Fort Amity
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Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity
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How many men might be seated or lying in the fore part of the canoe
John could not tell, being unable to turn his head. Once or twice a
guttural voice there growled a word of comfort to the dying lad, in
Gaelic or in broken English. And always the bowman sang high and
clear, setting the chorus for the attendant boats, and from the
chorus passing without a break into the solo. "En roulant ma boule"
followed "Fringue sur l'aviron "; and from that the voice slid into a
little love-chant, tender and delicate:
"A la claire fontaine
M'en allant promener,
J'ai trouve l'eau si belle
Que je m'y suis baigne.
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime,
Jamais je ne t'oublierai."
"II y a longtemps que je t'aime," broke in the chorus, the wide lake
modulating the music as water only can. John remembered the abattis
and all its slaughter, and marvelled what manner of men they were
who, fresh from it, could put their hearts into such a song.
"Et patati, et patata!" rapped in the big sergeant. "For God's sake,
Chameau, what kind of milk is this to turn a man's stomach?"
The chorus drowned his growls, and the bowman continued:
"Sur la plus haute branche
Le rossignol chantait,
Chante, rossignol, chante,
Toi qui as le coeur gai . . .
Chante, rossignol, chante,
Toi qui as le coeur gai;
Tu as le coeur a rire,
Moi je l'ai--t a pleurer. . . ."
"Gr-r-r--" As the song ended, the sergeant spat contemptuously over
the gunwale. "La-la-la, rossignol! et la-la-la, rosier!" he
mimicked. "We are not _rosieres_, my friend."
"The song is true Canayan, m'sieur, and your comrades appear to like
it."
"Par exemple! Listen, Monsieur Chameau, to something more in their
line." He inflated his huge lungs and burst into a ditty of his own:
"C'est dans la ville de Bordeaux
Qu'est arrive trois beaux vaissaux--
Qu'est arrive trois beaux vaissaux:
Les matelots qui sont dedans,
Vrai Dieu, sont de jolis galants."
The man had a rich baritone voice, not comparable indeed with the
bowman's tenor, yet not without quality; but he used it affectedly,
and sang with a simper on his face. His face, brick red in hue, was
handsome in its florid way; but John, watching the simper, found it
detestable.
"C'est une dame de Bordeaux
Qu'est amoureuse d'un matelot--"
Here he paused, and a few soldiers took up the refrain
half-heartedly:
"--Va, ma servante, va moi chercher
Un matelot pour m'amuser."
The song from this point became indecent, and set the men in the
nearer boats laughing. At its close a few clapped their hands.
But it was not a success, and the brick red darkened on the singer's
face; darkened almost to purple when a voice in the distance took up
the air and returned it mockingly, caricaturing a _roulade_ to the
life with the help of one or two ridiculous gracenotes: at which the
soldiers laughed again.
"I think, m'sieur," suggested the bowman politely, "they do not know
it very well, or they would doubtless have been heartier."
But the sergeant had heaved himself up with a curse and a lurch which
sent the canoe rocking, and was scanning the boats for the fellow who
had dared to insult him.
"How the devil can a man sing while that dog keeps barking!" he
growled, and let out a kick at the limp legs of the young Highlander.
Another growl answered. It came from the wounded prisoner behind
John--the man who had been muttering in Gaelic.
"It is a coward you are, big man. Go on singing your sculduddery,
and let the lad die quiet!"
The sergeant scowled, not understanding. John, whose blood was up,
obligingly translated the reproof into French. "He says--and I
also--that you are a cowardly bully; and we implore you to sing in
tune, another time. Par pitie, monsieur, ne scalpez-vous pas les
demi-morts!"
The shaft bit, as he had intended, and the man's vanity positively
foamed upon it. "Dog of a _ros-bif_, congratulate yourself that you
are half dead, or I would whip you again as we whipped you yesterday,
and as my regiment is even now again whipping your compatriots."
He jerked a thumb towards the south where, far up the lake, a pale
saffron glow spread itself upon the twilight.
"The English are burning your fort, maybe," John suggested amiably.
"They are burning the mill, more like--or their boats. But after
such a defeat, who cares?"
"If our general had only used his artillery--"
"Eh, what is that you're singing? _Oui-da_, if your general had only
used his artillery? My little friend, that's a fine battle--that
battle of 'If.' It is always won, too--only it has the misfortune
never to be fought. So, so: and a grand battle it is too, for
reputations. '_If_ the guns had only arrived '; and '_if_ the
brigadier Chose had brought up the reserves as ordered'; and '_if_
the right had extended itself, and that devil of a left had not
straggled'--why then we should all be heroes, we _ros-bifs_.
Whereas we came on four to one, and we were beaten; and we are
being carried north to Montreal and our general is running south from
an army one-third of his size and burning fireworks on his way.
And at Albany the ladies will take your standards and stitch '_If_'
on them in gold letters a foot long. Eh, but it was a glorious
fight--faith of Sergeant Barboux!"
And Sergeant Barboux, having set his vanity on its legs again, pulled
out his pipe and skin of tobacco.
"Hola, M. le Chameau!" he called; "the gentleman desires better music
than mine. Sing for him 'Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre'!"
M. le Chameau lifted his voice obediently; and thereupon John
recognised the note and knew to whose singing he had lain awake in
the woods so far behind and (it seemed) those ages ago.
He had been young then, and all possibilities of glory lay beyond the
horizons to which he was voyaging. Darkness had closed down on them,
but the beat of the paddles drove him forward. He stared up at the
peering stars and tried to bethink him that they looked down on the
same world that he had known--on Albany--Halifax--perhaps even on
Cleeve Court in Devonshire. The bowman's voice, ahead in the
darkness, kept time with the paddles:
"Il reviendra-z; a Paques--
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!
Il reviendra-z a Paques,
Ou--a la Trinite!"
Yes, the question was of returning, now; a day had made that
difference. Yet why should he wish to return? Of what worth would
his return be? For weeks, for months, he had been living in a life
ahead, towards which these paddles were faithfully guiding him; and
if the hope had died out of it, and all the colour, what better lay
behind that he should seek back to it?--a mother, who had shown him
little love; a brother, who coldly considered him a fool; nearer, but
only a little nearer--for already the leagues between seemed
endless--a few friends, a few messmates . . .
His ribs hurt him intolerably; and his wrist, too, was painful.
Yet his wounds troubled him with no thought of death. On the
contrary, he felt quite sure of recovering and living on, and on, on,
on--in those unknown regions ahead . . .
"La Trinite se passe--
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!
La Trinite se passe--
Malbrouck ne revient pas."
What were they like, those regions ahead? For he was young--less
than twenty--and a life almost as long as an ordinary man's might lie
before him yonder. He remembered an old discussion with a seminary
priest at Douai, on Nicodemus's visit by night and his question,
"How can a man be born when he is old?" . . . and all his thoughts
harked back to the Church he had left--that Church so Catholic, so
far-reaching, so secure of herself in all climes and amid all nations
of men. There were Jesuits, he knew, up yonder, beyond the rivers,
beyond the forests. He would find that Church there, steadfast as
these stars and, alone with them, bridging all this long gulf.
In his momentary weakness the repose She offered came on him as a
temptation. Had he but anchored himself upon her, all these leagues
had been as nothing. But he had cut himself adrift; and now the
world, too, had cut him off, and where was he with his doubts? . . .
Or was She following now and whispering, "Poor fool, you thought
yourself strong, and I granted you a short licence; but I have
followed, as I can follow everywhere, unseen, knowing the hour when
you must repent and want me; and lo! my lap is open. Come, let its
folds wrap you, and at once there is no more trouble; for within them
time and distance are not, and all this voyage shall be as a dream."
No; he put the temptation from him. For it was a sensual temptation
after all, surprising him in anguish and exhaustion and bribing with
promise of repose. He craved after it, but set his teeth. "Yes, you
are right, so far. The future has gone from me, and I have no hopes.
But it seems I have to live, and I am a man. My doubts are my
doubts, and this is no fair moment to abandon them. What I must
suffer, I will try to suffer. . . ."
The bowman had lit a lantern in the bows and passed back the resinous
brand to an Indian seated forward, who in turn handed it back over
John's head toward Sergeant Barboux, but, seeing that he dozed,
crawled aft over the wounded men and set it to the wick of a second
lantern rigged on a stick astern. As the wick took fire, the Indian,
who had been steering hitherto hour after hour, grunted out a
syllable or two and handed his comrade the paddle. The pair changed
places, and the ex-steersman--who seemed the elder by many years--
crept cautiously forward; the lantern-light, as he passed it, falling
warm on his scarlet trowsers and drawing fiery twinkles from his belt
and silver arm-ring.
With a guttural whisper he crouched over John, so low that his body
blotted out the lantern, the stars, the whole dim arch of the
heavens. Was this murder? John shut his teeth. If this were to be
the end, let it come now and be done with; he would not cry out.
The Highland lad had ceased his coughing and lay unconscious, panting
out the last of his life more and more feebly. The elder Highlander
moaned from time to time in his sleep, but had not stirred for some
while. Forward the bowman's paddle still beat time like a clock, and
away in the darkness other paddles answered it.
A hand was groping with the bandages about John's chest and loosening
them gently until his wound felt the edge of the night wind. All his
muscles stiffened to meet the coming stroke. . . .
The Indian grunted and withdrew his hand. A moment, and John felt it
laid on the wound again, with a touch which charmed away pain and the
wind's chill together--a touch of smooth ointment.
Do what he would, a sob shook the lad from head to foot.
"Thanks, brother!" he whispered in French. The Indian did not
answer, but replaced and drew close the bandage with rapid hands, and
so with another grunt crawled forward, moving like a shadow, scarcely
touching the wounded men as he went.
For a while John lay awake, gazing up into the stars. His pain had
gone, and he felt infinitely restful. The vast heavens were a
protection now, a shield flung over his helplessness. He had found a
friend.
Why?
That he could not tell. But he had found a friend, and could sleep.
In his dreams he heard a splash. The young Highlander had died in
the night, and Sergeant Barboux and the Indian lifted and dropped the
body overboard.
But John a Cleeve slept on; and still northward through the night,
down the long reaches of the lake, the canoe held her way.
CHAPTER V.
CONTAINS THE APOLOGUE OF MANABOZHO'S TOE.
They had threaded their course through the many islets at the foot of
the lake, and were speeding down the headwaters of the Richelieu.
The forests had closed in upon them, shutting out the mountains.
The convoy--officered for the most part by Canadian militiamen with
but a sprinkling of regulars such as Sergeant Barboux--soon began to
straggle. The prisoners were to be delivered at Montreal. Montcalm
had dispatched them thither, on short rations, for the simple reason
that Fort Carillon held scarcely food enough to support his own army;
but he could detach very few of his efficients for escort, and, for
the rest, it did not certainly appear who was in command. Barboux,
for example, was frankly insubordinate, and declared a dozen times a
day that it did not become gentlemen of the Bearn and Royal Roussillon
to take their orders from any _coureur de bois_ who might choose to
call himself Major.
Consequently the convoy soon straggled at will, the boatmen labouring
if the fancy took them, or resting their paddles across their thighs
and letting their canoes drift on the current. Now and again they
met a train of bateaux labouring up with reinforcements, that had
heard of the victory from the leading boats and hurrahed as they
passed, or shouted questions which Barboux answered as a conscious
hero of the fight and with no false modesty. But for hour after hour
John lived alone with his own boat's company and the interminable
procession of the woods.
They descended to the river, these woods, and overhung it--each bank
a mute monotonous screen of foliage, unbroken by glade or clearing;
pine and spruce and hemlock, maple and alder; piled plumes of green,
motionless, brooding, through which no sunrays broke, though here and
there a silver birch drew a shaft of light upon their sombre
background. Here were no English woodlands, no stretches of pale
green turf, no vistas opening beneath flattened boughs, with blue
distant hills and perhaps a group of antlers topping the bracken.
The wild life of these forests crawled among thickets or lurked in
sinister shadows. No bird poured out its heart in them; no lark
soared out of them, breasting heaven. At rare intervals a note fell
on the ear--the scream of hawk or eagle, the bitter cackling laugh of
blue jay or woodpecker, the loon's ghostly cry--solitary notes, and
unhappy, as though wrung by pain out of the choking silence; or away
on the hillside a grouse began drumming, or a duck went whirring down
the long waterway until the sound sank and was overtaken again by the
river's slow murmur.
When night had hushed down these noises, the forest would be silent
for an hour or two, and then awake more horribly with the howling of
wolves. John slept little of nights; not on account of the wolves,
but because the mosquitoes allowed him no peace. (They were torture
to a wounded man; but he declared afterwards that they cured his
wounded arm willynilly, for they forced him to keep it active under
pain of being eaten alive.) By day he dozed, lulled by the eternal
woods, the eternal dazzle on the water, the eternal mutter of the
flood, the paddle-strokes, M. le Chameau's singing.
They were now six in the canoe--the sergeant, le Chameau, the two
Indians, John a Cleeve and the elder Highlander, Corporal Hugh
McQuarters.
By this time--that is to say, having seen him--John understood the
meaning of M. le Chameau's queer name. He was a hunchback, but a gay
little man nevertheless; reputedly a genius in the art of shooting
rapids. He was also a demon to work, when allowed; but the sergeant
would not allow him.
It suited the sergeant's humour to lag behind the other boats by way
of asserting his dignity and proving that he, Barboux, held himself
at no trumpery colonial's beck and call. Also he had begun to nurse
a scheme; as will appear by and by.
At present it amused him to order the canoe to shore for an hour or
two in the heat of the day, lend his bayonet to the Indians, and
watch, smoking, while they searched the banks and dug out musquashes.
These they cooked and ate; which Barboux asserted to be good economy,
since provisions were running short. It occurred to John that this
might be a still better reason for hurrying forward, but he was
grateful for the siesta under the boughs while the Indians worked.
They were Ojibways both, the elder by name Menehwehna and the younger
(a handsome fellow with a wonderful gift of silence) Muskingon.
Since that one stealthy act of kindness Menehwehna had given no sign
of cordiality. John had tried a score of times to catch his eye, and
had caught it once or twice, but only to find the man inscrutable.
Yet he was by no means taciturn; but seemed, as his warpaint of soot
and vermilion wore thinner, to thaw into what (for an Indian) might
pass for geniality. After a successful rat-hunt he would even grow
loquacious, seating himself on the bank and jabbering while he
skinned his spoils, using for the most part a jargon of broken French
(in which he was fluent) and native words of which Barboux understood
very few and John none at all. When he fell back on Ojibway pure and
simple, it was to address Muskingon, who answered in monosyllables,
and was sparing of these. Muskingon and McQuarters were the silent
men of the party--the latter by force as well as choice, since he
knew no French and in English could only converse with John.
He and Muskingon had this further in common--they both detested the
sergeant.
John, for his part, had patched up a peace with the man, after this
fashion: On the second day Barboux had called upon le Chameau for a
song; and, the little hunchback having given "En roulant ma boule,"
demanded another.
"But it is monsieur's turn, who has a charming voice," suggested le
Chameau politely.
"It has the misfortune to grate on the ears of our English milord,"
Barboux answered with an angry flush, stealing a malevolent glance at
John. "And I do not sing to please myself."
John doubted this; but being by nature quick to forgive and repent a
quarrel, he answered with some grace: "I was annoyed, Sergeant
Barboux, and said what I thought would hurt rather than what was
just. You possess, indeed, a charming voice, and I regret to have
insulted it."
"You mean it?" asked Barboux, still red in the face, but patently
delighted.
"So entirely that I shall not pardon myself until you have done us
the favour to sing."
The sergeant held out his hand. "And that's very handsomely said!
Given or taken, an apology never goes astray between brave fellows.
And, after all," he added, "I had, if I remember, something the
better of that argument! You really wish me to sing, then?"
"To be sure I do," Jack assured him, smiling.
Barboux cleared his throat, wagged his head once or twice impassively
and trolled out:
"Belle meuniere, en passant par ici,
Ne suis-je-t'y pas eloigne d'ltalie. . . ."
From this graceful opening the song declined into the grossest filth;
and it was easy to see, watching his face, why McQuarters, without
understanding a word of French, had accused him of singing
"sculduddery." John, though disgusted, could not help being amused
by a performance which set him in mind now of a satyr and now of a
mincing schoolgirl--_vert galant avec un sourire de cantatrice_--
lasciviousness blowing affected kisses in the intervals of licking
its chops. At the conclusion he complimented the singer, with a
grave face.
Barboux bowed. "It has, to say true, a little more marrow in it than
le Chameau's _rossignols_ and _rosiers_. Hola, Chameau; the
Englishman here agrees that you sing well, but that your matter is
watery stuff. You must let me teach you one or two of my songlets--"
"Pardon, m'sieur, mais ca sera un peu trop--trop vif; c'est-a-dire
pour moi," stammered the little hunchback.
Barboux guffawed. The idea of le Chameau as a ladies' man tickled
him hugely, and he tormented the patient fellow with allusions to it,
and to his deformity, twenty times a day.
And yet the sergeant was not ill-natured--until you happened to cross
him, when his temper became damnable--but merely a big, vain,
boisterous lout. John, having taken his measure, found it easy to
study him philosophically and even to be passably amused by him.
But he made himself, it must be owned, an affliction; and an
affliction against which, since the boats had parted company, there
was no redress. He was conceited, selfish, tyrannical, and
inordinately lazy. He never took a hand with the paddle, but would
compel the others to work, or to idle, as the freak took him.
He docked the crew's allowance but fed himself complacently on more
than full rations, proving this to be his due by discourse on the
innate superiority of Frenchmen over Canadians, Englishmen or
Indians. He would sit by the hour bragging of his skill with the
gun, his victories in love, his feats of strength--baring his
chest, arms, legs, and inviting the company to admire his muscles.
He jested from sunrise until sundown, and never made a jest that did
not hurt. Worst of all was it when he schooled le Chameau to sing
his obscenities after him, line for line.
"No, no, I beg you, monsieur," the little fellow would protest,
"c'est--c'est sale!"--and would blush like a girl.
"_Sale_, you dog? I'll teach you--" A blow would follow.
M. Barboux was getting liberal with his blows. Once he struck
Muskingon. Menehwehna growled ominously, and the growl seemed to
warn not only Barboux but Muskingon, who for the moment had looked
murderous.
John guessed that some tie, if not of blood-relationship, at least of
strong affection, bound the two Indians together.
For himself, as soon as his wound allowed him to sit upright, which
it did on the second day--the bullet having glanced across his ribs
and left but its ugly track in the thin flesh covering them--the
monotony of the woods and the ceaseless glint of the water were a
drug which he could summon at will and so withdraw himself within a
stupor untroubled by Barboux or his boastings. He suffered the man,
but saw no necessity for heeding him.
He had observed two or three hanks of fishing-line dangling from the
thin strips of cedar which sheathed the canoe within, a little below
the gunwale. They had hooks attached, and from the shape of these
hooks he judged them to belong to the Indians. He unhitched one of
the lines, and more for the sake of killing time than for any set
purpose, began to construct a gaudy salmon-fly with a few frayed
threads of cloth from his tunic. After a minute or two he was aware
of Muskingon watching him with interest, and by signs begged for a
feather from the young Indian's top-knot. Muskingon drew one forth
and, under instructions, plucked off a piece of fluff from the root
of the feather, a small quill or two, and handed them over. With a
length of red silk drawn from his sash John, within half an hour, was
bending a very pretty fly on the hook. It did not in the least
resemble any winged creature upon earth; but it had a meretricious
air about it, and even a "killing" one when he finished up by binding
its body tight with an inch of gilt thread from his collar.
Meanwhile, his ambition growing with success, he had cast his eyes
about, to alight on a long jointed cane which the canoe carried as
part of its appanage, to be lifted on cross-legs and serve as the
ridge of an awning on wet nights. It was cumbrous, but flexible in
some small degree. Muskingon dragged it within reach, and sat
watching while John whipped a loop to its end and ran the line
through it.
He had begun in pure idleness, but now the production of the rod had
drawn everyone's eyes. Barboux was watching him superciliously, and
Menehwehna with grave attention, resting his paddle on his knees
while the canoe drifted. Fish had been leaping throughout the
afternoon--salmon by the look of them. John knew something of
salmon; he had played and landed many a fish out of the Dart above
Totnes, and in his own river below Cleeve Court. The sun had dropped
behind the woods, the water was not too clear, and in short it looked
a likely hour for feeding. He lifted his clumsy rod in his right
hand, steadied it with his injured left, and put all his skill into
the cast.
As he cast, the weight of his rod almost overbalanced him: a dart of
pain came from his closing wound and he knew that he had been a fool
and overtaxed his strength. But to his amazement a fish rose at once
and gulped the fly down. He tossed the rod across to Muskingon,
calling to him to draw it inboard and sit quite still; and catching
the line, tautened it and slackened it out slowly, feeling up to the
loop in which (as was to be expected) it had kinked and was sticking
fast.
He had the line in both hands now, with Muskingon paying out the
slack behind him; and if the hook held--the line had no gut--he felt
confident of his fish. By the feel of him he was a salmon--or a
black bass. John had heard of black bass and the sport they gave.
A beauty, at any rate!
Yes, he was a salmon. Giving on the line but never slackening it,
though it cut his forefinger cruelly (his left being all but useless
to check the friction), John worked him to the top of the water and
so, by little and little, to the side of the canoe. But his own
strength was giving out, faster now than the salmon's. His wound had
parted; and as he clenched his teeth he felt the line fraying.
The fish would have been lost had not Muskingon, almost without
shaking the canoe, dropped overboard, dived under and clenched both
hands upon his struggles.
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