Heralds of Empire Part 13

Bare had M. Radisson finished prayers, when he gave sharp command for Groseillers, his brother-in-law, to look to the building of the Habitation--as the French called their forts--while he himself would go up-stream to seek the Indians for trade. Jean and G.o.defroy and I were sent to the s.h.i.+p for a birch canoe, which M. Radisson had brought from Quebec.

Our leader took the bow; G.o.defroy, the stern; Jean and I, the middle.

A poise of the steel-shod steering pole, we grasped our paddles, a downward dip, quick followed by G.o.defroy at the stern, and out shot the canoe, swift, light, lithe, alert, like a racer to the bit, with a gurgling of waters below the gunwales, the keel athrob to the swirl of a turbulent current and a trail of eddies dimpling away on each side.

A sharp breeze sprang up abeam, and M. Radisson ordered a blanket sail hoisted on the steersman's fis.h.i.+ng-pole. But if you think that he permitted idle paddles because a wind would do the work, you know not the ways of the great explorer. He bade us ply the faster, till the canoe sped between earth and sky like an arrow shot on the level. The sh.o.r.e-line became a blur. Clumps of juniper and pine marched abreast, halted the length of time an eye could rest, and wheeled away. The swift current raced to meet us. The canoe jumped to mount the glossy waves raised by the beam wind. An upward tilt of her prow, and we had skimmed the swell like a winged thing. And all the while M. Radisson's eyes were everywhere. Chips whirled past. There were beaver, he said.

Was the water suddenly muddied? Deer had flitted at our approach. Did a fish rise? M. Radisson predicted otter; and where there were otter and beaver and deer, there should be Indians.

As for the rest of us, it had gone to our heads.

We were intoxicated with the wine of the rugged, new, free life. Sky above; wild woods where never foot had trod; air that drew through the nostrils in thirst-quenching draughts; blood atingle to the laughing rhythm of the river--what wonder that youth leaped to a fresh life from the mummified existence of little, old peoples in little, old lands?

We laughed aloud from fulness of life.

Jean laid his paddle athwart, ripped off his buckskin, and smiled back.

"Ramsay feels as if he had room to stretch himself," said he.

"Feel! I feel as if I could run a thousand miles and jump off the ends of the earth--"

"And dive to the bottom of the sea and harness whales and play bowling-b.a.l.l.s with the spheres, you young rantipoles," added M.

Radisson ironically.

"The fever of the adventurer," said Jean quietly. "My uncle knows it."

I laughed again. "I was wondering if Eli Kirke ever felt this way," I explained.

"Pardieu," retorted M. de Radisson, loosening his coat, "if people moved more and moped less, they'd brew small bile! Come, lads! Come, lads! We waste time!"

And we were paddling again, in quick, light strokes, silent from zest, careless of toil, strenuous from love of it.

Once we came to a bend in the river where the current was so strong that we had dipped our paddles full five minutes against the mill race without gaining an inch. The canoe squirmed like a hunter balking a hedge, and Jean's blade splintered off to the handle. But M. de Radisson braced back to lighten the bow; the prow rose, a sweep of the paddles, and on we sped!

"Hard luck to pull and not gain a boat length," observed Jean.

"Harder luck not to pull, and to be swept back," corrected M. de Radisson.

We left the main river to thread a labyrinthine chain of waterways, where were portages over brambly sh.o.r.es and slippery rocks, with the pace set at a run by M. de Radisson. Jean and I followed with the pack straps across our foreheads and the provisions on our backs. G.o.defroy brought up the rear with the bark canoe above his head.

At one place, where we disembarked, M. de Radisson traced the sand with the muzzle of his musket.

"A boot-mark," said he, drawing the faint outlines of a footprint, "and egad, it's not a man's foot either!"

"Impossible!" cried Jean. "We are a thousand miles from any white-man."

"There's nothing impossible on this earth," retorted Radisson impatiently. "But pardieu, there are neither white women in this wilderness, nor ghosts wearing women's boots! I'd give my right hand to know what left that mark!"

After that his haste grew feverish. We s.n.a.t.c.hed our meals by turns between paddles. He seemed to grudge the waste of each night, camping late and launching early; and it was G.o.defroy's complaint that each portage was made so swiftly there was no time for that solace of the common voyageur--the boatman's pipe. For eight days we travelled without seeing a sign of human presence but that one vague footmark in the sand.

"If there are no Indians, how much farther do we go, sir?" asked G.o.defroy sulkily on the eighth day.

"Till we find them," answered M. Radisson.

And we found them that night.

A deer broke from the woods edging the sand where we camped and had almost bounded across our fire when an Indian darted out a hundred yards behind. Mistaking us for his own people, he whistled the hunter's signal to head the game back. Then he saw that we were strangers. Pulling up of a sudden, he threw back his arms, uttered a cry of surprise, and ran to the hiding of the bush.

M. Radisson was the first to pursue; but where the sand joined the thicket he paused and began tracing the point of his rapier round the outlines of a mark.

"What do you make of it, G.o.defroy?" he demanded of the trader.

The trader looked quizzically at Sieur de Radisson.

"The toes of that man's moccasin turn out," says G.o.defroy significantly.

"Then that man is no Indian," retorted M. Radisson, "and hang me, if the size is not that of a woman or a boy!"

And he led back to the beach.

"Yon s.h.i.+p was a pirate," began G.o.defroy, "and if buccaneers be about----"

"Hold your clack, fool," interrupted M. Radisson, as if the fellow's prattle had cut into his mental plannings; and he bade us heap such a fire as could be seen by Indians for a hundred miles. "If once I can find the Indians," meditated he moodily, "I'll drive out a whole regiment of scoundrels with one snap o' my thumb!"

Black clouds rolled in from the distant bay, boding a stormy night; and G.o.defroy began to complain that black deeds were done in the dark, and we were forty leagues away from the protection of our s.h.i.+ps.

"A pretty target that fire will make of us in the dark," whined the fellow.

M. Radisson's eyes glistened sparks.

"I'd as lief be a pirate myself, as be shot down by pirates," grumbled the trader, giving a hand to hoist the shed of sheet canvas that was to s.h.i.+eld us from the rains now aslant against the seaward horizon.

At the words M. Radisson turned sharply; but the heedless fellow gabbled on.

"Where is a man to take cover, an the buccaneers began shooting from the bush behind?" demanded G.o.defroy belligerently.

M. Radisson reached one arm across the fire. "I'll show you," said he.

Taking G.o.defroy by the ear, with a p.r.i.c.k of the sword he led the lazy knave quick march to the beach, where lay our canoe bottom up.

"Crawl under!" M. Radisson lifted the prow.

From very shame--I think it was--G.o.defroy balked; but M. Radisson brought a cutting rap across the rascal's heels that made him hop. The canoe clapped down, and G.o.defroy was safe. "Pardieu," mutters Radisson, "such cowards would turn the marrow o' men's bones to b.u.t.ter!"

Sitting on a log, with his feet to the fire, he motioned Jean and me to come into the shelter of the slant canvas; for the clouds were rolling overhead black as ink and the wind roared up the river-bed with a wall of pelting rain. M. Radisson gazed absently into the flame. The steel lights were at play in his eyes, and his lips parted.

"Storm and cold--man and beast--powers of darkness and devil--knaves and fools and his own sins--he must fight them all, lads," says M.

Radisson slowly.

"Who must fight them all?" asks Jean.

"The victor," answers Radisson, and warm red flashed to the surface of the cold steel in his eyes.