Heralds of Empire Part 24

M. Radisson twirled his mustaches thoughtfully, gave the marquis the same instructions in French as he had given us when we were left in the New Englander's fort, and turning with a calm face to Ben, bade him get into our canoe.

But when we launched out M. Radisson headed the craft up-stream in the wrong direction, whither we paddled till nightfall. It was cold enough in all conscience to afford Ben Gillam excuse for tipping a flask from his jacket-pouch to his teeth every minute or two; but when we were rested and ready to launch again, the young captain's brain was so befuddled that he scarce knew whether he were in Boston or on Hudson Bay.

This time we headed straight down-stream, Ben nodding and dozing from his place in the middle, M. Radisson, La Chesnaye, and I poling hard to keep the drift-ice off. We avoided the New Englander's fort by going on the other side of the island, and when we shot past Governor Brigdar's stockades with the lights of the Prince Rupert blinking through the dark, Ben was fast asleep.

And all the while the winds were piping overhead with a roar as from the wings of the great storm bird which broods over all that northland.

Then the blore of the trumpeting wind was answered by a counter fugue from the sea, with a roll and pound of breakers across the sand of the traverse. Carried by the swift current, we had shot into the bay. It was morning, but the black of night had given place to the white darkness of northern storm. Ben Gillam jerked up sober and grasped an idle pole to lend a hand. Through the whirl of spray M. Radisson's figure loomed black at the bow, and above the boom of tumbling waves came the grinding as of an earthquake.

"We are lost! We are lost!" shrieked Gillam in panic, cowering back to the stern. "The storm's drifted down polar ice from the north and we're caught! We're caught!" he cried.

He sprang to his feet as if to leap into that white waste of seething ice foam. 'Twas the frenzy of terror, which oft seizes men adrift on ice. In another moment he would have swamped us under the pitching crest of a mountain sea. But M. Radisson turned. One blow of his pole and the foolish youth fell senseless to the bottom of the canoe.

"Look, sir, look!" screamed La Chesnaye, "the canoe's getting ice-logged! She's sunk to the gun'ales!"

But at the moment when M. Radisson turned to save young Gillam, the unguided canoe had darted between two rolling seas. Walls of ice rose on either side. A white whirl--a mighty rush--a tumult of roaring waters--the ice walls pitched down--the canoe was caught--tossed up--nipped--crushed like a card-box--and we four flung on the drenching ice-pans to a roll of the seas like to sweep us under, with a footing slippery as gla.s.s.

"Keep hold of Gillam! Lock hands!" came a clarion voice through the storm. "Don't fear, men! There is no danger! The gale will drive us ash.o.r.e! Don't fear! Hold tight! Hold tight! There's no danger if you have no fear!"

The ice heaved and flung to the roll of the drift.

"Hold fast and your wet sleeves will freeze you to the ice! Steady!"

he called, as the thing fell and rose again.

Then, with the hiss of the world serpent that pursues man to his doom, we were scudding before a mountain swell. There was the splintering report of a cannon-shot. The ice split. We clung the closer. The rush of waves swept under us, around us, above us. There came a crash.

The thing gave from below. The powers of darkness seemed to close over us, the jaws of the world serpent shut upon their prey, the spirit of evil shrieked its triumph.

Our feet touched bottom. The waves fell back, and we were ash.o.r.e on the sand-bar of the traverse.

"Run! Run for your lives!" shouted Radisson. Jerking up Gillam, whom the shock had brought to his senses. "Lock hands and run!"

And run we did, like those spirits in the twilight of the lost, with never a hope of rescue and never a respite from fear, hand gripping hand, the tide and the gale and the driving sleet yelping wolfishly at our heels! Twas the old, old story of Man leaping undaunted as a warrior to conquer his foes--turned back!--beaten!--pursued by serpent and wolf, spirit of darkness and power of destruction, with the light of life flickering low and the endless frosts creeping close to a heart beating faint!

Oh, those were giants that we set forth to conquer in that harsh northland--the giants of the warring elements! And giants were needed for the task.

Think you of that when you hear the slighting scorn of the rough pioneer, because he minceth not his speech, nor weareth ruffs at his wrists, nor bendeth so low at the knee as your Old-World hero!

The earth fell away from our feet. We all four tumbled forward. The storm whistled past overhead. And we lay at the bottom of a cliff that seemed to shelter a mult.i.tude of shadowy forms. We had fallen to a ravine where the vast caribou herds had wandered from the storm.

Says M. Radisson, with a depth of reverence which words cannot tell, "Men," says he, "thank G.o.d for this deliverance!"

So unused to man's presence were the caribou, or perhaps so stupefied by the storm, they let us wander to the centre of the herd, round which the great bucks had formed a cordon with their backs to the wind to protect the does and the young. The heat from the mult.i.tude of bodies warmed us back to life, and I make no doubt the finding of that herd was G.o.d Almighty's provision for our safety.

For three days we wandered with nothing to eat but wild birds done to death by the gale. [1] On the third day the storm abated; but it was still snowing too heavily for us to see a man's length away. Two or three times the caribou tossed up their heads sniffing the air suspiciously, and La Chesnaye fell to cursing lest the wolf-pack should stampede the herd. At this Gillam, whose hulking body had wasted from lack of bulky rations, began to whimper--

"If the wolf-pack come we are lost!"

"Man," says Radisson sternly, "say thy prayers and thank G.o.d we are alive!"

The caribou began to rove aimlessly for a time, then they were off with a rush that bare gave us chance to escape the army of clicking hoofs.

We were left unprotected in the falling snow.

The primal instincts come uppermost at such times, and like the wild creatures of the woods facing a foe, instantaneously we wheeled back to back, alert for the enemy that had frightened the caribou.

"Hist!" whispers Radisson. "Look!"

Ben Gillam leaped into the air as if he had been shot, shrieking out: "It's him! It's him! Shoot him! The thief! The traitor! It's him!"

He dashed forward, followed by the rest of us, hardly sure whether Ben were sane.

Three figures loomed through the snowy darkness, white and silent as the snow itself--vague as phantoms in mist--pointing at us like wraiths of death--spirit hunters incarnate of that vast wilderness riding the riotous storm over land and sea. One swung a weapon aloft. There was the scream as of a woman's cry--and the shrieking wind had swept the snow-clouds about us in a blind fury that blotted all sight. And when the combing billows of drift pa.s.sed, the apparition had faded. We four stood alone staring in s.p.a.ce with strange questionings.

"Egad!" gasped Radisson, "I don't mind when the wind howls like a wolf, but when it takes to the death-scream, with snow like the skirts of a shroud----"

"May the Lord have mercy on us!" muttered La Chesnaye, crossing himself. "It is sign of death! That was a woman's figure. It is sign of death!"

"Sign of death!" raged Ben, stamping his impotent fury, "'tis him--'tis him! The Judas Iscariot, and he's left us to die so that he may steal the furs!"

"Hold quiet!" ordered M. Radisson. "Look, you rantipole--who is that?"

'Twas Le Borgne, the one-eyed, emerging from the gloom of the snow like a ghost. By signs and Indian words the fellow offered to guide us back to our Habitation.

We reached the fort that night, Le Borgne flitting away like a shadow, as he had come. And the first thing we did was to hold a service of thanks to G.o.d Almighty for our deliverance.

[1] See Radisson's account--Prince Society (1885), Boston--Bodleian Library.--Canadian Archives, 1895-'96.

CHAPTER XIV

A CHALLENGE

Filling the air with ghost-shadows, silencing earth, m.u.f.fling the sea, day after day fell the snow. Sh.o.r.e-ice barred out the pounding surf.

The river had frozen to adamant. Brushwood sank in the deepening drifts like a foundered s.h.i.+p, and all that remained visible of evergreens was an occasional spar or snow mushroom on the crest of a branch.

No east, no west, no day, no night; nothing but a white darkness, billowing snow, and a silence as of death. It was the cold, silent, mystic, white world of northern winter.

At one moment the fort door flings wide with a rush of frost like smoke clouds, and in stamps G.o.defroy, shaking snow off with boisterous noise and vowing by the saints that the drifts are as high as the St. Pierre's deck. M. Groseillers orders the rascal to shut the door; but bare has the latch clicked when young Jean whisks in, tossing snow from cap and gauntlets like a clipper shaking a reef to the spray, and declares that the snow is already level with the fort walls.

"Eh, nephew," exclaims Radisson sharply, "how are the cannon?"

Ben Gillam, who has lugged himself from bed to the hearth for the first time since his freezing, blurts out a taunting laugh. We had done better to build on the sheltered side of an island, he informs us.

"Now, the s.h.i.+vers take me!" cries Ben, "but where a deuce are all your land forces and marines and jack-tars and forty thousand officers?"