The Raid from Beausejour; and How the Carter Boys Lifted the Mortgage Part 6

"I ricklecs the child well" replied Bill, shaking his head slowly.

"It _was_ a purty one, an' _no_ mistake! An' Cap'n Howe's darter, too. I swan!"

In a little while the careless-hearted soldiers were asleep amid the ashes of Kenneticook village, while the young lieutenant lay awake, his heart aching for his golden-haired pet, his widowed sister's child.

The next day he gave his men a long rest, for they had done some severe forced marching. When at length he reached Piziquid he little dreamed that the child whose death he mourned was at that very moment sailing down the river bound for Beausejour and a long sojourn among her people's enemies.

In the house of Antoine Lecorbeau things went on more pleasantly than with most of his fellow-Acadians. With the good will of Vergor, the commandant of Beausejour, who made enormous profits out of the Acadian's tireless diligence, Lecorbeau became once more fairly prosperous; and Le Loutre had grown again friendly. But most of the Acadians found themselves in a truly pitiable plight. There were not lands enough to supply them all, and they pined for the farms of Acadie which Le Loutre had forced them to forsake. Threatened with excommunication and the scalping knife if they should return to their allegiance, and with starvation if they obeyed the commands of their heartless superiors at Quebec, they were girt about on all sides with pain and peril.

Vacillating, unable to think boldly for themselves, they were doubtless much to blame, but their miseries were infinitely more than they deserved.

The punishments that fell upon them fell upon the wrong shoulders.

The English, who treated them for a long time with the most patient forbearance, were compelled at length, in self-defense, to adopt an att.i.tude of rigorous severity; and by the French, in whose cause they suffered everything, they were regarded as mere tools, to be used till destroyed. At the door of the corrupt officials of France may be laid all their miseries.

After the affair at Kenneticook Le Loutre found that Cobequid was no longer the place for him. He needed the shelter of Beausejour. There, by force of his fanatic zeal, his ability, and his power over the Acadians, he divided the authority of the fort with its corrupt commandant. He never dreamed of the part Pierre had played that dreadful night on the Kenneticook. He knew Lecorbeau had somewhere picked up an English child. But a child was in his eyes quite too trivial a matter to call for any comment.

As time went on Pierre's little one, as she was generally called--"la p't.i.te de Pierre"--picked up the French of her new Acadian home, and went far to forgetting her English. In the eyes of Lecorbeau and his wife she came to seem like one of their own and she was a favorite with the whole family; but to Pierre she clung as if he were her father and mother in one. As soon as she had learned a little French she was questioned minutely as to her parents and her home. Her name, Edie Howe, had at once been a.s.sociated with that of the lamented captain.

"Edie," good wife Lecorbeau would say to her, "where is your mother?"

At this the child would shake her head sorrowfully for a moment, and pointing over the hills, would answer:

"Away off there!"--and sometimes she would add, "Poor mamma's sick!"

At last one day she seemed suddenly to remember, and cried as if she were announcing a great discovery, "Why, mamma's in Halifax."

Mother Lecorbeau was not a little triumphant at having elicited this definite information.

On the subject of her father the little one had not much to say. When questioned about him she merely said that she was his little girl, and that he had gone away somewhere, and some bad people wouldn't let him come back again. She said her mamma had cried a great deal while telling her that papa would never come back--and from this it was clear at once that the father was dead. To get any definite idea from the child as to the time of his death proved a vain endeavor; she was not very clear in her ideas of time. But she said he was a tall man and a soldier.

She further declared that he hadn't a lot of hair on his face, like father Lecorbeau, but was nice and smooth, like her Pierre, only with a mustache. All this tallied with a description of Captain Howe, so Lecorbeau concluded that she was Howe's child. As for the people with whom she had been visiting in the hapless village of Kenneticook, they were evidently old servants of her father's family.

"I was staying at nurse's," she used to say. "Uncle Willie sent me there because my mamma was sick." Of this Uncle Willie she talked so much and so often that Pierre said he was jealous.

While several years rolled by, bringing no great event to the cabin in the willows at the foot of Beausejour, a cloud was slowly gathering over the fortressed hill. The relations between France and England in Acadie were growing more and more strained. It was plain that a rupture must soon come. In the cabin, by the light of fire or candle, after the day's work was done, Pierre and his father, with sometimes the old sergeant from the fort, used to talk over the condition of affairs. To Pierre and the sergeant it was obvious that France must win back Acadie, and that soon; and they paid little heed to Lecorbeau's sagacious comparisons between the French and English methods of conducting the government. Lecorbeau, naturally did not feel like arguing his points with much determination; but across the well-scrubbed deal table he uttered several predictions which Pierre recalled when he saw them brought to pa.s.s.

"Here's about how it stands," remarked the sergeant one night, shaking the ashes of his pipe into the hollow of his hand, "there's hundreds upon hundreds now of your Acadians s.h.i.+fting round loose, waiting for a chance to get back to their old farms. They don't dare go back while the English hold possession, for fear of His Reverence yonder"--signifying, of course, Le Loutre--"so they're all ready to fight just as soon as France gives the word. They don't care much for France, maybe--not much more than for the English--but they do just hanker after their old farms. When the government thinks it the right time, and sends us some troops from Quebec and Louisburg, all the Acadians out of Acadie will walk in to take possession, and the Acadians in Acadie will bid good day to King George and help us kick the English out of Halifax.

It's bound to come, sure as fate; and pretty soon, I'm thinking."

"I believe you're right!" a.s.sented Pierre, enthusiastically.

"What would you think, now," said Lecorbeau, suggestively, "if the English should take it into their slow heads not to wait for all this to happen? What would you do up there in the fort if some s.h.i.+ps were to sail up to-morrow and land a little English army under Beausejour?

You've got a priest and a greedy old woman (begging Monsieur Vergor's pardon) to lead you. How long would Beausejour hold out? And suppose Beausejour was taken, where would the settlements be--Ouestk.a.w.k and Memramcook, and even the fort on the St. John? Wouldn't it rather knock on the head this rising of the Acadians, this 'walking in and taking possession' of which you feel so confident?"

"But we won't give the English a chance!" cried the warlike pair, in almost the same breath. "We'll strike first. You'll see!"

Meanwhile the English were making ready to do just what Lecorbeau said they might do. At the same time the French at Quebec, at Louisburg, at Beausejour, though talking briskly about the great stroke by which Acadie was to be recaptured, were too busy plundering the treasury to take any immediate steps. Following the distinguished example of the notorious intendant, Bigot, almost every official in New France had his fingers in the public purse. They were in no haste for the fray.

The English, however, seeing what the French _might_ do, naturally supposed they would try and do it. To prevent this, they were planning the capture of Beausejour. Governor Lawrence, in Halifax, and Governor s.h.i.+rley, in Boston, were preparing to join forces for the undertaking.

In New England s.h.i.+rley raised a regiment of two thousand volunteers who mustered, in April of the year 1755, amid the quaint streets of Boston. This regiment was divided into two battalions, one of which was commanded by Colonel John Winslow, and the other by John Scott.

After a month's delay, waiting for muskets, the little army set sail for Beausejour. The chief command was in the hands of Colonel Moncton, who had been sent to Boston by Lawrence to arrange the expedition.

On the night when Lecorbeau, Pierre, and the old sergeant were holding the conversation of which I have recorded a fragment, the fleet containing the Ma.s.sachusetts volunteers were already at Annapolis. A day or two later they were sailing up the restless tide of Fundy. On the first day of June they were sighted from the cloud-topped mountain of Chepody, or "_Chapeau Dieu_." As the sun went down the fleet cast anchor under the high bluffs of Far Ouestk.a.w.k, not three leagues from Beausejour.

As the next dawn was breaking over the Minudie hills there arrived at the fort a little party of wearied Acadians, who had hastened up from Chepody to give warning. Instantly all Beausejour became a scene of excitement. There was much to be done in the way of strengthening the earthworks. Urgent messengers were sent out to implore reinforcements from Louisburg, while others called together all the Acadians of the neighborhood, to the number of fourteen hundred fighting men. As Pierre and his father were taking the rest of the family, with some supplies, to a little wooded semi-island beside the Tantramar, some miles from the fort, Lecorbeau said to his son:

"I rather like the idea of that bold stroke of yours and the sergeant's!

When do you think it will be carried out?"

Pierre looked somewhat crestfallen, but he mustered up spirit to reply:

"Just wait till we've beaten off those fellows. Then you'll see what we'll do."

"Well," said his father, "I'll wait as patiently as possible!"

After placing the mother and children in their refuge, which was already thronged, our two Acadians, with a tearful farewell, hastened back to take their part in the defense of Beausejour.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NEW ENGLANDERS.

The refuge of good wife Lecorbeau, and the children, and "Pierre's little one" was a wooded bit of rising ground which, before the diking-in of the Tantramar marshes, had been an island at high water. It was still called Isle au Tantramar. Among the trees, under rude lean-to tents and improvised shelters of all sorts, were gathered the women and children of Beausejour, out of range of the cannon b.a.l.l.s that they knew would soon be flying over their homes. The weather was balmy, and their situation not immediately painful, but their hearts were a prey to the wildest anxieties.

By this time the New Englanders had landed over against Fort Lawrence, and had joined their forces with those of the English at the fort.

The numbers of the attacking army filled the Acadians with apprehension of defeat. Many of them, like Lecorbeau, had in the past taken oath of allegiance to King George, and these feared lest, in the probable event of the English being victorious, they should be put to death as traitors. This difficulty was solved, and their fears much mitigated, in a thoroughly novel way. The commandant a.s.sured them solemnly that if they refused to join in the defense of the fort he would shoot them down like dogs. Upon this the Acadians conceived themselves released from all responsibility in the matter, and went quite cheerfully to work.

Even Lecorbeau feeling himself secured by Vergor's menace, was quietly and fearlessly interested in the approaching struggle. Lecorbeau, was no faint-heart, though his far-seeing sagacity often made him appear so in the eyes of those who did not know him well. As for Pierre, he was now in his element, sniffing the battle like a young warhorse, and forgetful of the odds against him. Le Loutre was everywhere at once, tireless, seeing everything, spurring the work, and worth a hundred Vergors in such a crisis as this.

Beausejour was a strong post, a pentagon with heavy ramparts of earth, with two bombproofs, so called, and mounting twenty-five pieces of artillery. Some of the guns were heavy metal for those days and that remote defense. I have seen them used as gateposts by the more aristocratic of Beausejour's present inhabitants. Within the fort was a garrison of one hundred and sixty regulars. Three hundred Acadians were added to this garrison--among them being Pierre and his father.

The rest of the Acadians spread themselves in bands through the woods and uplands, in order to carry on a system of hara.s.sing attacks.

Across the Missaguash, some distance from its mouth, there was a bridge called Pont-a-Buot, and thither, after a day or two of reconnoitering, Colonel Moncton led his forces from Fort Lawrence. They marched in long column up the Missaguash sh.o.r.e, wading through the rich young gra.s.ses.

As they approached they saw that the bridge had been broken down, and the fragments used to build a breastwork on the opposite sh.o.r.e. This breastwork, as far as they could see, was unoccupied.

Appearances in this case were deceptive. Hidden behind the breastwork was a body of troops from Beausejour. There were nearly four hundred of them--Acadians and Indians, with a few regulars to give them steadiness. Pierre, as might have been expected, was among the band, beside his instructor, the old sergeant. Trembling with excitement, though outwardly calm enough, Pierre watched, through the c.h.i.n.ks of the breastwork, the approach of the hostile column. Just as it reached the point opposite, where the bridge had been broken away, he heard a sharp command from an officer just behind him. Instantly, he hardly knew how, he found himself on his feet, yelling fiercely, and firing as fast as he could reload his musket. Through the rifts of the smoke he could see that the hot fire was doing execution in the English ranks.

Presently, he heard the old sergeant remark:

"There come the guns! Now look out for a squall!"--and he saw two fieldpieces being hurriedly dragged into position. The next thing he knew there was a roar--the breastwork on one side of him flew into fragments, and he saw a score of his comrades dead about him.

The roar was repeated several times, but his blood was up, and he went on loading and firing as before, without a thought of fear.

At length the sergeant grabbed him by the arm.

"We've got to skip out of this and cut for cover in those bushes yonder. We'll do more good there, and this breastwork, or what's left of it, is no longer worth holding."

Pierre looked about him astonished, and found they were almost alone.

He shouldered his musket and strode sullenly into cover, the old sergeant laughingly slapping him on the back.

Firing irregularly from the woods, the French succeeded in making it very unpleasant for the English in their work of laying a new bridge.

But, notwithstanding, the bridge grew before their eyes. Pierre was disgusted.

"We're beaten, it seems, already," he cried to the sergeant.

"Not at all!" responded the latter, cheerfully. "All this small force could be expected to do has been already done. We have suffered but slightly, while we have caused the enemy considerable loss. That's all we set out to do. We're not strong enough to stand up to them; we're only trying to weaken them all we can. See, now they're crossing--and it's about time we were out of this!"