The Trail of the Sword, Volume 2.
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Gilbert Parker >> The Trail of the Sword, Volume 2.
De Casson lowered his violin. "What do you intend?" he asked gravely.
Iberville took his great hand and pressed it. "To do what you will
commend, abbe: at Hudson's Bay to win back forts the English have taken,
and get those they have built."
"You have another purpose," added De Casson softly.
"Abbe, that is between me and my conscience. I go for my king and
country against our foes."
"Who will go with you? You will lead?"
"Not I to lead--that involves me." Iberville's face darkened. "I wish
more freedom, but still to lead in fact."
"But who will lead? And who will go?"
"De Troyes, perhaps, to lead. To go, my brothers Sainte-Helene and
Maricourt, Perrot and a stout company of his men; and then I fear not
treble as many English."
The priest did not seem satisfied. Presently Iberville, with a winning
smile, ran an arm over his shoulder and added: "We cannot go without you,
Dollier."
The priest's face cleared, and a moment afterwards the three comrades
shook hands together.
CHAPTER VIII
AS SEEN THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY
When King Louis and King James called for peace, they could not know
that it was as little possible to their two colonies as between rival
buccaneers. New France was full of bold spirits who loved conquest for
conquest's sake. Besides, in this case there was a force at work,
generally unknown, but as powerful as the convincing influence of an
army. Behind the worst and the best acts of Charles II was a woman.
Behind the glories and follies of Louis XIV was also a woman. Behind
some of the most striking incidents in the history of New France, New
England, and New York, was a woman.
We saw her when she was but a child--the centre of singular events.
Years had passed. Not one of those events had gone for nothing;
each was bearing fruit after its kind.
She is sitting alone in a room of a large unhandsome house, facing on
Boston harbour. It is evening. The room itself is of dark wood, and
evening has thrown it into gloom. Yet somehow the girl's face has a
light of its own. She is turned fair towards the window, and is looking
out to sea. A mist is rising from the water, and the shore is growing
grey and heavy as the light in the west recedes and night creeps in from
the ocean. She watches the waves and the mist till all is mist without;
a scene which she had watched, how often she could not count. The night
closes in entirely upon her, but she does not move. At last the door of
the room opens and some one enters and closes it again. "My daughter!"
says an anxious voice. "Are you here, Jessica?"
"I am here, father," is the reply. "Shall we have lights?"
"As you will."
Even as they speak a servant enters, and lighted candles are put upon the
table. They are alone again. Both are pale. The girl stands very
still, and so quiet is her face, one could never guess that she is
passing, through the tragic moment of her life.
"What is your answer, Jessica?" he asks. "I will marry him when he
comes back."
"Thank God!" is the old man's acknowledgment. "You have saved our
fortunes."
The girl sighs, and then, with a little touch of that demure irony which
we had seen in her years before, says: "I trust we have not lost our
honour."
"Why, you love him, do you not? There is no one you care for more than
George Gering?"
"I suppose not," is her reply, but the tone is enigmatical.
While this scene is on, another appears in Cheapside, London. A man
of bold and vigorous bearing comes from the office of a well-known
solicitor. That very morning he had had an interview with the King, and
had been reminded with more exactness than kindness that he had cost King
Charles a ship, scores of men, and thousands of pounds, in a fruitless
search for buried treasure in Hispaniola. When he had urged his case
upon the basis of fresh information, he was drily told that the security
was too scant, even for a king. He had then pleaded his case to the Duke
of Albemarle and other distinguished gentlemen. They were seemingly
convinced, but withheld their answer till the following morning.
But William Phips, stubborn adventurer, destined to receive all sorts of
honours in his time, has no intention of quitting London till he has his
way; and this is his thought as he steps into Cheapside, having already
made preparations upon the chance of success. He has gone so far as to
purchase a ship, called the Bridgwater Merchant from an alderman in
London, though he has not a hundred guineas at his disposal. As he
stands debating, a hand touches his arm and a voice says in his ear:
"You were within a mile of it with the Atgier Rose, two years ago."
The great adventurer turns. "The devil I was! And who are you?"
Satanic humour plays in the stranger's eyes as he answers: "I am Edward
Bucklaw, pirate and keeper of the treasure-house in the La Planta River."
"Blood of Judas," Phips says, "how dare you speak to me? I'll have you
in yon prison for an unhung rascal!"
"Ah! you are a great man," is the unmoved reply. "I knew you'd feel
that way. But if you'll listen for five minutes, down here at the Bull-
and-Daisy, there shall be peace between us."
An hour later, Phips, following Bucklaw's instructions, is tracing on a
map the true location of the lost galleon's treasure.
"Then," says Bucklaw, "we are comrades?"
"We are adventurers."
Another scene. In a northern inland sea two men are standing on the deck
of a ship: the one stalwart, clear-eyed, with a touch of strong reserve
in face and manner; the other of middle height, with sinister look. The
former is looking out silently upon the great locked hummocks of ice
surrounding the vessel. It is the early morning. The sun is shining
with that hard brightness only seen in the Arctic world--keen as silver,
cold as steel. It plays upon the hummocks, and they send out shafts of
light at fantastic angles, and a thin blue line runs between the almost
unbearable general radiance and the sea of ice stretching indefinitely
away. But to the west is a shore, and on it stands a fort and a few
detached houses. Upon the walls of the fort are some guns, and the
British flag is flying above. Beyond these again are the plains of the
north--the home of the elk, musk-ox, silver fox, the white bear and the
lonely races of the Pole. Here and there, in the south-west, an island
of pines breaks the monotony, but to the north there is only the white
silence, the terrible and yet beautiful trail of the Arctic.
The smaller man stands swinging his arms for warmth; the smack of the
leather in the clear air like the report of a gun. Presently, stopping
his exercise, he says:
"Well, monsieur, what do you say?"
Slowly the young man withdraws his eyes from the scene and turns.
"Radisson," he says, "this is much the same story as Bucklaw told
Governor Nicholls. How come you to know of it?"
"You remember, I was proclaimed four years ago? Well, afterwards I fell
in with Bucklaw. I sailed with him to the Spaniards' country, and we
might have got the treasure, but we quarreled; there was a fight, and
I--well, we end. Bucklaw was captured by the French and was carried to
France. He was a fool to look for the treasure with a poor ship and a
worse crew. He was for getting William Phips, a man of Boston, to work
with him, for Phips had got something of the secret from an old sailor,
but when he would have got him, Phips was on his way with a ship of King
Charles. I will tell you something more.' Mademoiselle Leveret's--"
"What do you know of Mademoiselle Leveret?"
"A little. Mademoiselle's father lost much money in Phips's expedition."
"How know you that?"
"I have ears. You have promised to go with Phips. Isn't that so?"
"What then?"
"I will go with you."
"Booty?"
"No, revenge."
"On whom?"
"The man you hate--Iberville."
Gering's face darkens. "We are not likely to meet."
"Pardon! very likely. Six months ago he was coming back from France.
He will find you. I know the race."
A sneer is on Gering's face. "Freebooters, outlaws like yourself!"
"Pardon! gentlemen, monsieur; noble outlaws. What is it that once or
twice they have quarreled with the governor, and because they would not
yield have been proclaimed? Nothing. Proclaimed yesterday, today at
Court. No, no. I hate Iberville, but he is a great man."
In the veins of the renegade is still latent the pride of race. He is a
villain but he knows the height from which he fell. "He will find you,
monsieur," he repeats. "When Le Moyne is the hunter he never will kennel
till the end. Besides, there is the lady!"
"Silence!"
Radisson knows that he has said too much. His manner changes. "You will
let me go with you?" The Englishman remembers that this scoundrel was
with Bucklaw, although he does not know that Radisson was one of the
abductors.
"Never!" he says, and turns upon his heel.
A moment after and the two have disappeared from the lonely pageant of
ice and sun. Man has disappeared, but his works--houses and ships and
walls and snow-topped cannon--lie there in the hard grasp of the North,
while the White Weaver, at the summit of the world, is shuttling these
lives into the woof of battle, murder, and sudden death.
On the shore of the La Planta River a man lies looking into the sunset.
So sweet, so beautiful is the landscape, the deep foliage, the scent of
flowers, the flutter of bright-winged birds, the fern-grown walls of a
ruined town, the wallowing eloquence of the river, the sonorous din of
the locust, that none could think this a couch of death. A Spanish
priest is making ready for that last long voyage, when the soul of man
sloughs the dross of earth. Beside him kneels another priest--a
Frenchman of the same order.
The dying man feebly takes from his breast a packet and hands it to his
friend.
"It is as I have said," he whispers. "Others may guess, but I know.
I know--and another. The rest are all dead. There were six of us, and
all were killed save myself. We were poisoned by a Spaniard. He thought
he had killed all, but I lived. He also was killed. His murderer's name
was Bucklaw--an English pirate. He has the secret. Once he came with a
ship to find, but there was trouble and he did not go on. An Englishman
also came with the king's ship, but he did not find. But I know that the
man Bucklaw will come again. It should not be. Listen: A year ago, and
something more, I was travelling to the coast. From there I was to sail
for Spain. I had lost the chart of the river then. I was taken ill and
I should have died, but a young French officer stayed his men beside me
and cared for me, and had me carried to the coast, where I recovered. I
did not go to Spain, and I found the chart of the river again."
There is a pause, in which the deep breathing of the dying man mingles
with the low wash of the river, and presently he speaks again. "I vowed
then that he should know. As God is our Father, swear that you will give
this packet to himself only."
The priest, in reply, lifts the crucifix from the dying man's breast and
puts his lips to it. The world seems not to know, so cheerful is it all,
that, with a sob, that sob of farewell which the soul gives the body,--
the spirit of a man is passing the mile-posts called Life, Time, and
Eternity.
Yet another glance into passing incidents before we follow the straight
trail of our story. In the city of Montreal fourscore men are kneeling
in a little church, as the mass is slowly chanted at the altar. All of
them are armed. By the flare of the torches and the candles--for it is
not daybreak yet--you can see the flash of a scabbard, the glint of a
knife, and the sheen of a bandoleer.
Presently, from among them, one man rises, goes to the steps of the
sanctuary and kneels. He is the leader of the expedition, the Chevalier
de Troyes, the chosen of the governor. A moment, and three other men
rise and come and kneel beside him. These are three brothers, and one we
know--gallant, imperious, cordial, having the superior ease of the
courtier.
The four receive a blessing from a massive, handsome priest, whose face,
as it bends over Iberville, suddenly flushes with feeling. Presently the
others rise, but Iberville remains an instant longer, as if loth to
leave. The priest whispers to him: "Be strong, be just, be merciful."
The young man lifts his eyes to the priest's: "I will be just, abbe!"
Then the priest makes the sacred gesture over him.
CHAPTER IX
TO THE PORCH OF THE WORLD
The English colonies never had a race of woodsmen like the coureurs du
bois of New France. These were a strange mixture: French peasants, half-
breeds, Canadian-born Frenchmen, gentlemen of birth with lives and
fortunes gone askew, and many of the native Canadian noblesse, who, like
the nobles of France, forbidden to become merchants, became adventurers
with the coureurs du bois, who were ever with them in spirit more than
with the merchant. The peasant prefers the gentleman to the bourgeois as
his companion. Many a coureur du bois divided his tale of furs with a
distressed noble or seigneur, who dare not work in the fields.
The veteran Charles le Moyne, with his sons, each of whom played a daring
and important part in the history of New France,--Iberville greatest,--
was one of the few merchants in whom was combined the trader and the
noble. But he was a trader by profession before he became a seigneur.
In his veins was a strain of noble blood; but leaving France and settling
in Canada, he avoided the little Court at Quebec, went to Montreal, and
there began to lay the foundation of his fame and fortune, and to send
forth men who were as the sons of Jacob. In his heart he was always in
sympathy with the woodsmen, and when they were proclaimed as perilous to
the peace and prosperity of the king's empire, he stood stoutly by them.
Adventurers, they traded as they listed; and when the Intendant Duchesnau
could not bend them to his greedy will, they were to be caught and hanged
wherever found. King Louis hardly guessed that to carry out that order
would be to reduce greatly the list of his Canadian noblesse. It struck
a blow at the men who, in one of the letters which the grim Frontenac
sent to Versailles not long before his death, were rightly called "The
King's Traders"--more truly such than any others in New France.
Whether or not the old seigneur knew it at the time, three of his own
sons were among the coureurs du bois--chieftains by courtesy--when they
were proclaimed. And it was like Iberville, that, then only a lad, he
came in from the woods, went to his father, and astonished him by asking
for his blessing. Then he started for Quebec, and arriving there with
Perrot and Du Lhut, went to the citadel at night and asked to be admitted
to Count Frontenac. Perhaps the governor-grand half-barbarian as he was
at heart-guessed the nature of the visit and, before he admitted
Iberville, dismissed those who were with him. There is in an old letter
still preserved by an ancient family of France, an account of this
interview, told by a cynical young nobleman. Iberville alone was
admitted. His excellency greeted his young visitor courteously,
yet with hauteur.
"You bring strange comrades to visit your governor, Monsieur Iberville,"
he said.
"Comrades in peace, your excellency, comrades in war."
"What war?"
"The king makes war against the coureurs du bois. There is a price on
the heads of Perrot and Du Lhut. We are all in the same boat."
"You speak in riddles, sir."
"I speak of riddles. Perrot and Du Lhut are good friends of the king.
They have helped your excellency with the Indians a hundred times. Their
men have been a little roystering, but that's no sin. I am one with
them, and I am as good a subject as the king has."
"Why have you come here?"
"To give myself up. If you shoot Perrot or Du Lhut you will have to
shoot me; and, if you carry on the matter, your excellency will not have
enough gentlemen to play Tartufe."
This last remark referred to a quarrel which Frontenac had had with the
bishop, who inveighed against the governor's intention of producing
Tartufe at the chateau.
Iberville's daring was quite as remarkable as the position in which he
had placed himself. With a lesser man than Frontenac it might have ended
badly. But himself, courtier as he was, had ever used heroical methods,
and appreciated the reckless courage of youth. With grim humour he put
all three under arrest, made them sup with him, and sent them away
secretly before morning--free. Before Iberville left, the governor had
word with him alone.
"Monsieur," he said, "you have a keen tongue, but our king needs keen
swords, and since you have the advantage of me in this, I shall take care
you pay the bill. We have had enough of outlawry. You shall fight by
rule and measure soon."
"In your excellency's bodyguard, I hope," was the instant reply.
"In the king's navy," answered Frontenac, with a smile, for he was
pleased with the frank flattery.
A career different from that of George Gering, who, brought up with
Puritans, had early learned to take life seriously, had little of
Iberville's gay spirit, but was just such a determined, self-conscious
Englishman as any one could trust and admire, and none but an Englishman
love.
And Jessica Leveret? Wherever she had been during the past four years,
she had stood between these two men, regardful, wondering, waiting; and
at last, as we know, casting the die against the enemy of her country.
But was it cast after all?
Immediately after she made a certain solemn promise, recorded in the last
chapter, she went once again to New York to visit Governor Nicholls. She
had been there some months before, but it was only for a few weeks, and
then she had met Dollier de Casson and Perrot. That her mind was
influenced by memory of Iberville we may guess, but in what fashion
who can say? It is not in mortal man to resolve the fancies of a woman,
or interpret the shadowy inclinations, the timid revulsions, which move
them--they cannot tell why, any more than we. They would indeed be
thankful to be solved unto themselves. The great moment for a man with a
woman is when, by some clear guess or some special providence, he shows
her in a flash her own mind. Her respect, her serious wonder, are all
then making for his glory. Wise and happy if by a further touch of
genius he seizes the situation: henceforth he is her master. George
Gering and Jessica had been children together, and he understood her,
perhaps, as, did no one else, save her father; though he never made good
use of his knowledge, nor did he touch that side of her which was purely
feminine--her sweet inconsistency; therefore, he was not her master.
But he had appealed to her, for he had courage, strong, ambition,
thorough kindness, and fine character, only marred by a want of
temperament. She had avoided as long as she could the question which,
on his return from service in the navy, he asked her, almost without
warning; and with a touch of her old demureness and gaiety she had put
him off, bidding him go win his laurels as commander. He was then
commissioned for Hudson's Bay, and expected, on his return, to proceed
to the Spaniards' country with William Phips, if that brave gentleman
succeeded with the king or his nobles. He had gone north with his ship,
and, as we have seen, when Iberville started on that almost impossible
journey, was preparing to return to Boston. As he waited Iberville came
on.
CHAPTER X
QUI VIVE!
From Land's End to John O' Groat's is a long tramp, but that from
Montreal to Hudson's Bay is far longer, and yet many have made it; more,
however, in the days of which we are writing than now, and with greater
hardships also then. But weighed against the greater hardships there was
a bolder temper and a more romantic spirit.
How strange and severe a journey it was, only those can tell who have
travelled those wastes, even in these later days, when paths have been
beaten down from Mount Royal to the lodges of the North. When they
started, the ice had not yet all left the Ottawa River, and they wound
their way through crowding floes, or portaged here and there for miles,
the eager sun of spring above with scarcely a cloud to trail behind him.
At last the river cleared, and for leagues they travelled to the north-
west, and came at last to the Lake of the Winds. They travelled across
one corner of it, to a point where they would strike an unknown path to
Hudson's Bay.
Iberville had never before seen this lake, and, with all his knowledge of
great proportions, he was not prepared for its splendid vastness. They
came upon it in the evening, and camped beside it. They watched the sun
spread out his banners, presently veil his head in them, and sink below
the world. And between them and that sunset was a vast rock stretching
out from a ponderous shore--a colossal stone lion, resting Sphinxlike,
keeping its faith with the ages. Alone, the warder of the West, stormy,
menacing, even the vernal sun could give it little cheerfulness. But to
Iberville and his followers it brought no gloom at night, nor yet in the
morning when all was changed, and a soft silver mist hung over the "great
water," like dissolving dew, through which the sunlight came with a
strange, solemn delicacy. Upon the shore were bustle, cheerfulness, and
song, until every canoe was launched, and then the band of warriors got
in, and presently were away in the haze.
The long bark canoes, with lofty prows, stained with powerful dyes, slid
along this path swiftly, the paddles noiselessly cleaving the water with
the precision of a pendulum. One followed the other with a space
between, so that Iberville, in the first, looking back, could see a
diminishing procession, the last seeming large and weird--almost a
shadow--as it were a part of the weird atmosphere. On either side was
that soft plumbless diffusion, and ahead the secret of untravelled wilds
and the fortunes of war.
As if by common instinct, all gossip ceased soon after they left
the shore, and, cheerful as was the French Canadian, he was--and is--
superstitious. He saw sermons in stones, books in the running brooks,
and the supernatural in everything. Simple, hardy, occasionally bloody,
he was ever on the watch for signs and wonders, and a phase of nature
influenced him after the manner of a being with a temperament. Often, as
some of the woodsmen and river-men had seen this strange effect, they now
made the sacred gesture as they ran on. The pure moisture lay like a
fine exudation on their brown skins, glistened on their black hair, and
hung from their beards, giving them a mysterious look. The colours of
their canoes and clothes were softened by the dim air and long use, and
there seemed to accompany each boat and each person an atmosphere within
this other haze, a spiritual kind of exhalation; so that one might have
thought them, with the crucifixes on their breasts, and that unworldly,
distinguished look which comes to those who live much with nature, as
sons of men going upon such mission as did they who went into the far
land with Arthur.
But the silence could not be maintained for long. The first flush of the
impression gone, these half-barbarians, with the simple hearts of
children, must rise from the almost melancholy, somewhat religious mood,
into which they had been cast. As Iberville, with Sainte-Helene and
Perrot, sat watching the canoes that followed, with voyageurs erect in
bow and stern, a voice in the next canoe, with a half-chanting
modulation, began a song of the wild-life. Voice after voice slowly took
it up, until it ran along the whole procession. A verse was sung, then a
chorus altogether, then a refrain of one verse which was sung by each
boat in succession to the last. As the refrain of this was sung by the
last boat it seemed to come out of the great haze behind. Verses of the
old song are still preserved:
"Qui vive!
Who is it cries in the dawn
Cries when the stars go down?
Who is it comes through the mist
The mist that is fine like lawn,
The mist like an angel's gown?
Who is it comes in the dawn?
Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn.
"Qui rive!
Who is it passeth us by,
Still in the dawn and the mist?
Tall seigneur of the dawn:
A two-edged sword at his thigh,
A shield of gold at his wrist:
Who is it hurrieth by?
Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn."
Under the influence of this beautiful mystery of the dawn, the slow
thrilling song, and the strange, happy loneliness--as though they were in
the wash between two worlds, Iberville got the great inspiration of his
life. He would be a discoverer, the faithful captain of his king, a
trader in provinces. . . . And in that he kept his word--years after,
but he kept it. There came with this, what always comes to a man of
great ideas: the woman who should share his prowess. Such a man, if
forced to choose between the woman and the idea, will ever decide for
the woman after he has married her, sacrificing what--however much he
hides it--lies behind all. But he alone knows what he has sacrificed.
For it is in the order of things that the great man shall be first the
maker of kingdoms and homes, and then the husband of his wife and a
begetter of children. Iberville knew that this woman was not more to him
than the feeling just come to him, but he knew also that while the one
remained the other would also.