The Plowshare and the Sword Part 21

"This is the message," shouted Gaudriole, and as he spoke he rushed under the Dutchman's arm, and shambled swiftly down the road. "To the man who has to live upon his wits the Dutchman is a gift from Heaven itself. Remember, my captain! The tobacco leaf is a brave cure for ill humour."

Van Vuren hurled a curse after him, and turned to ascend. From the summit of the heights he scanned the prospect, and quickly learnt what Gaudriole might have told him had he exercised greater forbearance.

The expedition had at last returned. Almost as soon as Van Vuren looked out he heard a welcome cry, and presently perceived a figure, clad in the distinctive dress of Holland, crossing the valley at a rapid walk. With an exclamation of relief the captain hastened down, and met Dutoit, his lieutenant and the leader of the exploration party, upon the plain.

Hurriedly the survivors collated their gloomy experiences.

"Twenty-eight left of our seventy-five," muttered Van Vuren, when he had heard Dutoit's report of two men lost and one dead of fever, "our supplies and ammunition gone, our s.h.i.+p destroyed. We have nothing now to hope for, except a safe pa.s.sage home. Hast seen any Englishmen?"

"Yesterday we sighted a spy making south, and him we pursued until he escaped us in the bush," answered Dutoit.

"These men never recognise defeat," went on Van Vuren. "They shall spread upward from the south, flow into this land, and push the French back from fort to fort. They have a wondrous knack of gratifying the savages. Know you if any new expedition has come over?"

"We came upon a man mortally sick, who babbled as he died about a s.h.i.+p supplied by the wool-staplers, which started from Bristol some nine months ago and was lost upon the reefs. This fellow had his face set due north, and believed that he was travelling towards Boston----"

"Who comes here?" cried Van Vuren, breaking in upon the other's story with a note of fear.

They saw the tall, stern figure of Mary Iden descending towards them, armed as for the chase. She crossed the ridge and halted when she sighted the men. Her face was ghastly, and her eyes roved wildly over the prospect. Presently she put out her hand, and the Dutchmen waited when they saw her sign.

"Soldiers," cried a wild English voice, "have you seen the French priest known as La Salle pa.s.s into the fortress?"

Van Vuren, who had touched at most of the New World colonies in his time, knew the Anglo-Saxon well enough to answer; but he started, and said bitterly to his subordinate:

"The very savages speak English. Where is the Indian who has a knowledge of French in all this country, which the French rule? Did not I say to you that it is as impossible to keep the men of King Charles out of this land as it is to dam the ocean behind a bank of sand?"

He turned to the Englishman's wife, and demanded further knowledge.

The woman struggled to return the answer which policy advised, but pa.s.sion overmastered her. Her eyes flashed wildly as she answered:

"Your race has ever been friendly with mine. 'Tis true you are foes of the English, but all nations hate England, even as the birds of the forest hate the eagle because of the strength of his flight. Soldiers, show me where I may find this priest. I have walked through the night seeking him. But a few hours ago I was a mother. To-day my son gives no answer to my voice. He was a great hunter was my son, though but a boy, and he feared no man. This day we bury him where the waters shout. He was good to look upon, he was strong like the young bear.

He had brave eyes. Soldiers, it is the priest who has slain my son."

The anguished woman had spoken thus aloud as she walked through the cathedral-like aisles of the forest, addressing the columnar pines, the fretted arch of foliage, the dim bush shrines; so she had called as her heart bled to the climbing t.i.ts, the ghostly moths, and the long grey wolf as he slunk away.

"Who is the father of your son?" pressed the Dutchman.

Awaking to the consciousness that the question was not wholly dictated by sympathy, Mary Iden drew herself erect, and, pointing over the heads of the men, indicated the impregnable heights whereon waved the flag azure a fleur-de-lys or, that emblem which dominated the land from the islands in the gulf to the country where the foot of white men had never trod.

"I have learnt the story of the wanderings of the children of England,"

she said in a strained prophetic voice. "Of the journey of the man Cabot, who pa.s.sed into the places of wind, into the great sea of ice, and reached the land where the Indians dare not walk. Of the seaman Frobisher, who touched the iron coast and lived. These men pa.s.sed out like spirits into the unknown, and came back with their great story as men restored from the dead. As the crow follows the eagle, to take of that which the strong bird leaves, so Frenchmen followed the great adventurers of England. And now I see the French driven from their fortress, from Tadousac and St. Croix. Those who dwell in Acadie shall be driven out, and go as exiles into a strange country. I see soldiers sweeping the great cliffs, freeing the valleys and plains. I see the French settled upon their farms, and their flag no longer s.h.i.+nes in the sun, and the people bend themselves to the rule of an English Queen, whose name is Victory and whose reign is peace. Many moons shall come and go, many suns shall heat the Father of Waters before these things shall be, and I shall not live to see that day." She pressed her hands to her aching eyes, and s.h.i.+vered as she swayed, and once more cried: "Soldiers, have you seen the priest who has slain my son?"

"A witch!" exclaimed Van Vuren hoa.r.s.ely. "Let us escape before she overlooks us."

The superst.i.tious Dutchmen hurried out to rejoin their men, who were camping in the forest; while Mary Iden made her way across the plain, and so into the great red eye of the sun.

CHAPTER XVII.

STAMEN.

That knowledge of forest-craft, which enables the traveller to guide his feet unerringly through pathless bush, was only in rare instances acquired by the New World venturers, and then only after years of hard experience. When Woodfield abandoned his captain to follow the career of Hough he struck indeed in the right direction, but the native trails were numerous, and along one of these the yeoman went astray. By seeking to set himself right he became hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of the forest; and at last succ.u.mbed to weariness and stretched himself to sleep upon a bed of moss, until a ray of sunlight stabbed through the dense roof of foliage and smote him across the eyes.

Woodfield arose and looked around in sore perplexity, knowing not which way to turn. The globes of dew gleamed in opal tints upon the gra.s.s, the big robins pa.s.sed wreathed in filmy gossamers, the earth smoked with mist and thrilled with the voice of the glad west wind. But all the beauty and peace of nature combined made no satisfying meal for an empty body. Trusting to Providence, Woodfield started out afresh, and walked strongly for many hours, but always making direct north and away from the camping-ground of the Iroquois, away from Couchicing and the little settlement upon its sh.o.r.e.

The yeoman tramped on, until exhaustion came upon him. All around the great white pines lifted two hundred feet in height, interspersed with dazzling spruce and gleaming poplars. He smoked to still the pain of hunger, but the strong tobacco made him dazed. He staggered on, and presently heard the voices of approaching men. The trail bent sharply.

He pa.s.sed on, with half-opened eyes and wildly throbbing brain, went round the bend, and started suddenly as from an evil dream. Half-naked bodies and painted faces closed round him in a clamorous ring; and Woodfield awoke fully to the knowledge that he had fallen into the hands of the Algonquins.

With an effort he drew himself upright, and gazed bravely at an old warrior with flowing hair, who nodded and smiled at him in a not unfriendly fas.h.i.+on.

"J'ai faim," the adventurer muttered, trusting that one at least of the braves might understand the French language.

It was the wily old fox Oskelano who confronted the Englishman. He stretched out his hand--the etiquette of handshaking he had acquired from his visit to the fortress--and articulated with difficulty:

"You ... French?"

Woodfield grasped the brown hand and nodded violently.

"Necessity makes hypocrites of us all," he muttered for the satisfaction of his stubborn English conscience.

Oskelano grinned amicably and gave an order to his men; and straightway the warriors closed round and escorted Woodfield to their camp, every step widening the distance between him and his companions. They gave him food and drink; they provided him with a shelter; they built a smoky fire before him to keep away the flies. Finally Oskelano himself came, accompanied by his brother, and the two squatted gravely at the entrance to the bower and scrutinised their captive with pride and interest.

"Um," grunted Oskelano, after a long period of silence.

"Ho," muttered the weary Englishman with equal gravity.

The French vocabulary of the Algonquin chief did not extend beyond the single word _diable_, a word which he uttered constantly in his subsequent efforts to converse with his guest, without any understanding of its meaning, but believing, since he had heard it issue with frequency from the lips of the soldiers in the fortress, that it was an expression of possibilities. He endeavoured to convey by means of gestures that it had come to his knowledge that the Iroquois were about to attack the fortress at the instigation of the English. His spies had seen a messenger bearing the symbol of the headless bird. They had also observed the general movement eastward of the tribes. The G.o.ds had provided him with a rare opportunity for attacking his enemy. He was the friend of the great French people--he slapped his insidious old heart with his treacherous hand--he was eager to fight for his allies, and in return he doubted not that the chief far over seas, King Louis to wit, would graciously send to his good Algonquin friends many of the magic fire-tubes, with an abundant supply of that unholy admixture of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal which possessed such a wondrous property of exploding to the physical detriment of a foe.

"Diable?" he grunted, staring eagerly at Woodfield.

"Oui," answered the hara.s.sed Englishman, though in truth he had understood nothing.

"Um," grunted Oskelano; and there the interview ended, with nothing gained on either side.

But as the chief returned to his skin-hut, his brother, a sachem wiser than he, made the disquieting a.s.sertion: "The white stranger is not of the French tribe."

"How know you so?" cried the perturbed chief.

"He does not lift his hands, nor does he shake his shoulders when he speaks. He sits without motion. He does not laugh. He is one of the race they call English."

Woodfield ate the strong bear-meat brought to his shelter by a silent giant, and turned to compose himself for sleep; but the giant touched his shoulder and made a gesture which there was no mistaking. The Englishman rose, and immediately two other figures glided out of the forest and cut off his retreat.

They led him along a trail where the fireflies were beginning to light their lamps, between the big trees, and out into short bush and sage-brush where the cranes swept overhead, crying mournfully.

Rockland appeared presently, streaked granite overrun with poison-ivy.

The captive noticed that the rock was fretted with caves.

Into one of these he was ushered by the custodians, who then gravely divested him of his weapons. A fire was lighted near the mouth of the cave, and there the bronze guardians squatted, maintaining an intolerable silence throughout the night.

A change of sentries took place at daybreak; another at mid-day; a third the following nightfall. Food and drink were handed in to the prisoner; but the guards spoke never a word and made him no sign.