head.
He prayed that there might be no Ojibway interpreter at hand; he knew
of none in the fort but Father Launoy, now busy in the chapel laying
out the Commandant's body. Of all the spectators there was but one--
the General himself--who had not known him either as Ensign John a
Cleeve or as the wounded sergeant from Ticonderoga. He had met
Captain Muspratt at Albany, and remembered him well on the march up
the Hudson to Lake George. With Major Etherington he had marched,
messed, played at cards, and lived in close comradeship for months
together--only two years ago! It was not before their eyes that he
hung his head, but before the thought of two eyes that in the chapel
yonder were covered by the hands of a kneeling girl.

M. Etienne stepped forward and took his hand.

"I thank you, my friend--if you can understand my thanks."

Dominique Guyon, returning from the chapel, saw only an Indian
stepping back upon the ranks of the red-coats, who clapped him on the
shoulder for a good fellow; and Dominique paid him no more attention,
being occupied with M. Etienne's next words.

"Nevertheless," said M. Etienne, turning upon Amherst, "my duty to
his Majesty obliges me to insist that I have not capitulated; and
your troops, sir, though they have done me this service, must be at
once withdrawn."

And clearly, by all the rules of war, M. Etienne had the right on his
side. Amherst shrugged his shoulders, frowning and yet forced to
smile--the fix was so entirely absurd. As discipline went in these
North American campaigns, he commanded a well-disciplined army; but
numbers of provincials and bateau-men had filtered in through the
breaches almost unobserved during the parley, and were now strolling
about the fortifications like a crowd of inquisitive tourists.
He ordered Major Etherington to clear them out, and essayed once more
to reason with the enemy.

"You do not seriously urge me, monsieur, to withdraw my men and renew
the bombardment?"

"That is precisely what I require of you."

"But--good heavens, my dear sir!--look at the state of your walls!"
He waved a hand towards the defences.

"I see them; but _you_, sir, as a gentleman, should have no eyes for
their condition--on this side."

The General arched his eyebrows and glanced from M. Etienne to the
Canadians; he did not for a moment mean to appeal to them, but his
glance said involuntarily, "A pretty madman you have for commander!"

And in fact they were already murmuring. What nonsense was this of
M. Etienne's? The fort had fallen, as any man with eyes could see.
Their Commandant was dead. They had fought to gain time? Well, they
had succeeded, and won compliments even from their enemy.

Corporal Sans Quartier spoke up. "With all respect, M. le Capitaine,
if we fight again some of us would like to know what we are fighting
for."

M. Etienne swung round upon him.

"Tais-toi, poltron!"

A murmur answered him; and looking along the line of faces he read
sympathy, respect, even a little shame, but nowhere the response he
sought.

Nor did he reproach them. Bitter reproaches indeed shook his lips,
but trembled there and died unuttered. For five--maybe ten--long
seconds he gazed, and so turned towards the General.

"Achevez, monsieur! . . . Je vous demande pardon si vous me trouvez
un peu pointilleux." His voice shook; he unbuckled his sword, held
it for a moment between his hands as if hesitating, then offered it
to Amherst with the ghost of a bitter smile. "Cela ne vaut pas--sauf
a moi--la peine de le casser . . ."

He bowed, and would have passed on towards the chapel. Amherst
gently detained him.

"I spare you my compliments, sir, and my condolence; they would be
idly offered to a brave man at such a moment. Forgive me, though,
that I cannot spare to consult you on my own affairs. Time presses
with us. You have, as I am told, good pilots here who know the
rapids between this and Montreal, and I must beg to have them pointed
out to me."

M. Etienne paused. "The best pilots, sir, are Dominique Guyon there,
and his brother Bateese. But you will find that most of these men
know the river tolerably well."

"And the rest of your garrison? Your pardon, again, but I must hold
you responsible, to deliver up _all_ your men within the Fort."

"I do not understand . . . This, sir, is all the garrison of Fort
Amitie."

Amherst stared at the nineteen or twenty hurt and dishevelled men
ranged against the tower wall, then back into a face impossible to
associate with untruth.

"M. le Capitaine," said he very slowly, "if with these men you have
made a laughing-stock of me for two days and a half, why then I owe
you a grudge. But something else I owe, and must repay at once.
Be so good as to receive back a sword, sir, of which I am all
unworthy to deprive you."

But as he proffered it, M. Etienne put up both hands to thrust the
gift away, then covered his face with them.

"Not now, monsieur--not now! To-morrow perhaps . . . but not now, or
I may break it indeed!"

Still with his face covered, he tottered off towards the chapel.



CHAPTER XXV.


THE RAPIDS.

They had run the Galops rapids, Point Iroquois, Point Cardinal, the
Rapide Plat, without disaster though not without heavy toil. The
fury of the falls far exceeded Amherst's expectations, but he
believed that he had seen the worst, and he blessed the pilotage of
Dominique and Bateese Guyon.

Here and there the heavier bateaux carrying the guns would be warped
or pushed and steadied along shore in the shallow water under the
bank, by gangs, to avoid some peril over which the whaleboats rode
easily; and this not only delayed the flotilla but accounted for the
loss of a few men caught at unawares by the edge of the current,
swept off their legs, and drowned.

On the first day of September they ran the Long Saut and floated
across the still basin of Lake St. Francis. At the foot of the lake
the General landed a company or two of riflemen to dislodge La
Corne's militia; but La Corne was already falling back upon the lower
rapids, and, as it turned out, this redoubtable partisan gave no
trouble at all.

They reached and passed Coteau du Lac on the 3rd.

Dominique and Bateese steered the two leading whaleboats, setting the
course for the rest as they had set it all the way down from Fort
Amitie. By M. Etienne's request, he and his niece and the few
disabled prisoners from the fort travelled in these two boats under a
small guard. It appeared that the poor gentleman's wits were shaken;
he took an innocent pride now in the skill of the two brothers, his
family's _censitaires_, and throughout the long days he discoursed on
it wearisomely. The siege--his brother's death--Fort Amitie itself
and his two years and more of residence there--seemed to have faded
from his mind. He spoke of Boisveyrac as though he had left it but a
few hours since.

"And the General," said he to Diane, "will be interested in seeing
the Seigniory."

"A sad sight, monsieur!" put in Bateese, overhearing him.
(Just before embarking, M. Etienne, Diane and Felicite had been
assigned to Bateese's boat, while Father Launoy, Father Joly and two
wounded prisoners travelled in Dominique's.) "A sight to break the
heart! We passed it, Dominique and I, on our way to and from
Montreal. Figure to yourself that the corn was standing already
over-ripe, and it will be standing yet, though we are in September!"

"The General will make allowances," answered M. Etienne with grave
simplicity. "He will understand that we have had no time for
harvesting of late. Another year--"

Diane shivered. And yet--was it not better to dote thus, needing no
pity, happy as a child, than to live sane and feel the torture?
Better perhaps, but best and blessedest to escape the choice as her
father had escaped it! As the river bore her nearer to Boisveyrac
she saw his tall figure pacing the familiar shores, pausing to con
the acres that were his and had been his father's and his father's
father's. She saw and understood that smile of his which had so
often puzzled her as a child when she had peered up into his face
under its broad-brimmed hat and noted his eyes as they rested on the
fields, the clearings, the forest; noted his cheeks reddened with
open-air living; his firm lips touched with pride--the pride of a
king treading his undisputed ground. In those days she and Armand
had been something of an enigma to their father, and he to them;
their vision tinged and clouded, perhaps, by a drop or two of dusky
Indian blood. But now he had suddenly become intelligible to her, an
heroic figure, wonderfully simple. She let her memory call up
picture after picture of him--as he sat in the great parlour hearing
"cases," dispensing fatherly justice; as he stood up at a marriage
feast to drink the bride's and bridegroom's health and commend their
example to all the young _habitants_; as he patted the heads of the
children trooping to their first communion; as he welcomed his
_censitaires_ on St. Martin's day, when they poured in with their
rents--wheat, eggs and poultry--the poultry all alive, heels tied,
heads down, throats distended and squalling--until the barnyard
became Babel, and still he went about pinching the fowls' breasts,
running the corn through his hands, dispensing a word of praise here,
a prescription there, and kindness everywhere. Now bad harvests
would vex him no more, nor the fate of his familiar fields.
In the wreck of all he had lived for, his life had stood up clear for
a moment, complete in itself and vindicated. And the moment which
had revealed had also ended it; he lay now beneath the chapel
pavement at Fort Amitie, indifferently awaiting judgment, his sword
by his side.

They ran the Cedars and, taking breath on the smooth waters below,
steered for the shore where the towers and tall chimneys of
Boisveyrac crept into view, and the long facade of the Seigniory,
slowly unfolding itself from the forest.

Here the leading boats were brought to land while the flotilla
collected itself for the next descent. A boat had capsized and
drowned its crew in the Long Saut, and Amherst had learnt the lesson
of that accident and thenceforward allowed no straggling. Constant
to his rule, too, of leaving no post in his rear until satisfied that
it was harmless, he proposed to inspect the Seigniory, and sent a
message desiring M. Etienne's company--and Mademoiselle's, if to
grant this favour would not distress her.

Diane prayed to be excused; but M. Etienne accepted with alacrity.
He had saluted the first glimpse of the homestead with a glad cry,
eager as a schoolboy returning for his holidays. He met the General
on the slope with a gush of apologies. 'He must overlook the unkempt
condition of the fields. . . . Boisveyrac was not wont to make so
poor a show . . . the estate, in fact, though not rich, had always
been well kept up . . . the stonework was noted throughout New
France, and every inch of timber (would M. le General observe?)
thoroughly well seasoned. . . . Yes, those were the arms above the
entrance--Noel quartering Tilly--two of the oldest families in the
province . . . If M. le General took an interest in heraldry, these
other quarterings were worth perusal . . . de Repentigny,
de Contrecoeur, Traversy, St. Ours, de Valrennes, de la Mothe,
d'Ailleboust . . . and the windmill would repay an ascent . . .
the view from its summit was magnificent. . . .'

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