“Cold and forsaken, destitute of friends,
And all good comforts else, unless some tree
Whose speechless chanty doth better ours,
With which the bitter east-winds made their sport
And sang through hourly, hath invited thee
To shelter half a day. Shall she be thus,
And I draw in soft slumbers?”
BRAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
It was near sunset before Hector and his cousin returned on the evening
of the eventful day that had found Catharine a prisoner on Long Island.
They had met with good success in hunting, and brought home a fine
half-grown fawn, fat and in good order. They were surprised at finding
the fire nearly extinguished, and no Catharine awaiting their return.
There, it is true, was the food that she had prepared for them, but she
was not to be seen; supposing that she had been tired of waiting for
them, and had gone out to gather strawberries, they did not at first
feel very anxious, but ate some of the rice and honey, for they were
hungry with long fasting; and taking some Indian meal cake in their
hands, they went out to call her in, but no trace of her was visible.
They now became alarmed, fearing that she had set off by herself to seek
them, and had missed her way home again.
They hurried back to the happy valley--she was not there; to Pine-tree
Point--no trace of her there; to the edge of the mount that overlooked
the lake--no, she was not to be seen; night found them still
unsuccessful in their search. Sometimes they fancied that she had seated
herself beneath some tree and fallen asleep; but no one imagined the
true cause, having seen nothing of the Indians.
Again they retraced their steps back to the house; but they found her
not there. They continued their unavailing search till the moon setting
left them in darkness, and they laid down to rest, but not to sleep. The
first streak of dawn saw them again hurrying to and fro, calling in
vain upon the name of the loved and lost companion of their wanderings.
Desolation had fallen upon their house, and the evil which of all others
they had most feared, had happened to them.
Indiana, whose vigilance was more untiring, for she yielded not so
easily to grief and despair, now returned with the intelligence that
she had discovered the Indian trail, through the big ravine to the lake
shore; she had found the remains of a wreath of oak leaves which had
been woven by Catharine, and probably been about her hair; and she had
seen the mark of feet, Indian feet, on the soft clay, at the edge of the
lake, and the furrowing of the shingles by the pushing off of a canoe.
It was evident that she had been taken away from her home by these
people. Poor Louis gave way to transports of grief and despair; he
knew the wreath, it was such as Catharine often made for herself, and
Mathilde, and petite Louise, and Marie; his mother had taught her to
make them; they were linked together by the stalks, and formed a sort
of leaf chain. The remembrance of many of their joyous days of childhood
made Louis weep sorrowful tears for happy days, never to return again;
he placed the torn relic in his breast, and sadly turned away to hide
his grief from Hector and the Indian girl.
Indiana now proposed searching the island for further traces, but
advised wariness in so doing. They saw, however, no smoke nor canoes.
The Indians had departed while they were searching the ravines and flats
round Mount Ararat, and the lake told no tales, The following day they
ventured to land on Long Island, and on going to the north side saw
evident traces of a temporary encampment having been made. This was all
they could do, further search was unavailing; as they found no trace of
any violence having been committed, they still cherished hopes that
no personal harm had been done to the poor captive, It was Indiana’s
opinion that, though a prisoner, she was unhurt, as the Indians rarely
killed women and children, unless roused to do so by some signal act
on the part of their enemies, when an exterminating spirit of revenge
induced them to kill and spare not; but where no offence had been
offered, they were not likely to take the life of an helpless,
unoffending female.
The Indian is not cruel for the wanton love of blood, but to gratify
revenge for some injury done to himself, or to his tribe; but it was
difficult to still the terrible apprehensions that haunted the minds of
Louis and Hector. They spent much time in searching the northern shores
and the distant islands, in the vain hope of finding her, as they still
thought the camp might have been moved to the opposite side of the lake.
Inconsolable for the loss of their beloved companion, Hector and Louis
no longer took interest in what was going on; they hardly troubled
themselves to weed the Indian corn, in which they had taken such great
delight; all now seemed to them flat, stale, and unprofitable; they
wandered listlessly to and fro, silent and sad; the sunshine had
departed from their little dwelling; they ate little, and talked less,
each seeming absorbed in his own painful reveries.
In vain the gentle Indian girl strove to revive their drooping spirits;
they seemed insensible to her attentions, and often left her for hours
alone. They returned one evening about the usual hour of sunset, and
missed their meek, uncomplaining guest from the place she was wont to
occupy. They called, but there was none to reply--she too was gone. They
hurried to the shore just time enough to see the canoe diminishing to a
mere speck upon the waters, in the direction of the mouth of the river;
they called to her in accents of despair, to return, but the wind wafted
back no sound to their ears, and soon the bark was lost to sight, and
they sat them down disconsolately on the shore.
“What is she doing?” said Hector; “this is cruel to abandon us thus.”
“She has gone up the river, with the hope of bringing us some tidings
of Catharine,” said Louis. “How came you to think that such is her
intention?”
“I heard her say the other day that she would go and bring her back, or
die.”
“What! do you think she would risk the vengeance of the old chief whose
life she attempted to take?”
“She is a brave girl; she does not fear pain or death to serve those she
loves.”
“Alas!” said Hector, “she will perish miserably and to no avail; they
would not restore our dear sister, even at the sacrifice of Indiana’s
life.”
“How can she, unprotected and alone, dare such perils? Why did she not
tell us? we would have shared her danger.”
“She feared for our lives more than for her own; that poor Indian girl
has a noble heart. I care not now what befals us, we have lost all that
made life dear to us,” said Louis gloomily, sinking his head between his
knees.
“Hush, Louis, you are older than I, and ought to bear these trials with
more courage. It was our own fault, Indiana’s leaving us, we left her so
much alone to pine after her lost companion; she seemed to think that we
did not care for her. Poor Indiana, she must have felt lonely and sad.”
“I tell you what we will do, Hec.--make a log canoe. I found an old
battered one lying on the shore, not far from Pine-tree Point; we have
an axe and a tomahawk,--what should hinder us from making one like it?”
“True! we will set about it to-morrow.”
“I wish it were morning, that we might set to work to cut down a good
pine for the purpose.”
“As soon as it is done, we will go up the river; anything is better than
this dread suspense and inaction.”
The early dawn saw the two cousins busily engaged chopping at a tree of
suitable dimensions, and they worked hard all that day, and the next,
and the next, before the canoe was hollowed out, and then, owing to
their inexperience and the bluntness of their tools, their first attempt
proved abortive; it was too heavy at one end, and did not balance well
in the water.
Louis, who had been quite sure of success, was disheartened; not so
Hector.
“Do not let us give it up; my maxim is perseverance; let us try again,
and again--aye! and a third and a fourth time. I say, never give it up,
that is the way to succeed at last.”
“You have ten times my patience, Hec.” “Yes! but you are more ingenious
than I, and are excellent at starting an idea.”
“We are a good pair then for partnership.”
“We will begin anew; and this time I hope we shall profit by our past
blunders.”
“Who would imagine that it is now more than a month since we lost
Catharine!”
“I know it, a long, long, weary month,” replied Louis, and he struck his
axe sharply into the bark of the pine as he spoke, and remained silent
for some minutes. The boys, wearied by chopping down the tree, rested
from their work, and sat down on the side of the condemned canoe to
resume their conversation. Suddenly Louis grasped Hector’s arm, and
pointed to a bark canoe that appeared making for the westernmost point
of the island. Hector started to his feet, exclaiming, “It is Indiana
returned!”
“Nonsense! Indiana!--it is no such thing. Look you, it is a stout man in
a blanket coat.”
“The Indians?” asked Hector inquiringly.
“I do not think he looks like an Indian; but let us watch. What is he
doing?”
“Fishing. See now, he has just caught a fine bass--another--he has great
luck-now he is pushing the canoe ashore.”
“That man does not move like an Indian--hark! he is whistling. I ought
to know that tune. It sounds like the old chanson my father used to
sing;” and Louis, raising his voice, began to sing the words of an old
French Canadian song, which we will give in the English as we heard it
sung by an old lumberer.
“Down by those banks where the pleasant waters flow,
Through the wild woods we’ll wander, and we’ll chase the buffalo.
And we’ll chase the buffalo.”
“Hush, Louis! you will bring the man over to us,” said Hector.
“The very thing I am trying to do mon ami. This is our country, and that
may be his; but we are lords here, and two to one--so I think he will
not be likely to treat us ill. I am a man now, and so are you, and he is
but one, so he must mind how he affronts us,” replied Louis laughing.
“I wish the old fellow was inclined to be sociable. Hark, if he is
not singing now! aye, and the very chorus of the old song,”--and Louis
raised his voice to its highest pitch as he repeated,
“Through the wild woods well wander,
And well chase the buffalo--
And we’ll chase the buffalo.”
“What a pity I have forgotten the rest of that dear old song. I used to
listen with open ears to it when I was a boy. I never thought to hear it
again, and to hear it here of all places in the world!”
“Come, let us go on with our work,” said Hector, with something like
impatience in his voice; and the strokes of his axe fell once more
in regular succession on the log; but Louis’s eye was still on the
mysterious fisher, whom he could discern lounging on the grass and
smoking his pipe. “I do not think he sees or hears us,” said Louis to
himself, “but I think I’ll manage to bring him over soon”--and he set
himself busily to work to scrape up the loose chips and shavings, and
soon began to strike fire with his knife and flint.
“What are you about, Louis?” asked Hector. “Lighting a fire.”
“It is warm enough without a fire, I am sure.”
“I know that, but I want to attract the notice of yonder tiresome
fisherman.”
“And perhaps bring a swarm of savages down upon us, who may be lurking
in the bushes of the island.”
“Pooh, pooh! Hec.:--there are no savages. I am weary of this
place--anything is better than this horrible solitude.” And Louis fanned
the flame into a rapid blaze, and heaped up the light dry branches till
it soared up among the bushes. Louis watched the effect of his fire,
and rubbed his hands gleefully as the bark canoe was pushed off from the
island, and a few vigorous strokes of the paddle sent it dancing over
the surface of the calm lake.
Louis waved his cap above his head with a cheer of welcome as the vessel
lightly glided into the little cove, near the spot where the boys were
chopping, and a stout-framed, weather-beaten man, in a blanket coat,
also faded and weather-beaten, with a red worsted sash and worn
mocassins, sprung upon one of the timbers of Louis’s old raft, and gazed
with a keen eye upon the lads. Each party silently regarded the other. A
few rapid interrogations from the stranger, uttered in the broad patois
of the Lower Province, were answered in a mixture of broken French and
English by Louis.
A change like lightning passed over the face of the old man as he cried
out--“Louis Perron, son of my ancient compagnon.”
“Oui! oui!”--with eyes sparkling through tears of joy, Louis threw
himself into the broad breast of Jacob Morelle, his father’s friend and
old lumbering comrade.
“Hector, son of la belle Catharine Perron,--and Hector, in his turn,
received the affectionate embrace of the warm-hearted old man.
“Who would have thought of meeting with the children of my old comrade
here at the shore of the Rice Lake?--oh! what a joyful meeting!”
Jacob had a hundred questions to ask: Where were their parents? did they
live on the Plains now? how long was it since they had left the Cold
Springs? were there any more little ones? and so forth.
The boys looked sorrowfully at each other. At last the old man stopped
for want of breath, and remarked their sad looks.
“What, mes fils, are your parents dead? Ah well! I did not think to have
outlived them; but they have not led such healthy lives as old Jacob
Morelle--hunting, fishing, lumbering, trapping,--those are the things to
harden a man and make him as tough as a stock-fish--eh! mes enfans, is
it not so?”
Hector then told the old lumberer how long they had been separated from
their families, and by what sad accident they had been deprived of the
society of their beloved sister. When they brought their narrative down
to the disappearance of Catharine, the whole soul of the old trapper
seemed moved--he started from the log on which they were sitting, and
with one of his national asseverations, declared “That la bonne fille
should not remain an hour longer than he could help among those savage
wretches. Yes, he, her father’s old friend, would go up the river and
bring her back in safety, or leave his grey scalp behind him among the
wigwams.”
“It is too late, Jacob, to think of starting today,” said Hector. “Come
home with us, and eat some food, and rest a bit.”
“No need of that, my son. I have a lot of fish here in the canoe,
and there is an old shanty on the island yonder, if it be still
standing,--the Trapper’s Fort I used to call it some years ago. We will
go off to the island and look for it.”
“No need for that,” replied Louis, “for though I can tell you the old
place is still in good repair, for we used it this very spring as a
boiling house for our maple sap, yet we have a better place of our own
nearer at hand--just two or three hundred yards over the brow of yonder
hill. So come with us, and you shall have a good supper, and bed to lie
upon.”
“And you have all these, boys!” said Jacob opening his merry black eyes,
as they came in sight of the little log-house and the field of green
corn. The old man praised the boys for their industry and energy. “Ha!
here is old Wolfe too,” as the dog roused himself from the hearth and
gave one of his low grumbling growls. He had grown dull and dreamy, and
instead of going out as usual with the young hunters, he would lie
for hours dozing before the dying embers of the fire. He pined for the
loving hand that used to pat his sides, and caress his shaggy neck, and
pillow his great head upon her lap, or suffer him to put his huge paws
upon her shoulders, while he licked her hands and face; but she was
gone, and the Indian girl was gone, and the light of the shanty had gone
with them. Old Wolfe seemed dying of sorrow.
That evening as Jacob sat on the three-legged stool, smoking his short
Indian pipe, he again would have the whole story of their wanderings
over, and the history of all their doings and contrivances.
“And how far, mes enfans, do you think you are from the Cold Springs?”
“At least twenty miles, perhaps fifty, for it is a long long time now
since we left home, three summers ago.”
“Well, boys, you must not reckon distance by the time you have been
absent,” said the old “Now I know the distance through the woods, for I
have passed through them on the Indian trail, and by my reckoning as
the bee flies, it cannot be more than seven or eight miles--no, nor that
either.”
The boys opened their eyes. “Jacob, is this possible? So near, and yet
to us the distance has been as great as though it were a hundred miles
or more.”
“I tell you what, boys, that is the provoking part of it. I remember
when I was out on the St. John’s, lumbering, missing my comrades, and I
was well-nigh starving, when I chanced to come back to the spot where we
parted; and I verily believe I had not been two miles distant the whole
eight days that I was moving round and round, and backward and forward,
just in a circle, because, d’ye see, I followed the sun, and that led me
astray the whole time.”
“Was that when you well-nigh roasted the bear?” asked Louis, with a sly
glance at Hector.
“Well, no; that was another time; your father was out with me then.”
And old Jacob, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, settled himself to
recount the adventure of the bear. Hector, who had heard Louis’s edition
of the roast bear, was almost impatient at being forced to listen to old
Jacob’s long-winded history, which included about a dozen other stories,
all tagged on to this, like links of a lengthened chain; and was not
sorry when the old lumberer, taking his red nightcap out of his pocket,
at last stretched himself out on a buffalo skin that he had brought up
from the canoe, and soon was soundly sleeping.
The morning was yet grey when the old man shook himself from his
slumber, which, if not deep, had been loud; and after having roused up
a good fire, which, though the latter end of July, at that dewy hour
was not unwelcome, he lighted his pipe, and began broiling a fish on
the coals for his breakfast; and was thus engaged when Hector and Louis
wakened.
“Mes enfans,” said Jacob, “I have been turning over in my mind about
your sister, and have come to the resolution of going up the river
alone without any one to accompany me. I know the Indians; they are a
suspicious people, they deal much in stratagems, and they are apt to
expect treachery in others. Perhaps they have had some reason; for the
white men have not always kept good faith with them, which I take to be
the greater shame, as they have God’s laws to guide and teach them to
be true and just in their dealing, which the poor benighted heathen have
not, the more’s the pity. Now, d’ye see, if the Indians see two stout
lads with me, they will say to themselves, there may be more left
behind, skulking in ambush. So, boys, I go to the camp alone; and, God
willing, I will bring back your sister, or die in the attempt. I shall
not go single-handed; see, I have here scarlet-cloth, beads, and powder
and shot. I carry no firewater; it is a sin and a shame to tempt these
poor wretches to their own destruction; it makes fiends of them at
once.”
It was to no purpose that Hector and Louis passionately besought old
Jacob to let them share the dangers of the expedition; the old man was
firm, and would not be moved from his purpose.
“Look you, boys,” he said, “if I do not return by the beginning of the
rice harvest, you may suppose that evil has befallen me and the girl;
then I would advise you to take care for your own safety, for if they
do not respect my grey head, neither will they spare your young ones.
In such case, make yourselves a good canoe--a dug-out _[FN: Log
canoe.]_ will do--and go down the lake till you are stopped by the
rapids; _[FN: Crook’s Rapids.]_ make a portage there; but as your
craft is too weighty to carry far, e’en leave her and chop out another,
and go down to the Falls; _[FN: Heeley’s Falls, on the Trent.]_
then, if you do not like to be at any further trouble, you may make out
your journey to the Bay _[FN: Bay Quinte.]_ on foot, coasting along
the river; there you will fall in with settlers who know old Jacob
Morelle--aye, and your two fathers--and they will put you in the way of
returning home. If I were to try ever so to put you on the old Indian
trail in the woods, though I know it myself right well, you might be
lost, and maybe never return home again. I leave my traps and my rifle
with you; I shall not need them: if I come back I may claim the things;
if not, they are yours. So now I have said my say, had my _talk_, as the
Indians say. Farewell. But first let us pray to Him who alone can bring
this matter to a safe issue.” And the old man devoutly kneeled down,
and prayed for a blessing on his voyage and on those he was leaving; and
then hastened down to the beach, and the boys, with full hearts, watched
the canoe till it was lost to their sight on the wide waters of the
lake.