The Black Wolf's Breed Part 29

As a picture laid away in memory this all comes back to me pure and fresh, but on that morning I gave it no heed. From the heights I pa.s.sed along through quiet streets into the lower town, thence to the beach, where I was soon inquiring among the sailors for the privateer.

These women looked askance at me, and regarded my unfamiliar uniform with suspicion, but after great difficulty one of their number was induced to carry me alongside an ominous looking craft lying in the harbor--a black-hulled brig of probably six hundred and fifty tons burden. Of the sentinel on deck I asked:

"Your captain--"

"Is here," and at the word a dark, wiry man, who had evidently been watching my approach, appeared at the companion way.

"A word with you, sir, if you are the captain of this craft. I am told you are refitting for a trip to west Florida. What your errand is I care not; I want to go with you."

"We do not take pa.s.sengers," he answered positively.

"Then take me as a marine, a seaman, what you will. I am a soldier, familiar with the handspike as with the sword, though knowing little of winds or currents."

Captain Leva.s.seur eyed me closely, asked many questions concerning my life and service, to which I replied, truthfully in part. He seemed satisfied.

"Well, we do need a few more stout fellows who can handle a cutla.s.s; when could you come aboard?"

"At once; I have no baggage but the weapons at my side."

"Good. Your name?"

"Gaspard Cambronne," I answered at random.

The freebooter laughed.

"We care nothing for your name so you will fight. We sail the day after to-morrow one week." And surveying my well knit frame, for I was a st.u.r.dy youth, "If you know any more stout young fellows like yourself we can give them a berth apiece."

So I scrambled aboard without more ado, and became at once a member of the "Seamew's" crew. I hardly knew at first why I gave a false name.

But the character of the vessel was doubtful, its destination uncertain, and knowing not what mission she was on I s.h.i.+rked to give my real name and station. The chance was desperate, yet not one whit more desperate than I.

The Seamew sailed more than three weeks behind le Dauphin, armed with letters of marque from the King commissioning her to prey upon Spanish commerce in southern seas, and especially to take part in any expedition against Havana or Pensacola.

Our voyage wore on drearily enough to me, almost without incident.

After four weeks of sky and sea we rounded the southernmost cape of Florida and turned into the Mexican Gulf. I grew more and more impatient and full of dread. Le Dauphin had twenty-three days the start of our faster vessel, and Biloxi was probably at that moment in a fever of warlike preparation. It was just possible, too, that the Spaniards had not yet been informed of the war, and nothing had been so far done by them.

Cruising by Pensacola harbor, just outside the Isle de Santa Rosa, a pine-grown stretch of narrow sand which for twenty-five leagues protects that coast, Leva.s.seur called me to him.

"Do you know, my lad, what vessels those are at anchor in the harbor?"

Two of them I recognized as I would my own tent, two French men-of-war which Bienville had long been expecting from France. The rest were Spaniards, full-rigged, four s.h.i.+ps, and six gunboats. Leva.s.seur put the Seamew boldly about and entered the harbor. He signaled the Frenchmen, lowered a boat, and sent his lieutenant aboard the flags.h.i.+p with credentials and a letter signifying his readiness to engage in any enterprise.

From Admiral Champmeslin, in command of the squadron, he learned that Bienville and Serigny, combined with the Choctaws, had invested Pensacola by land, and on the morrow a simultaneous attack by land and sea would be made. The Spanish forces consisted of four s.h.i.+ps, six gunboats, a strong fort on Santa Rosa Island, and the works at Pensacola, the strength of whose garrison was unknown.

That night on board the Seamew was spent in busy preparation and in rest. I alone was unemployed, my awkwardness with ropes and spars forbade it. I sat moodily upon a gun at the port, and fixing my eyes on sh.o.r.e vainly endeavored to make out what the French and Choctaws were doing there. To the left were the meager camp fires of the Indians; further up the hills a more generous blazing line marked the French position.

Gradually a low wavering sound separated itself from the other noises of the night, coming faint but clear upon the light land breeze, the first quivering notes of a Choctaw war chant. How familiar it was.

Was I mistaken? I listened more intently. No. It was in very truth the voice of Tuskahoma, my old friend on many marches.

I cared nothing for the Seamew or her crew, and determined to seek my old friends to fight out the day with them.

What little thought I gave it justified the deed. My position as an officer of the King would palliate deserting the s.h.i.+p which had brought me over.

CHAPTER XXI

THE FALL OF PENSACOLA

I slipped down the anchor chain without noise into the throbbing sea, and swam ash.o.r.e to a point some three or four cable lengths away.

Guided by the single voice which still sang of war, of glory and of death, I pushed easily into the ring of hideously painted savages who surrounded the singer. To unaccustomed eyes this would have been a fearful sight.

Two hundred warriors sat motionless as bronze idols about their chief; two hundred naked bodies glinted back the pine knot's fitful glow. In the center of this threatening circle moved Tuskahoma, two great crimson blotches upon his cheeks, treading that weird suggestive measure the Indians knew so well. Round and round a little pine-tree, shorn of its branches and striped with red, he crept, danced and sang.

His words came wild and irregular, a sort of rhythmic medley, now soft and low as the murmur of the summer ocean, now thrilling every ear by their sudden ferocity and fearful energy. Now it was the gentle lullaby, the mother's crooning, the laughter of a child; again, the bursting of the tempest, the lightning's flash, the thunder's rumbling roar.

His arms raised to heaven like some gaunt priest of butchery, he invoked the mighty Manitou of his tribe, then dropping p.r.o.ne upon the ground he crawled, a sinuous serpent, among the trees.

For awhile his listeners wandered away upon their chieftain's words to the waiting ones at home, to hunting grounds of peace and plenty; melodious as a maiden's sigh that song breathed of love and lover's hopes, it wailed for departed friends, extolled their virtues, and called down heaven's curses upon the coward of tomorrow's fight. Then the fierce gleam of s.h.i.+ning steel, one wild war-whoop and all again was still. His words faded away in the echoless night till a holy hush brooded o'er beach and forest.

Then the solitary dancer wound about the ring as the crouching panther steals upon her prey, while peal after peal came the frightful cries of barbaric conflict, the shrieks of the wounded--a wild, victorious shout blended with a hopeless dying scream.

With a master's touch he played upon their vibrant feelings; not a key of human emotion he left unsounded fame, pride, hate, love and death--his song expressed them all.

Thoroughly frenzied, warrior after warrior now began to join him in the ring; voice after voice caught up the dread refrain which terrorized the trained soldiery of Europe and filled their imaginations with the nameless horrors of unrelenting war.

High above the din Tuskahoma lifted now his ferocious battle cry; advancing upon the blazed sapling he sank his tomahawk deep into the soft white wood, then moved swiftly out of the circle to his own fire.

This was the act by which he announced his a.s.sumption of supreme authority.

Frantic with excitement the unleashed throng rushed upon this fancied enemy, and soon but the mangled fragments and the roots marked where it had stood.

And the forest slumbered and the sentry paced his lonely path.

It is not my purpose to speak in detail of those matters of history which have been so much better described by men of learning. I would merely mention in pa.s.sing such smaller affairs as relate directly to my own narrative.

Short and sharp was the conflict which, under G.o.d, gave our arms the victory at Pensacola. Swarming over the palisades or boldly tearing them down, the Choctaws, led by Tuskahoma, swept the Spaniards from their works. It so happened that Tuskahoma and I mounted the fortifications together. As I essayed to drop down upon the inside my sword belt caught upon the top of a picket, leaving me dangling in mid air, an easy prey to those below had they only noticed my plight.

Tuskahoma paused to sever the belt with his knife, and by this accident I was first within the Spanish works, sword and pistol in hand. Soon a hundred were by my side.

The Spanish troops, inured to civilized warfare, could not stand before these yelling demons, springing here and there elusive as phantoms, wielding torch and tomahawk with deadly effect.

In the very forefront, shoulder to shoulder, with a laugh and a parry, a lunge and a jest, fought the Chevalier de la Mora. Merry as a lad at play, resolute and quick, I could but stop betimes to wonder at the fellow. Gallant, gay and debonnair, he sang a rippling little air from soft Provence, and whirled his blade with such dainty skill that even the stoical Indians gazed in awe upon the laughing cavalier. Fighting through a bye-street, he met, steel to steel, a Spanish gentleman, within the sweep of whose sword lay half a dozen of our good fellows.

De la Mora glanced at this silent tribute to the Spaniard's prowess; his face lighted up with a soldier's joy. He planted one foot staunchly across a prostrate corpse, and right jauntily rang out the hissing music of their steel. Instinctively I paused to watch, and as instinctively understood that though pressed to his best, de la Mora desired to be left alone. Verily it was a gentleman's fight, and no odds, for love and glory's sake, though the Spaniard might have had a whit the better. As I fought on, I heard the swift hurtle of a flying knife, and saw the Spaniard drop his sword. De la Mora glanced round with indignant eyes to the Choctaw who had made the cast, now looking for approval from this gentleman who sang like a woman and fought like a fiend. The Chevalier was like to have wreaked summary vengeance for striking so foul a blow. Through the press I could see him go up to his late adversary, bare-headed and courteous, to extricate him from the motley, bleeding group wherein he had fallen. Throwing his powerful shoulder against a door, he broke it down, and tenderly carried the wounded gentleman within. I could then see him quietly standing guard at the door, waiting for the turmoil to cease, for it was then quite evident that the day was ours.

Already the Choctaws were busy tearing the reeking scalps from the living and the dead. De la Mora's face grew deathly pale at the sight; his cheeks did play the woman, and one might deem him my lady's dapper page, catching his maiden whiff of blood. This generous act kept him from being in at the close of the fray, and robbed him of the greater meed of glory which he might have thereby won. Twice that day, as he struck down a pike aimed at my breast, did he make me to feel in my heart like a lying thief--I, who was weak enough to imagine his dishonor.

Just at the last there was a trifling incident occurred which my lads insisted was greatly to my credit. News of this was carried straight to the Governor, and much was made thereof.

Bienville, with his Frenchmen, battered down the gates, and before many minutes the proud Castilian pennon lowered to the milk-white flag of France. On sea and land were we alike successful.

An hour after Pensacola fell, the Spanish s.h.i.+ps struck their colors to Champmeslin. Our greatest loss was the total destruction of the Seamew, blown up by a red-hot shot, which fell in her powder magazine.