Fort Amity

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity

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Diane, seated in the boat and watching, saw him halt and point out
the escutcheons; saw him halt again in the gateway and spread out his
arms to indicate the solidity of the walls; could almost, reading his
gestures, hear the words they explained; and her cheeks burned with
shame.

"A fine estate!" said a voice in the next boat.

"Yes, indeed," answered Bateese at her elbow; "there is no Seigniory
to compare with Boisveyrac. And we will live to welcome you back to
it, mademoiselle. The English are no despoilers, they tell me."

She glanced at Dominique. He had filled a pipe, and, as he smoked,
his eyes followed her uncle's gestures placidly. Scorn of him, scorn
of herself, intolerable shame, rose in a flood together.

"If my uncle behaves like a _roturier_, it is because his mind is
gone. Shall _we_ spy on him and laugh?--ghosts of those who are
afraid to die!"

Father Launoy looked up from his breviary.

"Mademoiselle is unjust," said he quietly. "To my knowledge, those
servants of hers, whom she reproaches, have risked death and taken
wounds, in part for her sake."

Diane sat silent, gazing upon the river. Yes, she had been unjust,
and she knew it. Felicite had told her how the garrison had rushed
after Dominique to rescue her, and of the struggle in the stairway of
the tower. Dominique bore an ugly cut, half-healed yet, reaching
from his right eyebrow across the cheekbone--the gash of an Indian
knife. Bateese could steer with his left hand only; his right he
carried in a sling. And the two men lying at this moment by Father
Launoy's feet had taken their wounds for her sake. Unjust she had
been; bitterly unjust. How could she explain the secret of her
bitterness--that she despised herself?

Boats were crowding thick around them now, many of them half filled
with water. The crews, while they baled, had each a separate tale to
tell of their latest adventure; each, it seemed, had escaped
destruction by a hair's-breadth. The Cedars had been worse even than
the Long Saut. They laughed and boasted, wringing their clothes.
The nearest flung questions at Dominique, at Bateese. The Cascades,
they understood, were the worst in the whole chain of rapids, always
excepting the La Chine. But the La Chine were not to be attempted;
the army would land above them, at Isle Perrot perhaps, or at the
village near the falls, and cover the last nine or ten miles on foot.
But what of the Buisson? and of the Roches Fendues?

More than an hour passed in this clamour, and still the boats
continued to crowd around. The first-comers, having baled, were
looking to their accoutrements, testing the powder in their flasks,
repolishing the locks and barrels of their muskets. "To be sure La
Corne and his militiamen had disappeared, but there was still room
for a skirmish between this and Lake St. Louis; if he had posted
himself on the bank below, he might prove annoying. The rapids were
bad enough without the addition of being fired upon during the
descent, when a man had work enough to hold tight by the gunwale and
say his prayers. Was the General sending a force down to clear La
Corne out?"

"Diane!"

A crowd of soldiers had gathered on the bank, shutting out all view
of the Seigniory. Diane, turning at the sound of her uncle's voice,
saw the men make way, and caught her breath. He was not alone.
He came through the press triumphantly, dragging by the hand an
Indian--an Indian who hung back from the river's brink with eyes
averted, fastened on the ground--the man whom, of all men, she most
feared to meet.

"Diane, the General has been telling me--this honest fellow--we have
been most remiss--"

M. Etienne panted as he picked his steps down the bank. His face was
glowing.

"--He understands a little French, it seems. I have the General's
permission to give him a seat in our boat. He tells me he is averse
to being thanked, but that is nonsense. I insisted on his coming."

"You have thanked me once already, monsieur," urged John a Cleeve in
a voice as low as he could pitch it.

"But not sufficiently. You hear, Diane?--he speaks French! I was
confused at the time; I did not gather--"

She felt Dominique's eyes upon her. Was her face so white then?
He must not guess. . . . She held out her hand, commanding her voice
to speak easily, wondering the while at the sound of it.

"Welcome, my friend. My uncle is right; we have been remiss--"

Her voice trailed off, as her eyes fell on Father Launoy. He was
staring, not at her, but at the Indian; curiously at first, then with
dawning suspicion.

Involuntarily she glanced again towards Dominique. He, too, slowly
moved his gaze from her face and fastened it on the Indian.

He knew. . . . Father Launoy knew. . . . Oh, when would the boats
push off?

They pushed off and fell into their stations at length, amid almost
interminable shouting of orders and cross-shouting, pulling and
backing of oars. She had stolen one look at Bateese. . . . He did
not suspect . . . but, in the other boat, they knew.

Her uncle's voice ran on like a brook. She could not look up, for
fear of meeting her lover's eyes--yes, her lover's! She was reckless
now. They knew. She would deceive herself no longer. She was
base--base. He stood close, and in his presence she was glad--
fiercely, deliciously, desperately. She, betrayed in all her vows,
was glad. The current ran smoothly. If only, beyond the next ledge,
might lie annihilation!

The current ran with an oily smoothness. They were nearing the
Roches Fendues. Dominique's boat led.

A clear voice began to sing, high and loud, in a ringing tenor:

"Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre:
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine . . ."

At the first note John a Cleeve, glancing swiftly at Bateese, saw his
body stiffen suddenly with his hand on the tiller; saw his eyes
travel forward, seeking his brother's; saw his face whiten.
Dominique stood erect, gazing back, challenging. Beyond him John
caught a glimpse of Father Launoy looking up from his breviary; and
the priest's face, too, was white and fixed.

Voices in the boats behind began to curse loudly; for "Malbrouck" was
no popular air with the English. But Bateese took up the chant:

"Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre--
Ne sais quand reviendra!"

They were swinging past Bout de l'lsle. Already the keel under foot
was gathering way. From Bateese, who stood with eyes stiffened now
and inscrutable, John looked down upon Diane. She lifted her face
with a wan smile, but she, too, was listening to the challenge flung
back from the leading boat.

"Il reviendra-z a Paques . . ."

He flung one glance over his shoulder, and saw the channel dividing
ahead. Dominique was leaning over, pressing down the helm to
starboard. Over Dominique's arm Father Launoy stared rigidly.
Father Joly, as if aware of something amiss, had cast out both hands
and was grasping the gunwale. The boat, sucked into the roar of the
rapids, shot down the left channel--the channel of death.

"Il reviendra-z a Paques,
Ou--a la Trinite!"

The voice was lost in the roar of the falls, now drumming loud in
John's ears. He knew nothing of these rapids; but two channels lay
ahead and the choice between them. He leapt across M. Etienne, and
hurling Bateese aside, seized the tiller and thrust it hard over,
heading for the right.

Peering back through the spray as he bent he saw the helmsmen astern
staring--hesitating. They had but a second or two in which to
choose. He shouted and shouted again--in English. But the tumbling
waters roared high above his shouts.

He reached out and gripping Bateese by the collar, forced the tiller
into his hand. Useless now to look back to try to discover how many
boats were following!

Bateese, with a sob, crept back to the tiller and steered.

Not until the foot of the falls was reached did John know that the
herd had followed him. But forty-six boats had followed Dominique's
fatal lead: and of their crews ninety red-coated corpses tossed with
Dominique's and the two priests' and spun in the eddies beneath the
_Grand Bouilli_.

At dawn next morning the sentries in Montreal caught sight of them
drifting down past the walls, and carried the news. So New France
learnt that its hour was near.

CHAPTER XXVI.

DICK'S JUDGMENT.

Two days later Amherst landed his troops at La Chine, marched them
unopposed to Montreal, and encamped before the city on its western
side. Within the walls M. de Vaudreuil called a council of war.

Resistance was madness. From east, south, west, the French
commanders--Bourlamaque, Bougainville, Roquemaure, Dumas, La Corne--
had all fallen back, deserted by their militias. The provincial army
had melted down to two hundred men; the troops of the line numbered
scarce above two thousand. The city, crowded with non-combatant
refugees, held a bare fortnight's provisions. Its walls, built for
defence against Indians, could not stand against the guns which
Amherst was already dragging up from the river; its streets of wooden
houses awaited only the first shell to set them ablaze.

On the eastern side Murray was moving closer, to encamp for the
siege. To the south the tents of Haviland's army dotted the river
shore. Seventeen thousand British and British-Colonials ringed about
all that remained of New France, ready to end her by stroke of sword
if Vaudreuil would not by stroke of pen.

Next morning Bougainville sought Amherst's tent and presented a bulky
paper containing fifty-five articles of capitulation. Amherst read
them through, and came to the demand that the troops should march out
with arms, cannon, flags, and all the honours of war. "Inform the
Governor," he answered, "that the whole garrison of Montreal, and
all other French troops in Canada, must lay down their arms, and
undertake not to serve again in this war." Bougainville bore his
message, and returned in a little while to remonstrate; but in vain.
Then Levis tried his hand, sending his quartermaster-general to plead
against terms so humiliating--"terms," he wrote, "to which it will
not be possible for us to subscribe." Amherst replied curtly that
the terms were harsh, and he had made them so intentionally; they
marked his sense of the conduct of the French throughout the war in
exciting their Indian allies to atrocity and murder.

So Fort William Henry was avenged at length, in the humiliation of
gallant men; and human vengeance proved itself, perhaps, neither more
nor less clumsy than usual.

Vaudreuil tried to exact that the English should, on their side, pack
off their Indians. He represented that the townsfolk of Montreal
stood in terror of being massacred. Again Amherst refused.
"No Frenchman," said he, "surrendering under treaty has ever suffered
outrage from the Indians of our army." This was on the 7th of
September.

Early on the 8th Vaudreuil yielded and signed the capitulation.
Levis, in the name of the army, protested bitterly. "If the Marquis
de Vaudreuil, through political motives, believes himself obliged to
surrender the colony at once, we beg his leave to withdraw with the
troops of the line to Isle Sainte-Helene, to maintain there, on our
own behalf, the honour of the King's arms." To this, of course, the
Governor could not listen. Before the hour of surrender the French
regiments burnt their flags.

On the southern shore of the St. Lawrence, in the deepest recess of a
small curving bay, the afternoon sun fell through a screen of
bulrushes upon a birch canoe and a naked man seated in the shallows
beside it. In one hand he held out, level with his head, a lock of
hair, dark and long and matted, while the other sheared at it with a
razor. The razor flashed as he turned it this way and that against
the sun. On his shoulders and raised upper arm a few water-drops
glistened, for he had been swimming.

The severed locks fell into the stream that rippled beside him
through the bulrush stems. Some found a channel at once and were
swept out of sight, others were caught against the stems and trailed
out upon the current like queer water-flags. He laid the razor back
in the canoe and, rising cautiously, looked about for a patch of
clear, untroubled water to serve him for a mirror; but small eddies
and cross-currents dimpled the surface everywhere, and his search was
not a success. Next he fetched forth from the canoe an earthenware
pan with lye and charcoal, mixed a paste, and began to lather his
head briskly.

Twice he paused in his lathering. Before his shelter rolled the
great river, almost two miles broad; and clear across that distance,
from Montreal, came the sound of drums beating, bells ringing, men
shouting and cheering. In the Place d'Armes, over yonder, Amherst
was parading his troops to receive the formal surrender of the
Marquis de Vaudreuil. Murray and Haviland were there, leading their
brigades, with Gage and Fraser and Burton; Carleton and Haldfmand and
Howe--Howe of the Heights of Abraham, brother of him who fell in the
woods under Ticonderoga; the great Johnson of the Mohawk Valley, whom
the Iroquois obeyed; Rogers of the backwoods and his brothers,
bravest of the brave; Schuyler and Lyman: and over against them,
drinking the bitterest cup of their lives, Levis and Bourlamaque and
Bougainville, Dumas, Pouchot, and de la Corne--victors and
vanquished, all the surviving heroes of the five years' struggle face
to face in the city square.

_Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta_--the half of North
America was changing hands at this moment, and how a bare two miles'
distance diminished it all! What child's play it made of the
rattling drums! From his shelter John a Cleeve could see almost the
whole of the city's river front--all of it, indeed, but a furlong or
two at its western end; and the clean atmosphere showed up even the
loopholes pierced in the outer walls of the great Seminary.
Above the old-fashioned square bastions of the citadel a white flag
floated; and that this flag bore a red cross instead of the golden
lilies it had borne yesterday was the one and only sign, not easily
discerned, of a reversal in the fates of two nations. The steeples
and turrets of Montreal, the old windmill, the belfry and
high-pitched roof of Notre Dame de Bonsecours, the massed buildings
of the Seminary and the Hotel Dieu, the spire of the Jesuits, rose
against the green shaggy slopes of the mountain, and over the
mountain the sky paled tranquilly toward evening. Sky, mountain,
forests, mirrored belfry and broad rolling river--a permanent peace
seemed to rest on them all.

Half a mile down-stream, where Haviland's camp began, the men of the
nearest picket were playing chuck-farthing. Duty deprived them of
the spectacle in the Place d'Armes, and thus, as soldiers, they
solaced themselves. Through the bulrush stems John heard their
voices and laughter.

A canoe came drifting down the river, across the opening of the
little creek. A man sat in it with his paddle laid across his knees;
and as the stream bore him past, his eyes scanned the water inshore.
John recognised Bateese at once; but Bateese, after a glance, went by
unheeding. It was no living man he sought.

John finished his lathering at leisure, waded out beyond the rushes
and cast himself forward into deep water. He swam a few strokes,
ducked his head, dived, and swam on again; turned on his back and
floated, staring up into the sky; breasted the strong current and
swam against it, fighting it in sheer lightness of heart. Boyhood
came back to him with his cleansing, and a boyish memory--of an hour
between sunset and moonrise; of a Devonshire lane, where the harvest
wagons had left wisps of hay dangling from the honeysuckles; of a
triangular patch of turf at the end of the lane, and a whitewashed
Meeting-House with windows open, and through the windows a hymn
pouring forth upon the Sabbath twilight--

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all his sons away . . ."

An ever-rolling stream! It would bear him down, and the generals
yonder, victors and vanquished, drums and trumpets, hopes and
triumphs and despair--overwhelming, making equal the greater with the
less. But meanwhile, how good to be alive and a man, to swim and
breast it! So this river, if he fought it, would out-tire him, sweep
him away and roll on unheeding, majestic, careless of life and of
time. But for this moment he commanded it. Let his new life bring
what it might, this hour the river should be his servant, should
prepare and wash him clean, body and soul. He lifted his head,
shaking the water from his eyes, and the very volume of the lustral
flood contented him. He felt the strong current pressing against his
arms, and longed to embrace it all. And again, tickled by the
absurdity of his fancies, he lay on his back and laughed up at the
sky.

He swam to shore, flung himself down, and panted. Across the river,
by the landing-stage beneath the citadel, a band was playing down
Haviland's brigade to its boats; and one of the boats was bringing a
man whom John had great need to meet. When the sun had dried and
warmed him, he dressed at leisure, putting on a suit complete, with
striped shirt, socks, and cowhide boots purchased from a waterside
trader across the river and paid for with the last of his moneys
earned in the wilderness. The boots, though a world too wide,
cramped him painfully; and he walked up and down the bank for a
minute or two, to get accustomed to them, before strolling down to
meet the challenge of the pickets.

They were men of the 17th, and John inquired for their adjutant.
They pointed to the returning boats. The corporal in charge of the
picket, taking note of his clothes, asked if he belonged to Loring's
bateau-men, and John answered that he had come down with them through
the falls.

"A nice mess you made of it up yonder," was the corporal's comment.
"Two days we were on fatigue duty picking up the bodies you sent down
to us, and burying them. Only just now a fellow came along in a
canoe--a half-witted kind of Canadian. Said he was searching for his
brother."

"Yes," said John, "I saw him go by. I know the man."

"Hell of a lot of brother he's likely to find. We've tidied up the
whole length of the camp front. But there's corpses yet, a mile or
two below, they say. I sent him down to take his pick."

He put a question or two about the catastrophe. "Scandalous sort of
bungle," he pronounced it, being alike ignorant of the strength of
the rapids, and fain, as an honest soldier of Haviland's army, to
take a discrediting view of anything done by Amherst's. He waxed
very scornful indeed.

"Now _we_ was allowing you didn't find the stream fast enough, by the
way you kept us cooling our heels here." Perceiving that John was
indisposed to quarrel, he went wearily back to his chuck-farthing.

John sat down and waited, scanning the boats as they drew to shore.
Dick, whom he had left an ensign, was now adjutant of the 17th.
This meant, of course, that he had done creditably and made himself
felt. It meant certain promotion, too; Dick being the very man, as
adjutant, to lick a regiment into shape. John could not help
pondering a little, by contrast, on his own career, but without any
tinge of jealousy or envy. Dick owed nothing to luck; would honestly
earn or justify any favour that Fortune might grant.

The young adjutant, stepping ashore, swung round on his heel to call
an order to the crowding boats. His voice, albeit John thrilled to
the sound of it, was not the voice he remembered. It had hardened
somehow. And his face, when John caught sight of it in profile, was
not the face of a man on the sunny side of favour. It was manlier,
more resolute perhaps than of old, but it had put on reserve and
showed even some discontent in the set of the chin--a handsome face
yet, and youthful, and full of eager strength; but with a shadow on
it (thought John) that it had not worn in the days when Dick
Montgomery took his young ease in Sion and criticised men and
generals.

He was handling the disembarkation well. Clearly, too, his men
respected and liked him. But (thought John again) who could help
loving him? John had not bargained for the rush of tenderness that
shook him as he stood there unperceived, and left him trembling.
For a moment he longed only to escape; and then, mastered by an
impulse, scarce knowing what he did, stepped forward and touched his
cousin's arm.

"Dick!" he said softly.

Montgomery turned, cast a sharp glance at him, and fell back staring.

"_You!_" John saw the lips form the word, but no sound came.
He himself was watching Dick's eyes.

Yes, as incredulity passed, joy kindled in them, and the old
affection. For once in his life Richard Montgomery fairly broke
down.

"Jack!"--he stretched out both hands. "We heard--You were not among
the prisoners--" His voice stammered to a halt: his eyes brimmed.

"Come, and hear all about it. Oh, Dick, Dick, 'tis good to see your
face again!"

They linked arms, and Dick suffered John to lead him back to the
canoe among the rushes.

"My mother . . . ?" asked John, halting there by the brink.

"You haven't heard?" Dick turned his face and stared away across the
river.

"I have heard nothing. . . . Is she dead?"

Dick bent his head gravely. "A year since. . . . Your brother Philip
wrote the news to me. It was sudden: just a failure of the heart, he
said. She had known of the danger for years, but concealed it."

John seated himself on the bank, and gazed out over the river for a
minute or so in silence. "She believed me dead, of course?" he
began, but did not ask how the blow had affected her. Likely enough
Dick would not know. "Is there any more bad news?" he asked at
length.

"None. Your brother is well, and there's another child born.
The a Cleeves are not coming to an end just yet. No more questions,
Jack, until you've told me all about yourself!"

He settled down to listen, and John, propping himself on an elbow,
began his tale.

Twice or thrice during the narrative Dick furrowed his brows in
perplexity. When, however, John came to tell of his second year's
sojourn with the Ojibways, he sat up with a jerk and stared at his
cousin in a blank dismay.

"But, good Lord! You said just now that this fellow--this
Menehwehna--had promised to help you back to the army, as soon as
Spring came. Did he break his word, then?"

"No! he would have kept his word. But I didn't want to return."

"You didn't--want--to return!" Dick repeated the words slowly,
trying to grasp them. "Man alive, were you clean mad? Don't you see
what cards you held? Oh," he groaned, "you're not going on to tell
me that you threw them away--the chance of a life-time!"

"I don't see," answered John simply.

Dick sprang up and paced the bank with his hands clenched, half
lifted. "God! if such a chance had fallen to _me_! You had
intercepted two dispatches, one of which might have hurried the
French up from Montreal here to save Fort Frontenac. Wherever you
could, you bungled; but you rode on the full tide of luck. And even
when you tumbled in love with this girl--oh, you needn't deny it!--
even when you walked straight into the pitfall that ninety-nine men
in a hundred would have seen and avoided--your very folly pulled you
out of the mess! You escaped, by her grace, having foiled two
dispatches and possessed your self of knowledge that might have saved
Amherst from wasting ten minutes where he wasted two days. And now
you stare at me when I tell you that you held the chance of a
lifetime! Why, man, you could have asked what promotion you willed!
Some men have luck--!" Speech failed him and he cast himself down at
full length on the turf again. "Go on," he commanded grimly.

And John resumed, but in another, colder tone. The rest of the
story he told perfunctorily, omitting all mention of the fight
on the flagstaff tower and telling no more than was needful of the
last adventure of the rapids. Either he or Dick had changed.
Having begun, he persevered, but now without hope to make himself
understood.

"Did ever man have such luck?" grumbled Dick. "You have made
yourself a deserter. You did all you could to earn being shot; you
walked back, and again did all you could to leave Amherst no other
choice but to shoot you. And, again, you blunder into saving half an
army! Have you seen Amherst?"

"He sent for me at La Chine, to reward me."

"You told him all, of course?"

"I did--or almost all!"

"Then, since he has not shot you, I presume you are now restored to
the Forty-sixth, and become the just pride of the regiment?"

Dick's voice had become bitter with a bitterness at which John
wondered; but all his answer was:

"Look at these clothes. They will tell you if I am restored to the
Forty-sixth."

"So that was more than Amherst could bring himself to stomach?"

"On the contrary, he gave me my choice. But I am resigning my
commission."

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