Heralds of Empire Part 12

And "a pretty pickle" it was, with the "porps" floundering bodily from wave-crest to wave-crest, the winds shrieking through the cordage, and the storm-fiends brewing a hurricane like to engulf master and crew!

In the forehold were rebels who would sink us all to the bottom of the sea if they could. Aft, powder enough to blow us all to eternity! On deck, one brave man, two chittering lads, and a gin-soaked pilot steering a crazy course among the fanged reefs of Labrador.

The wind backed and veered and came again so that a weather-vane could not have shown which way it blew. At one moment the s.h.i.+p was jumping from wave to wave before the wind with a single tiny storms'l out. At another I had thought we must scud under bare poles for open sea.

The coast sheered vertical like a rampart wall, and up--up--up that dripping rock clutched the tossing billows like watery arms of sirens.

It needed no seaman to prophecy the fate of a boat caught between that rock and a nor'easter.

Then the gale would veer, and out raced a tidal billow of waters like to take the St. Pierre broadside.

"Helm hard alee!" shouts Radisson in the teeth of the gale.

For the fraction of a second we were driving before the oncoming rush.

Then the sea rose up in a wall on our rear.

There was a shattering crash. The billows broke in sheets of whipping spray. The decks swam with a river of waters. One gun wrenched loose, teetered to the roll, and pitched into the seething deep. Yard-arms came splintering to the deck. There was a roaring of waters over us, under us, round us--then M. de Radisson, Jean, and I went slithering forward like water-rats caught in a whirlpool. My feet struck against windla.s.s chains. Jean saved himself from was.h.i.+ng overboard by cannoning into me; but before the dripping bowsprit rose again to mount the swell, M. de Radisson was up, shaking off spray like a water-dog and muttering to himself: "To be snuffed out like a candle--no--no--no, my fine fellows! Leap to meet it! Leap to meet it!"

And he was at the wheel himself.

The s.h.i.+p gave a long shudder, staggered back, stern foremost, to the trough of the swell, and lay weltering cataracts from her decks.

There was a pause of sudden quiet, the quiet of forces gathering strength for fiercer a.s.sault; and in that pause I remembered something had flung over me in the wash of the breaking sea. I looked to the crosstrees. The mutineer was gone.

It was the first and last time that I have ever seen a smoking sea.

The ocean boiled white. Far out in the wake of the tide that had caught us foam smoked on the track of the ploughing waters.

Waters--did I say? You could not see waters for the spray.

Then Jean bade me look how the stays'l had been torn to flutters, and we both set about righting decks.

For all I could see, M. Radisson was simply holding the wheel; but the holding of a wheel in stress is mighty fine seamans.h.i.+p. To keep that old gallipot from s.h.i.+pping seas in the tempest of billows was a more ticklish task than rope-walking a whirlpool or sacking a city.

Presently came two sounds--a swish of seas at our stern and the booming of surf against coast rocks. Then M. de Radisson did the maddest thing that ever I have seen. Both sounds told of the coming tempest. The veering wind settled to a driving nor'easter, and M. de Radisson was steering straight as a bullet to the mark for that rock wall.

But I did not know that coast. When our s.h.i.+p was but three lengths from destruction the St. Pierre answered to the helm. Her prow rounded a sharp rock. Then the wind caught her, whirling her right about; but in she went, stern foremost, like a fish, between the narrow walls of a fiord to the quiet shelter of a land-locked lagoon. Pierre Radisson had taken refuge in what the sailors call "a hole in the wall."

There we lay close reefed, both anchors out, while the hurricane held high carnival on the outer sea.

After we had put the St. Pierre s.h.i.+p-shape, M. Radisson stationed Jean and me fore and aft with muskets levelled, and bade us shoot any man but himself who appeared above the hatch. Arming himself with his short, curved hanger--oh, I warrant there would have been a carving below decks had any one resisted him that day!--down he went to the mutineers of the dim-lighted forehold.

Perhaps the storm had quelled the spirit of rebellion; but up came M.

de Radisson, followed by the entire crew--one fellow's head in white cotton where it had struck the floor, and every man jumping keen to answer his captain's word.

I must not forget a curious thing that happened as we lay at anchor.

The storm had scarce abated when a strange s.h.i.+p poked her jib-boom across the entrance to the lagoon, followed by queer-rigged black sails.

"A pirate!" said Jean.

But Sieur de Radisson only puckered his brows, s.h.i.+fted position so that the St. Pierre could give a broadside, and said nothing.

Then came the strangest part of it. Another s.h.i.+p poked her nose across the other side of the entrance. This was white-rigged.

"Two s.h.i.+ps, and they have us cooped!" exclaimed Jean.

"One sporting different sails," said M. de Radisson contemptuously.

"What do you think we should do, sir?" asked Jean.

"Think?" demanded Radisson. "I have stopped thinking! I act! My thoughts are acts."

But all the same his thought at that moment was to let go a broadside that sent the stranger scudding. Judging it unwise to keep a half-mutinous crew too near pirate s.h.i.+ps, M. Radisson ordered anchor up. With a deck-mop fastened in defiance to our prow, the St. Pierre slipped out of the harbour through the half-dark of those northern summer nights, and gave the heel to any highwayman waiting to attack as she pa.s.sed.

The rest of the voyage was a ploughing through brash ice in the straits, with an occasional disembarking at the edge of some great ice-field; but one morning we were all awakened from the heavy sleep of hard-worked seamen by the screaming of a mult.i.tude of birds. The air was odorous with the crisp smell of woods. When we came on deck, 'twas to see the St. Pierre anch.o.r.ed in the cove of a river that raced to meet the bay.

The screaming gulls knew not what to make of these strange visitors; for we were at Port Nelson--Fort Bourbon, as the French called it.

And you must not forget that we were French on _that_ trip!

[1] These expressions are M. de Radisson's and not words coined by Mr.

Stanhope, as may be seen by reference to the French explorer's account of his own travels, written partly in English, where he repeatedly refers to a "pretty pickle." As for the s.h.i.+ps, they seem to have been something between a modern whaler and old-time brigantine.--_Author_.

CHAPTER VIII

M. DE RADISSON COMES TO HIS OWN

The sea was touched to silver by the rising sun--not the warm, red sun of southern climes, nor yet the gold light of the temperate zones, but the cold, clear steel of that great cold land where all the warring elements challenge man to combat. Browned by the early frosts, with a glint of h.o.a.r rime on the cobwebs among the gra.s.ses, north, south, and west, as far as eye could see, were boundless reaches of hill and valley. And over all lay the rich-toned shadows of early dawn.

The broad river raced not to meet the sea more swiftly than our pulses leaped at sight of that unclaimed world. 'Twas a kingdom waiting for its king. And its king had come! Flush with triumph, sniffing the nutty, autumn air like a war-horse keen for battle, stood M. Radisson all impatience for the conquest of new realms. His jewelled sword-hilt glistened in the sun. The fire that always slumbered in the deep-set eyes flashed to life; and, fetching a deep breath, he said a queer thing to Jean and me.

"'Tis good air, lads," says he; "'tis free!"

And I, who minded that b.l.o.o.d.y war in which my father lost his all, knew what the words meant, and drank deep.

But for the screaming of the birds there was silence of death. And, indeed, it was death we had come to disenthrone. M. Radisson issued orders quick on top of one another, and the sailors swarmed from the hold like bees from a hive. The drum beat a roundelay that set our blood hopping. There were trumpet-calls back and forth from our s.h.i.+p to the Ste. Anne. Then, to a whacking of cables through blocks, the gig-boats touched water, and all hands were racing for the sh.o.r.e.

G.o.defroy waved a monster flag--lilies of France, gold-wrought on cloth of silk--and Allemand kept beating--and beating--and beating the drum, rumbling out a "Vive le Roi!" to every stroke. Before the keel gravelled on the beach, M. Radisson's foot was on the gunwale, and he leaped ash.o.r.e. G.o.defroy followed, flouris.h.i.+ng the French flag and yelling at the top of his voice for the King of France. Behind, wading and floundering through the water, came the rest. G.o.defroy planted the flag-staff. The two crews sent up a shout that startled those strange, primeval silences. Then, M. Radisson stepped forward, hat in hand, whipped out his sword, and held it aloft.

"In the name of Louis the Great, King of France," he shouted, "in the name of His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France, I take possession of all these regions!"

At that, Chouart Groseillers s.h.i.+vered a bottle of wine against the flag-pole. Drums beat, fifes shrieked as for battle, and l.u.s.ty cheers for the king and Sieur Radisson rang and echoed and re-echoed from our crews. Three times did Allemand beat his drum and three times did we cheer. Then Pierre Radisson raised his sword. Every man dropped to knee. Catholics and Protestants, Calvinists and infidels, and riff-raff adventurers who had no religion but what they swore by, bowed their heads to the solemn thanks which Pierre Radisson uttered for safe deliverance from perilous voyage. [1]

That was my first experience of the fusion which the New World makes of Old World divisions. We thought we had taken possession of the land.

No, no, 'twas the land had taken possession of us, as the New World ever does, fusing ancient hates and rearing a new race, of which--I wot--no prophet may dare too much!

"He who twiddles his thumbs may gnaw his gums," M. Radisson was wont to say; and I a.s.sure you there was no twiddling of thumbs that morning.