Heralds of Empire Part 44

'Twas as fair sailing under English colours as you could wish till Pierre Radisson had undone all the mischief that he had worked against the Fur Company in Hudson Bay. Pierre Radisson sits with a pipe in his mouth and his long legs stretched clear across the cabin-table, spinning yarns of wild doings in savage lands, and Governor Phipps, of the Hudson's Bay Company, listens with eyes a trifle too sleepily watchful, methinks, for the Frenchman's good. A summer sea kept us course all the way to the northern bay, and sometimes Pierre Radisson would fling out of the cabin, marching up and down the deck muttering, "Pah! Tis tame adventuring! Takes a dish o' spray to salt the freshness out o' men! Tis the roaring forties put nerve in a man's marrow! Soft days are your Delilah's that shave away men's strength!

Toughen your fighters, Captain Gazer! Toughen your fighters!"

And once, when M. Radisson had pa.s.sed beyond hearing, the governor turns with a sleepy laugh to the captain.

"A pox on the rantipole!" says he. "May the sharks test the nerve of his marrow after he's captured back the forts!"

In the bay great ice-drift stopped our way, and Pierre Radisson's impatience took fire.

"What a deuce, Captain Gazer!" he cries. "How long do you intend to squat here anch.o.r.ed to an ice-pan?"

A spark shot from the governor's sleepy eyes, and Captain Gazer swallowed words twice before he answered.

"Till the ice opens a way," says he.

"Opens a way!" repeats Radisson. "Man alive, why don't you carve a way?"

"Carve a way yourself, Radisson," says the governor contemptuously.

That was let enough for Pierre Radisson. He had the sailors lowering jolly-boats in a jiffy; and off seven of us went, round the ice-pans, ploughing, cutting, portaging a way till we had crossed the obstruction and were pulling for the French fort with the spars of three Company boats far in the offing.

I detained the English sailors at the river-front till M. Radisson had entered the fort and won young Jean Groseillers to the change of masters. Before the Fur Company's s.h.i.+ps came, the English flag was flying above the fort and Fort Bourbon had become Fort Nelson.

"I bid you welcome to the French Habitation," bows Radisson, throwing wide the gates to the English governor.

"Hm!" returns Phipps, "how many beaver-skins are there in store?"

M. Radisson looked at the governor. "You must ask my tradespeople that," he answers; and he stood aside for them all to pa.s.s.

"Your English mind thinks only of the gain," he said to me.

"And your French mind?" I asked.

"The game and not the winnings," said he.

No sooner were the winnings safe--twenty thousand beaver-skins stowed away in three s.h.i.+ps' holds--than Pierre Radisson's foes unmasked. The morning of our departure Governor Phipps marched all our Frenchmen aboard like captives of war.

"Sir," expostulated M. de Radisson, "before they gave up the fort I promised these men they should remain in the bay."

Governor Phipps's sleepy eyes of a sudden waked wide.

"Aye," he taunted, "with Frenchmen holding our fort, a pretty trick you could play us when the fancy took you!"

M. Radisson said not a word. He pulled free a gantlet and strode forward, but the doughty governor hastily scuttled down the s.h.i.+p's ladder and put a boat's length of water between him and Pierre Radisson's challenge.

The gig-boat pulled away. Our s.h.i.+p had raised anchor. Radisson leaned over the deck-rail and laughed.

"Egad, Phipps," he shouted, "a man may not fight cowards, but he can cudgel them! An I have to wait for you on the River Styx, I'll punish you for making me break promise to these good fellows!"

"Promise--and when did promise o' yours hold good, Pierre Radisson?"

The Frenchman turned with a bitter laugh.

"A giant is big enough to be hit--a giant is easy to fight," says he, "but egad, these pigmies crawl all over you and sting to death before they are visible to the naked eye!"

And as the Happy Return wore s.h.i.+p for open sea he stood moodily silent with eyes towards the sh.o.r.e where Governor Phipps's gig-boat had moored before Fort Nelson.

Then, speaking more to himself than to Jean and me, his lips curled with a hard scorn.

"The Happy Return!" says he. "Pardieu! 'tis a happy return to beat devils and then have all your own little lies come roosting home like imps that filch the victory! They don't trust me because I won by trickery! Egad! is a slaughter better than a game? An a man wins, who a devil gives a rush for the winnings? 'Tis the fight and the game--pah!--not the thing won! Storm and cold, man and beast, powers o' darkness and devil, knaves and fools and his own sins--aye, that's the scratch!--The man and the beast and the dark and the devil, he can breast 'em all with a bold front! But knaves and fools and his own sins, pah!--death grubs!--hatching and nesting in a man's bosom till they wake to sting him! Flesh-worms--vampires--blood-suckers--spun out o' a man's own tissue to sap his life!"

He rapped his pistol impatiently against the deck-rail, stalked past us, then turned.

"Lads," says he, "if you don't want gall in your wine and a grub in your victory, a' G.o.d's name keep your own counsel and play the game fair and square and aboveboard."

And though his speech worked a pretty enough havoc with fine-spun rhetoric to raise the wig off a pedant's head, Jean and I thought we read some sense in his mixed metaphors.

On all that voyage home he never once crossed words with the English officers, but took his share of hards.h.i.+p with the French prisoners.

"I mayn't go back to France. They think they have me cornered and in their power," he would say, gnawing at his finger-ends and gazing into s.p.a.ce.

Once, after long reverie, he sprang up from a gun-waist where he had been sitting and uttered a scornful laugh.

"Cornered? Hah! We shall see! I snap my fingers in their faces."

Thereafter his mood brightened perceptibly, and he was the first to put foot ash.o.r.e when we came to anchor in British port. There were yet four hours before the post-chaise left for London, and the English crew made the most of the time by flocking to the ale-houses. M. Radisson drew Jean and me apart.

"We'll beat our detractors yet," he said. "If news of this capture be carried to the king and the Duke of York[1] before the shareholders spread false reports, we are safe. If His Royal Highness favour us, the Company must fall in line or lose their charter!"

And he bade us hire three of the fleetest saddle-horses to be found.

While the English crew were yet brawling in the taverns, we were to horse and away. Our horse's feet rang on the cobblestones with the echo of steel and the sparks flashed from M. Radisson's eyes. A wharfmaster rushed into mid-road to stop us, but M. Radisson rode him down. A uniformed constable called out to know what we were about.

"Our business!" shouts M. Radisson, and we are off.

Country franklins got their wains out of our way with mighty confusion, and coaches drew aside for us to pa.s.s, and roadside brats scampered off with a scream of freebooters; but M. Radisson only laughed.

"This is living," said he. "Give your nag rein, Jean! Whip and spur!

Ramsay! Whip and spur! Nothing's won but at cost of a sting! Throw off those jack-boots, Jean! They're a handicap! Loose your holsters, lad! An any highwaymen come at us to-day I'll send him a short way to a place where he'll stay! Whip up! Whip up!"

"What have you under your arm?" cries Jean breathlessly.

"Rare furs for the king," calls Radisson.

Then the wind is in our hair, and thatched cots race off in a blur on either side; plodding workmen stand to stare and are gone; open fields give place to forest, forest to village, village to bare heath; and still we race on.

Midnight found us pounding through the dark of London streets for Cheapside, where lived Mr. Young, a director of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was favourable to Pierre Radisson.