CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FALL OF THE CATINATS.

Two days after Madame de Maintenon's marriage to the king there was held

within the humble walls of her little room a meeting which was destined

to cause untold misery to many hundreds of thousands of people, and yet,

in the wisdom of Providence, to be an instrument in carrying French arts

and French ingenuity and French sprightliness among those heavier

Teutonic peoples who have been the stronger and the better ever since

for the leaven which they then received. For in history great evils

have sometimes arisen from a virtue, and most beneficent results have

often followed hard upon a crime.

The time had come when the Church was to claim her promise from madame,

and her pale cheek and sad eyes showed how vain it had been for her to

try and drown the pleadings of her tender heart by the arguments of the

bigots around her. She knew the Huguenots of France. Who could know

them better, seeing that she was herself from their stock, and had been

brought up in their faith? She knew their patience, their nobility,

their independence, their tenacity. What chance was there that they

would conform to the king's wish? A few great nobles might, but the

others would laugh at the galleys, the jail, or even the gallows when

the faith of their fathers was at stake. If their creed were no longer

tolerated, then, and if they remained true to it, they must either fly

from the country or spend a living death tugging at an oar or working in

a chain-gang upon the roads. It was a dreadful alternative to present

to a people who were so numerous that they made a small nation in

themselves. And most dreadful of all, that she who was of their own

blood should cast her voice against them. And yet her promise had been

given, and now the time had come when it must be redeemed.

The eloquent Bishop Bossuet was there, with Louvois, the minister of

war, and the famous Jesuit, Father la Chaise, each piling argument upon

argument to overcome the reluctance of the king. Beside them stood

another priest, so thin and so pale that he might have risen from his

bed of death, but with a fierce light burning in his large dark eyes,

and with a terrible resolution in his drawn brows and in the set of his

grim, lanky jaw. Madame bent over her tapestry and weaved her coloured

silks in silence, while the king leaned upon his hand and listened with

the face of a man who knows that he is driven, and yet can hardly turn

against the goads. On the low table lay a paper, with pen and ink

beside it. It was the order for the revocation, and it only needed the

king's signature to make it the law of the land.

"And so, father, you are of opinion that if I stamp out heresy in this

fashion I shall assure my own salvation in the next world?" he asked.

"You will have merited a reward."

"And you think so too, Monsieur Bishop?"

"Assuredly, sire."

"And you. Abbe du Chayla?"

The emaciated priest spoke for the first time, a tinge of colour

creeping into his corpse-like cheeks, and a more lurid light in his

deep-set eyes.

"I know not about assuring your salvation, sire. I think it would take

very much more to do that. But there cannot be a doubt as to your

damnation if you do not do it."

The king started angrily, and frowned at the speaker.

"Your words are somewhat more curt than I am accustomed to," he

remarked.

"In such a matter it were cruel indeed to leave you in doubt. I say

again that your soul's fate hangs upon the balance. Heresy is a mortal

sin. Thousands of heretics would turn to the Church if you did but give

the word. Therefore these thousands of mortal sins are all upon your

soul. What hope for it then, if you do not amend?"

"My father and my grandfather tolerated them."

"Then, without some special extension of the grace of God, your father

and your grandfather are burning in hell."

"Insolent!" The king sprang from his seat.

"Sire, I will say what I hold to be the truth were you fifty times a

king. What care I for any man when I know that I speak for the King of

kings? See; are these the limbs of one who would shrink from testifying

to truth?" With a sudden movement he threw back the long sleeves of his

gown and shot out his white fleshless arms. The bones were all knotted

and bent and screwed into the most fantastic shapes. Even Louvois, the

hardened man of the court, and his two brother priests, shuddered at the

sight of those dreadful limbs. He raised them above his head and turned

his burning eyes upwards.

"Heaven has chosen me to testify for the faith before now," said he.

"I heard that blood was wanted to nourish the young Church of Siam, and

so to Siam I journeyed. They tore me open; they crucified me; they

wrenched and split my bones. I was left as a dead man, yet God has

breathed the breath of life back into me that I may help in this great

work of the regeneration of France."

"Your sufferings, father," said Louis, resuming his seat, "give you

every claim, both upon the Church and upon me, who am its special

champion and protector. What would you counsel, then, father, in the

case of those Huguenots who refuse to change?"

"They would change," cried Du Chayla, with a drawn smile upon his

ghastly face. "They must bend or they must break. What matter if they

be ground to powder, if we can but build up a complete Church in the

land?" His deep-set eyes glowed with ferocity, and be shook one bony

hand in savage wrath above his head.

"The cruelty with which you have been used, then, has not taught you to

be more tender to others."

"Tender! To heretics! No, sire, my own pains have taught me that the

world and the flesh are as nothing, and that the truest charity to

another is to capture his soul at all risks to his vile body. I should

have these Huguenot souls, sire, though I turned France into a shambles

to gain them."

Louis was evidently deeply impressed by the fearless words and the wild

earnestness of the speaker. He leaned his head upon his hand for a

little time, and remained sunk in the deepest thought.

"Besides, sire," said Pere la Chaise softly, "there would be little need

for these stronger measures of which the good abbe speaks. As I have

already remarked to you, you are so beloved in your kingdom that the

mere assurance that you had expressed your will upon the subject would

be enough to turn them all to the true faith."

"I wish that I could think so, father; I wish that I could think so.

But what is this?"

It was his valet who had half opened the door.

"Captain de Catinat is here, who desires to see you at once, sire."

"Ask the captain to enter. Ah!" A happy thought seemed to have struck

him. "We shall see what love for me will do in such a matter, for if it

is anywhere to be found it must be among my own body-servants."

The guardsman had arrived that instant from his long ride, and leaving

Amos Green with the horses, he had come on at once, all dusty and

travel-stained, to carry his message to the king. He entered now, and

stood with the quiet ease of a man who is used to such scenes, his hand

raised in a salute.

"What news, captain?"

"Major de Brissac bade me tell you, sire, that he held the Castle of

Portillac, that the lady is safe, and that her husband is a prisoner."

Louis and his wife exchanged a quick glance of relief.

"That is well," said he. "By the way, captain, you have served me in

many ways of late, and always with success. I hear, Louvois, that De la

Salle is dead of the small-pox."

"He died yesterday, sire."

"Then I desire that you make out the vacant commission of major to

Monsieur de Catinat. Let me be the first to congratulate you, major,

upon your promotion, though you will need to exchange the blue coat for

the pearl and gray of the mousquetaires. We cannot spare you from the

household, you see."

De Catinat kissed the hand which the monarch held out to him.

"May I be worthy of your kindness, sire!"

"You would do what you could to serve me, would you not?"

"My life is yours, sire."

"Very good. Then I shall put your fidelity to the proof."

"I am ready for any proof."

"It is not a very severe one. You see this paper upon the table. It is

an order that all the Huguenots in my dominions shall give up their

errors, under pain of banishment or captivity. Now I have hopes that

there are many of my faithful subjects who are at fault in this matter,

but who will abjure it when they learn that it is my clearly expressed

wish that they should do so. It would be a great joy to me to find that

it was so, for it would be a pain to me to use force against any man who

bears the name of Frenchman. Do you follow me?"

"Yes, sire." The young man had turned deadly pale, and he shifted his

feet, and opened and clasped his hands. He had faced death a dozen

times and under many different forms, but never had he felt such a

sinking of the heart as came over him now.

"You are yourself a Huguenot, I understand. I would gladly have you,

then, as the first-fruit of this great measure. Let us hear from your

own lips that you, for one, are ready to follow the lead of your king in

this as in other things."

The young guardsman still hesitated, though his doubts were rather as to

how he should frame his reply than as to what its substance should be.

He felt that in an instant Fortune had wiped out all the good turns

which she had done him during his past life, and that now, far from

being in her debt, he held a heavy score against her. The king arched

his eyebrows and drummed his fingers impatiently as he glanced at the

downcast face and dejected bearing.

"Why all this thought?" he cried. "You are a man whom I have raised and

whom I will raise. He who has a major's epaulettes at thirty may carry

a marshal's baton at fifty. Your past is mine, and your future shall be

no less so. What other hopes have you?"

"I have none, sire, outside your service."

"Why this silence, then? Why do you not give the assurance which I

demand?"

"I cannot do it, sire."

"You cannot do it!"

"It is impossible. I should have no more peace in my mind, or respect

for myself, if I knew that for the sake of position or wealth I had

given up the faith of my fathers."

"Man, you are surely mad! There is all that a man could covet upon one

side, and what is there upon the other?"

"There is my honour."

"And is it, then, a dishonour to embrace my religion?"

"It would be a dishonour to me to embrace it for the sake of gain

without believing in it."

"Then believe it."

"Alas, sire, a man cannot force himself to believe. Belief is a thing

which must come to him, not he to it."

"On my word, father," said Louis, glancing with a bitter smile at his

Jesuit confessor, "I shall have to pick the cadets of the household from

your seminary, since my officers have turned casuists and theologians.

So, for the last time, you refuse to obey my request?"

"Oh, sire--" De Catinat took a step forward with outstretched hands and

tears in his eyes.

But the king checked him with a gesture. "I desire no protestations,"

said he. "I judge a man by his acts. Do you abjure or not?"

"I cannot, sire."

"You see," said Louis, turning again to the Jesuit, "it will not be as

easy as you think."

"This man is obstinate, it is true, but many others will be more

yielding."

The king shook his head. "I would that I knew what to do," said he.

"Madame, I know that you, at least, will ever give me the best advice.

You have heard all that has been said. What do you recommend?"

She kept her eyes still fixed upon her tapestry, but her voice was firm

and clear as she answered:--

"You have yourself said that you are the eldest son of the Church.

If the eldest son desert her, then who will do her bidding? And there

is truth, too, in what the holy abbe has said. You may imperil your own

soul by condoning this sin of heresy. It grows and flourishes, and if

it be not rooted out now, it may choke the truth as weeds and briers

choke the wheat."

"There are districts in France now," said Bossuet, "where a church is

not to be seen in a day's journey, and where all the folk, from the

nobles to the peasants, are of the same accursed faith. So it is in the

Cevennes, where the people are as fierce and rugged as their own

mountains. Heaven guard the priests who have to bring them back from

their errors."

"Whom should I send on so perilous a task?" asked Louis.

The Abbe du Chayla was down in a instant upon his knees with his gaunt

hands outstretched. "Send me, sire! Me!" he cried. "I have never asked

a favour of you, and never will again. But I am the man who could

break this people. Send me with your message to the people of the

Cevennes."

"God help the people of the Cevennes!" muttered Louis, as he looked with

mingled respect and loathing at the emaciated face and fiery eyes of the

fanatic. "Very well, abbe," he added aloud; "you shall go to the

Cevennes."

Perhaps for an instant there came upon the stern priest some premonition

of that dreadful morning when, as he crouched in a corner of 'his

burning home, fifty daggers were to rasp against each other in his body.

He sunk his face in his hands, and a shudder passed over his gaunt

frame. Then he rose, and folding his arms, he resumed his impassive

attitude. Louis took up the pen from the table, and drew the paper

towards him.

"I have the same counsel, then, from all of you," said he,--"from you,

bishop; from you, father; from you, madame; from you, abbe; and from

you, Louvois. Well, if ill come from it, may it not be visited upon me!

But what is this?"

De Catinat had taken a step forward with his hand outstretched.

His ardent, impetuous nature had suddenly broken down all the barriers

of caution, and he seemed for the instant to see that countless throng

of men, women, and children of his own faith, all unable to say a word

for themselves, and all looking to him as their champion and spokesman.

He had thought little of such matters when all was well, but now, when

danger threatened, the deeper side of his nature was moved, and he felt

how light a thing is life and fortune when weighed against a great

abiding cause and principle.

"Do not sign it, sire," he cried. "You will live to wish that your hand

had withered ere it grasped that pen. I know it, sire. I am sure of

it. Consider all these helpless folk--the little children, the young

girls, the old and the feeble. Their creed is themselves. As well ask

the leaves to change the twigs on which they grow. They could not

change. At most you could but hope to turn them from honest folk into

hypocrites. And why should you do it? They honour you. They love you.

They harm none. They are proud to serve in your armies, to fight for

you, to work for you, to build up the greatness of your kingdom.

I implore you, sire, to think again before you sign an order which will

bring misery and desolation to so many."

For a moment the king had hesitated as he listened to the short abrupt

sentences in which the soldier pleaded for his fellows, but his face

hardened again as he remembered how even his own personal entreaty had

been unable to prevail with this young dandy of the court.

"France's religion should be that of France's king," said he, "and if my

own guardsmen thwart me in such a matter, I must find others who will be

more faithful. That major's commission in the mousquetaires must go to

Captain de Belmont, Louvois."

"Very good, sire."

"And De Catinat's commission may be transferred to Lieutenant

Labadoyere."

"Very good, sire."

"And I am to serve you no longer?"

"You are too dainty for my service."

De Catinat's arms fell listlessly to his side, and his head sunk forward

upon his breast. Then, as he realised the ruin of all the hopes of his

life, and the cruel injustice with which he had been treated, he broke

into a cry of despair, and rushed from the room with the hot tears of

impotent anger running down his face. So, sobbing, gesticulating, with

coat unbuttoned and hat awry, he burst into the stable where placid Amos

Green was smoking his pipe and watching with critical eyes the grooming

of the horses.

"What in thunder is the matter now?" he asked, holding his pipe by the

bowl, while the blue wreaths curled up from his lips.

"This sword," cried the Frenchman--"I have no right to wear it! I shall

break it!"

"Well, and I'll break my knife too if it will hearten you up."

"And these," cried De Catinat, tugging at his silver shoulder-straps,

"they must go."

"Ah, you draw ahead of me there, for I never had any. But come, friend,

let me know the trouble, that I may see if it may not be mended."

"To Paris! to Paris!" shouted the guardsman frantically. "If I am

ruined, I may yet be in time to save them. The horses, quick!"

It was clear to the American that some sudden calamity had befallen, so

he aided his comrade and the grooms to saddle and bridle.

Five minutes later they were flying on their way, and in little more

than an hour their steeds, all reeking and foam-flecked, were pulled up

outside the high house in the Rue St. Martin. De Catinat sprang from

his saddle and rushed upstairs, while Amos followed in his own leisurely

fashion.

The old Huguenot and his beautiful daughter were seated at one side of

the great fireplace, her hand in his, and they sprang up together, she

to throw herself with a glad cry into the arms of her lover, and he to

grasp the hand which his nephew held out to him.

At the other side of the fireplace, with a very long pipe in his mouth

and a cup of wine upon a settle beside him, sat a strange-looking man,

with grizzled hair and beard, a fleshy red projecting nose, and two

little gray eyes, which twinkled out from under huge brindled brows.

His long thin face was laced and seamed with wrinkles, crossing and

recrossing everywhere, but fanning out in hundreds from the corners of

his eyes. It was set in an unchanging expression, and as it was of the

same colour all over, as dark as the darkest walnut, it might have been

some quaint figure-head cut out of a coarse-grained wood. He was clad

in a blue serge jacket, a pair of red breeches smeared at the knees with

tar, clean gray worsted stockings, large steel buckles over his coarse

square-toed shoes, and beside him, balanced upon the top of a thick

oaken cudgel, was a weather-stained silver-laced hat. His gray-shot

hair was gathered up behind into a short stiff tail, and a seaman's

hanger, with a brass handle, was girded to his waist by a tarnished

leather belt.

De Catinat had been too occupied to take notice of this singular

individual, but Amos Green gave a shout of delight at the sight of him,

and ran forward to greet him. The other's wooden face relaxed so far as

to show two tobacco-stained fangs, and, without rising, he held out a

great red hand, of the size and shape of a moderate spade.

"Why, Captain Ephraim," cried Amos in English, "who ever would have

thought of finding you here? De Catinat, this is my old friend Ephraim

Savage, under whose charge I came here."

"Anchor's apeak, lad, and the hatches down," said the stranger, in the

peculiar drawling voice which the New Englanders had retained from their

ancestors, the English Puritans.

"And when do you sail?"

"As soon as your foot is on her deck, if Providence serve us with wind

and tide. And how has all gone with thee, Amos?"

"Right well. I have much to tell you of."

"I trust that you have held yourself apart from all their popish

devilry."

"Yes, yes, Ephraim."

"And have had no truck with the scarlet woman."

"No, no; but what is it now?"

The grizzled hair was bristling with rage, and the little gray eyes were

gleaming from under the heavy tufts. Amos, following their gaze, saw

that De Catinat was seated with his arm round Adele, while her head

rested upon his shoulder.

"Ah, if I but knew their snip-snap, lippetty-chippetty lingo! Saw one

ever such a sight! Amos, lad, what is the French for 'a shameless

hussy'?"

"Nay, nay, Ephraim. Surely one may see such a sight, and think no harm

of it, on our side of the water.

"Never, Amos. In no godly country."

"Tut! I have seen folks courting in New York."

"Ah, New York! I said in no godly country. I cannot answer for New York

or Virginia. South of Cape Cod, or of New Haven at the furthest, there

is no saying what folk will do. Very sure I am that in Boston or Salem

or Plymouth she would see the bridewell and he the stocks for half as

much. Ah!" He shook his head and bent his brows at the guilty couple.

But they and their old relative were far too engrossed with their own

affairs to give a thought to the Puritan seaman. De Catinat had told

his tale in a few short, bitter sentences, the injustice that had been

done to him, his dismissal from the king's service, and the ruin which

had come upon the Huguenots of France. Adele, as is the angel instinct

of woman, thought only of her lover and his misfortunes as she listened

to his story, but the old merchant tottered to his feet when he heard of

the revocation of the Edict, and stood with shaking limbs, staring about

him in bewilderment.

"What am I to do?" he cried. "What am I to do? I am too old to begin

my life again."

"Never fear, uncle," said De Catinat heartily. "There are other lands

beyond France."

"But not for me. No, no; I am too old. Lord, but Thy hand is heavy

upon Thy servants. Now is the vial opened, and the carved work of the

sanctuary thrown down. Ah, what shall I do, and whither shall I turn?"

He wrung his hands in his perplexity.

"What is amiss with him, then, Amos?" asked the seaman. "Though I know

nothing of what he says, yet I can see that he flies a distress signal."

"He and his must leave the country, Ephraim."

"And why?"

"Because they are Protestants, and the king will not abide their creed."

Ephraim Savage was across the room in an instant, and had enclosed the

old merchant's thin hand in his own great knotted fist. There was a

brotherly sympathy in his strong grip and rugged weather-stained face

which held up the other's courage as no words could have done.

"What is the French for 'the scarlet woman,' Amos?" he asked, glancing

over his shoulder. "Tell this man that we shall see him through.

Tell him that we've got a country where he'll just fit in like a bung in

a barrel. Tell him that religion is free to all there, and not a papist

nearer than Baltimore or the Capuchins of the Penobscot. Tell him that

if he wants to come, the _Golden Rod_ is waiting with her anchor apeak

and her cargo aboard. Tell him what you like, so long as you make him

come."

"Then we must come at once," said De Catinat, as he listened to the

cordial message which was conveyed to his uncle. "To-night the orders

will be out, and to-morrow it may be too late."

"But my business!" cried the merchant.

"Take what valuables you can, and leave the rest. Better that than lose

all, and liberty into the bargain."

And so at last it was arranged. That very night, within five minutes of

the closing of the gates, there passed out of Paris a small party of

five, three upon horseback, and two in a closed carriage which bore

several weighty boxes upon the top. They were the first leaves flying

before the hurricane, the earliest of that great multitude who were

within the next few months to stream along every road which led from

France, finding their journey's end too often in galley, dungeon and

torture chamber, and yet flooding over the frontiers in numbers

sufficient to change the industries and modify the characters of all the

neighbouring peoples. Like the Israelites of old, they had been driven

from their homes at the bidding of an angry king, who, even while he

exiled them, threw every difficulty in the way of their departure. Like

them, too, there were none of them who could hope to reach their

promised land without grievous wanderings, penniless, friendless, and

destitute. What passages befell these pilgrims in their travels, what

dangers they met, and overcame in the land of the Swiss, on the Rhine,

among the Walloons, in England, in Ireland, in Berlin, and even in

far-off Russia, has still to be written. This one little group,

however, whom we know, we may follow in their venturesome journey, and

see the chances which befell them upon that great continent which had

lain fallow for so long, sown only with the weeds of humanity, but which

was now at last about to quicken into such glorious life.

PART II.

IN THE NEW WORLD.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE START OF THE "GOLDEN ROD."

Thanks to the early tidings which the guardsman had brought with him,

his little party was now ahead of the news. As they passed through the

village of Louvier in the early morning they caught a glimpse of a naked

corpse upon a dunghill, and were told by a grinning watchman that it was

that of a Huguenot who had died impenitent, but that was a common enough

occurrence already, and did not mean that there had been any change in

the law. At Rouen all was quiet, and Captain Ephraim Savage before

evening had brought both them and such property as they had saved aboard

of his brigantine, the Golden Rod. It was but a little craft, some

seventy tons burden, but at a time when so many were putting out to sea

in open boats, preferring the wrath of Nature to that of the king, it

was a refuge indeed. The same night the seaman drew up his anchor and

began to slowly make his way down the winding river.

And very slow work it was. There was half a moon shining and a breeze

from the east, but the stream writhed and twisted and turned until

sometimes they seemed to be sailing up rather than down. In the long

reaches they set the yard square and ran, but often they had to lower

their two boats and warp her painfully along, Tomlinson of Salem, the

mate, and six grave, tobacco-chewing, New England seamen with their

broad palmetto hats, tugging and straining at the oars. Amos Green, De

Catinat, and even the old merchant had to take their spell ere morning,

when the sailors were needed aboard for the handling of the canvas.

At last, however, with the early dawn the river broadened out and each

bank trended away, leaving a long funnel-shaped estuary between.

Ephraim Savage snuffed the air and paced the deck briskly with a twinkle

in his keen gray eyes. The wind had fallen away, but there was still

enough to drive them slowly upon their course.

"Where's the gal?" he asked.

"She is in my cabin," said Amos Green. "I thought that maybe she could

manage there until we got across."

"Where will you sleep yourself, then?"

"Tut, a litter of spruce boughs and a sheet of birch bark over me have

been enough all these years. What would I ask better than this deck of

soft white pine and my blanket?"

"Very good. The old man and his nephew, him with the blue coat, can

have the two empty bunks. But you must speak to that man, Amos. I'll

have no philandering aboard my ship, lad--no whispering or cuddling or

any such foolishness. Tell him that this ship is just a bit broke off

from Boston, and he'll have to put up with Boston ways until he gets off

her. They've been good enough for better men than him. You give me the

French for 'no philandering,' and I'll bring him up with a round turn

when he drifts."

"It's a pity we left so quick or they might have been married before we

started. She's a good girl, Ephraim, and he is a fine man, for all that

their ways are not the same as ours. They don't seem to take life so

hard as we, and maybe they get more pleasure out of it."

"I never heard tell that we were put here to get pleasure out of it,"

said the old Puritan, shaking his head. "The valley of the shadow of

death don't seem to me to be the kind o' name one would give to a

play-ground. It is a trial and a chastening, that's what it is, the

gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. We're bad from the

beginning, like a stream that runs from a tamarack swamp, and we've

enough to do to get ourselves to rights without any fool's talk about

pleasure."

"It seems to me to be all mixed up," said Amos. "like the fat and the

lean in a bag of pemmican. Look at that sun just pushing its edge over

the trees, and see the pink flush on the clouds and the river like a

rosy ribbon behind us. It's mighty pretty to our eyes, and very

pleasing to us, and it wouldn't be so to my mind if the Creator hadn't

wanted it to be. Many a time when I have lain in the woods in the fall

and smoked my pipe, and felt how good the tobacco was, and how bright

the yellow maples were, and the purple ash, and the red tupelo blazing

among the bushwood, I've felt that the real fool's talk was with the man

who could doubt that all this was meant to make the world happier for

us."

"You've been thinking too much in them woods," said Ephraim Savage,

gazing at him uneasily. "Don't let your sail be too great for your

boat, lad, nor trust to your own wisdom. Your father was from the Bay,

and you were raised from a stock that cast the dust of England from

their feet rather than bow down to Baal. Keep a grip on the word and

don't think beyond it. But what is the matter with the old man?

He don't seem easy in his mind."

The old merchant had been leaning over the bulwarks, looking back with a

drawn face and weary eyes at the red curving track behind them which

marked the path to Paris. Adele had come up now, with not a thought to

spare upon the dangers and troubles which lay in front of her as she

chafed the old man's thin cold hands, and whispered words of love and

comfort into his ears. But they had come to the point where the gentle

still-flowing river began for the first time to throb to the beat of the

sea. The old man gazed forward with horror at the bowsprit as he saw it

rise slowly upwards into the air, and clung frantically at the rail as

it seemed to slip away from beneath him.

"We are always in the hollow of God's hand," he whispered, "but oh,

Adele, it is a dreadful thing to feel His fingers moving under us."

"Come with me, uncle," said De Catinat, passing his arm under that of

the old man. "It is long since you have rested. And you, Adele, I pray

that you will go and sleep, my poor darling, for it has been a weary

journey. Go now, to please me, and when you wake, both France and your

troubles will lie behind you."

When father and daughter had left the deck, De Catinat made his way aft

again to where Amos Green and the captain were standing.

"I am glad to get them below, Amos," said he, "for I fear that we may

have trouble yet."

"And how?"

"You see the white road which runs by the southern bank of the river.

Twice within the last half-hour I have seen horsemen spurring for dear

life along it. Where the spires and smoke are yonder is Honfleur, and

thither it was that these men went. I know not who could ride so madly

at such an hour unless they were the messengers of the king. Oh, see,

there is a third one!"

On the white band which wound among the green meadows a black dot could

be seen which moved along with great rapidity, vanished behind a clump

of trees, and then reappeared again, making for the distant city.

Captain Savage drew out his glass and gazed at the rider.

"Ay, ay," said he, as he snapped it up again. "It is a soldier, sure

enough. I can see the glint of the scabbard which he carries on his

larboard side. I think we shall have more wind soon. With a breeze we

can show our heels to anything in French waters, but a galley or an

armed boat would overhaul us now."

De Catinat, who, though he could speak little English, had learned in

America to understand it pretty well, looked anxiously at Amos Green.

"I fear that we shall bring trouble on this good captain," said he,

"and that the loss of his cargo and ship may be his reward for having

befriended us. Ask him whether he would not prefer to land us on the

north bank. With our money we might make our way into the Lowlands."

Ephraim Savage looked at his passenger with eyes which had lost

something of their sternness. "Young man," said he, "I see that you can

understand something of my talk."

De Catinat nodded.

"I tell you then that I am a bad man to beat. Any man that was ever

shipmates with me would tell you as much. I just jam my helm and keep

my course as long as God will let me. D'ye see?"

De Catinat again nodded, though in truth the seaman's metaphors left him

with but a very general sense of his meaning.

"We're comin' abreast of that there town, and in ten minutes we shall

know if there is any trouble waiting for us. But I'll tell you a story

as we go that'll show you what kind o' man you've shipped with. It was

ten years ago that I speak of, when I was in the _Speedwell_, sixty-ton

brig, tradin' betwixt Boston and Jamestown, goin' south with lumber and

skins and fixin's, d'ye see, and north again with tobacco and molasses.

One night, blowin' half a gale from the south'ard, we ran on a reef two

miles to the east of Cape May, and down we went with a hole in our

bottom like as if she'd been spitted on the steeple o' one o' them

Honfleur churches. Well, in the morning there I was washin' about, nigh

out of sight of land, clingin' on to half the foreyard, without a sign

either of my mates or of wreckage. I wasn't so cold, for it was early

fall, and I could get three parts of my body on to the spar, but I was

hungry and thirsty and bruised, so I just took in two holes of my

waist-belt, and put up a hymn, and had a look round for what I could

see. Well, I saw more than I cared for. Within five paces of me there

was a great fish, as long pretty nigh as the spar that I was grippin'.

It's a mighty pleasant thing to have your legs in the water and a beast

like that all ready for a nibble at your toes."

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried the French soldier. "And he have not eat you?"

Ephraim Savage's little eyes twinkled at the reminiscence.

"I ate him," said he.

"What!" cried Amos.

"It's a mortal fact. I'd a jack-knife in my pocket, Same as this one,

and I kicked my legs to keep the brute off, and I whittled away at the

spar until I'd got a good jagged bit off, sharp at each end, same as a

nigger told me once down Delaware way. Then I waited for him, and

stopped kicking, so he came at me like a hawk on a chick-a-dee. When he

turned up his belly I jammed my left hand with the wood right into his

great grinnin' mouth, and I let him have it with my knife between the

gills. He tried to break away then, but I held on, d'ye see, though he

took me so deep I thought I'd never come up again. I was nigh gone when

we got to the surface, but he was floatin' with the white up, and twenty

holes in his shirt front. Then I got back to my spar, for we'd gone a

long fifty fathoms under water, and when I reached it I fainted dead

away."

"And then?"

"Well, when I came to, it was calm, and there was the dead shark

floatin' beside me. I paddled my spar over to him and I got loose a few

yards of halliard that were hangin' from one end of it. I made a

clove-hitch round his tail, d'ye see, and got the end of it slung over

the spar and fastened, so as I couldn't lose him. Then I set to work

and I ate him in a week right up to his back fin, and I drank the rain

that fell on my coat, and when I was picked up by the _Gracie_ of

Gloucester, I was that fat that I could scarce climb aboard.

That's what Ephraim Savage means, my lad, when he says that he is a

baddish man to beat."

Whilst the Puritan seaman had been detailing his reminiscence, his eyes

had kept wandering from the clouds to the flapping sails and back.

Such wind as there was came in little short puffs, and the canvas either

drew full or was absolutely slack. The fleecy shreds of cloud above,

however, travelled swiftly across the blue sky. It was on these that

the captain fixed his gaze, and he watched them like a man who is

working out a problem in his mind. They were abreast of Honfleur now,

and about half a mile out from it. Several sloops and brigs were lying

there in a cluster, and a whole fleet of brown-sailed fishing-boats were

tacking slowly in. Yet all was quiet on the curving quay and on the

half-moon fort over which floated the white flag with the golden

_fleur-de-lis_. The port lay on their quarter now and they were drawing

away more quickly as the breeze freshened. De Catinat glancing back had

almost made up his mind that their fears were quite groundless when they

were brought back in an instant and more urgently than ever.

Round the corner of the mole a great dark boat had dashed into view,

ringed round with foam from her flying prow, and from the ten pairs of

oars which swung from either side of her. A dainty white ensign drooped

over her stern, and in her bows the sun's light was caught by a heavy

brass carronade. She was packed with men, and the gleam which twinkled

every now and again from amongst them told that they were armed to the

teeth. The captain brought his glass to bear upon them and whistled.

Then he glanced up at the clouds once more.

"Thirty men," said he, "and they go three paces to our two. You, sir,

take your blue coat off this deck or you'll bring trouble upon us.

The Lord will look after His own if they'll only keep from foolishness.

Get these hatches off, Tomlinson. So! Where's Jim Sturt and Hiram

Jefferson? Let them stand by to clap them on again when I whistle.

Starboard! Starboard! Keep her as full as she'll draw. Now, Amos, and

you, Tomlinson, come here until I have a word with you."

The three stood in consultation upon the poop, glancing back at their

pursuers. There could be no doubt that the wind was freshening; it blew

briskly in their faces as they looked back, but it was not steady yet,

and the boat was rapidly overhauling them. Already they could see the

faces of the marines who sat in the stern, and the gleam of the lighted

linstock which the gunner held in his hand.

"_Hola!_" cried an officer in excellent English. "Lay her to or we

fire"

"Who are you, and what do you want?" shouted Ephraim Savage, in a voice

that might have been heard from the bank.

"We come in the king's name, and we want a party of Huguenots from Paris

who came on board of your vessel at Rouen."

"Brace back the foreyard and lay her to," shouted the captain. "Drop a

ladder over the side there and look smart! So! Now we are ready for

them."

The yard was swung round and the vessel lay quietly rising and falling

on the waves. The boat dashed alongside, her brass cannon trained upon

the brigantine, and her squad of marines with their fingers upon their

triggers ready to open fire. They grinned and shrugged their shoulders

when they saw that their sole opponents were three unarmed men upon the

poop. The officer, a young active fellow with a bristling moustache,

like the whiskers of a cat, was on deck in an instant with his drawn

sword in his hand.

"Come up, two of you!" he cried. "You stand here at the head of the

ladder, sergeant. Throw up a rope and you can fix it to this stanchion.

Keep awake down there and be all ready to fire! You come with me,

Corporal Lemoine. Who is captain of this ship?"

"I am, sir," said Ephraim Savage submissively.

"You have three Huguenots aboard?"

"Tut! tut! Huguenots, are they? I thought they were very anxious to

get away, but as long as they paid their passage it was no business of

mine. An old man, his daughter, and a young fellow about your age in

some sort of livery."

"In uniform, sir! The uniform of the king's guard. Those are the folk I

have come for."

"And you wish to take them back?"

"Most certainly."

"Poor folk! I am sorry for them."

"And so am I, but orders are orders and must be done."

"Quite so. Well, the old man is in his bunk asleep. The maid is in a

cabin below. And the other is sleeping down the hold there where we

had to put him, for there is no room elsewhere."

"Sleeping, you say? We had best surprise him."

"But think you that you dare do it alone! He has no arms, it is true,

but he is a well-grown young fellow. Will you not have twenty men up

from the boat?"

Some such thought had passed through the officer's head, but the

captain's remark put him upon his mettle.

"Come with me, corporal," said he. "Down this ladder, you say?"

"Yes, down the ladder and straight on. He lies between those two cloth

bales." Ephraim Savage looked up with a smile playing about the corners

of his grim mouth. The wind was whistling now in the rigging, and the

stays of the mast were humming like two harp strings. Amos Green

lounged beside the French sergeant who guarded the end of the rope

ladder, while Tomlinson, the mate, stood with a bucket of water in his

hand exchanging remarks in very bad French with the crew of the boat

beneath him.

The officer made his way slowly down the ladder which led into the hold,

and the corporal followed him, and had his chest level with the deck

when the other had reached the bottom. It may have been something in

Ephraim Savage's face, or it may have been the gloom around him which

startled the young Frenchman, but a sudden suspicion flashed into his

mind.

"Up again, corporal!" he shouted, "I think that you are best at the

top."

"And I think that you are best down below, my friend," said the Puritan,

who gathered the officer's meaning from his gesture. Putting the sole

of his boot against the man's chest he gave a shove which sent both him

and the ladder crashing down on to the officer beneath him. As he did

so he blew his whistle, and in a moment the hatch was back in its place

and clamped down on each side with iron bars.

The sergeant had swung round at the sound of the crash, but Amos Green,

who had waited for the movement, threw his arms about him and hurled him

overboard into the sea. At the same instant the connecting rope was

severed, the foreyard creaked back into position again, and the

bucketful of salt water soused down over the gunner and his gun, putting

out his linstock and wetting his priming. A shower of balls from the

marines piped through the air or rapped up against the planks, but the

boat was tossing and jerking in the short choppy waves and to aim was

impossible. In vain the men tugged and strained at their oars while the

gunner worked like a maniac to relight his linstock and to replace his

priming. The boat had lost its weigh, while the brigantine was flying

along now with every sail bulging and swelling to bursting-point.

Crack! went the carronade at last, and five little slits in the mainsail

showed that her charge of grape had flown high. Her second shot left no

trace behind it, and at the third she was at the limit of her range.

Half an hour afterwards a little dark dot upon the horizon with a golden

speck at one end of it was all that could be seen of the Honfleur

guard-boat. Wider and wider grew the low-lying shores, broader and

broader was the vast spread of blue waters ahead, the smoke of Havre lay

like a little cloud upon the northern horizon, and Captain Ephraim

Savage paced his deck with his face as grim as ever, but with a dancing

light in his gray eyes.

"I knew that the Lord would look after His own," said he complacently.

"We've got her beak straight now, and there's not as much as a dab of

mud betwixt this and the three hills of Boston. You've had too much of

these French wines of late, Amos, lad. Come down and try a real Boston

brewing with a double stroke of malt in the mash tub."

CHAPTER XXV.

A BOAT OF THE DEAD.

For two days the _Golden Rod_ lay becalmed close to the Cape La Hague,

with the Breton coast extending along the whole of the southern horizon.

On the third morning, however, came a sharp breeze, and they drew

rapidly away from land, until it was but a vague dim line which blended

with the cloud banks. Out there on the wide free ocean, with the wind

on their cheeks and the salt spray pringling upon their lips, these

hunted folk might well throw off their sorrows and believe that they had

left for ever behind them all tokens of those strenuous men whose

earnest piety had done more harm than frivolity and wickedness could

have accomplished. And yet even now they could not shake off their

traces, for the sin of the cottage is bounded by the cottage door, but

that of the palace spreads its evil over land and sea.

"I am frightened about my father, Amory," said Adele, as they stood

together by the shrouds and looked back at the dim cloud upon the

horizon which marked the position of that France which they were never

to see again.

"But he is out of danger now."

"Out of danger from cruel laws, but I fear that he will never see the

promised land."

"What do you mean, Adele? My uncle is hale and hearty."

"Ah, Amory, his very heart-roots were fastened in the Rue St. Martin,

and when they were torn his life was torn also. Paris and his business,

they were the world to him."

"But he will accustom himself to this new life."

"If it only could be so! But I fear, I fear, that he is over old for

such a change. He says not a word of complaint. But I read upon his

face that he is stricken to the heart. For hours together he will gaze

back at France, with the tears running silently down his cheeks.

And his hair has turned from gray to white within the week."

De Catinat also had noticed that the gaunt old Huguenot had grown

gaunter, that the lines upon his stern face were deeper, and that his

head fell forward upon his breast as he walked. He was about, however,

to suggest that the voyage might restore the merchant's health, when

Adele gave a cry of surprise and pointed out over the port quarter.

So beautiful was she at the instant with her raven hair blown back by

the wind, a glow of colour struck into her pale cheeks by the driving

spray, her lips parted in her excitement, and one white hand shading her

eyes, that he stood beside her with all his thoughts bent upon her grace

and her sweetness.

"Look!" she cried. "There is something floating upon the sea. I saw it

upon the crest of a wave."

He looked in the direction in which she pointed, but at first he saw

nothing. The wind was still behind them, and a brisk sea was running of

a deep rich green colour, with long creamy curling caps to the larger

waves. The breeze would catch these foam-crests from time to time, and

then there would be a sharp spatter upon the decks, with a salt smack

upon the lips, and a pringling in the eyes. Suddenly as he gazed,

however, something black was tilted up upon the sharp summit of one of

the seas, and swooped out of view again upon the further side. It was

so far from him that he could make nothing of it, but sharper eyes than

his had caught a glance of it. Amos Green had seen the girl point and

observed what it was which had attracted her attention.

"Captain Ephraim," cried he, "there's a boat on the starboard quarter."

The New England seaman whipped up his glass and steadied it upon the

bulwark.

"Ay, it's a boat," said he, "but an empty one. Maybe it's been washed

off from some ship, or gone adrift from shore. Put her hard down, Mr.

Tomlinson, for it just so happens that I am in need of a boat at

present."

Half a minute later the _Golden Rod_ had swung round and was running

swiftly down towards the black spot which still bobbed and danced upon

the waves. As they neared her they could see that something was

projecting over her side.

"It's a man's head!" cried Amos Green.

But Ephraim Savage's grim face grew grimmer. "It's a man's foot," said

he. "I think that you had best take the gal below to the cabin."

Amid a solemn hush they ran alongside this lonely craft which hung out

so sinister a signal. Within ten yards of her the foreyard was hauled

aback and they gazed down upon her terrible crew.

She was a little thirteen-foot cockle-shell, very broad for her length

and so flat in the bottom that she had been meant evidently for river or

lake work. Huddled together beneath the seats were three folk, a man in

the dress of a respectable artisan, a woman of the same class, and a

little child about a year old. The boat was half full of water and the

woman and child were stretched with their faces downwards, the fair

curls of the infant and the dark locks of the mother washing to and fro

like water-weeds upon the surface. The man lay with a slate-coloured

face, his chin cocking up towards the sky, his eyes turned upwards to

the whites, and his mouth wide open showing a leathern crinkled tongue

like a rotting leaf. In the bows, all huddled in a heap, and with a

single paddle still grasped in his hand, there crouched a very small man

clad in black, an open book lying across his face, and one stiff leg

jutting upwards with the heel of the foot resting between the rowlocks.

So this strange company swooped and tossed upon the long green Atlantic

rollers.

A boat had been lowered by the _Golden Rod_, and the unfortunates were

soon conveyed upon deck. No particle of either food or drink was to be

found, nor anything save the single paddle and the open Bible which lay

across the small man's face. Man, woman, and child had all been dead a

day at the least, and so with the short prayers used upon the seas they

were buried from the vessel's side. The small man had at first seemed

also to be lifeless, but Amos had detected some slight flutter of his

heart, and the faintest haze was left upon the watch glass which was

held before his mouth. Wrapped in a dry blanket he was laid beside the

mast, and the mate forced a few drops of rum every few minutes between

his lips until the little spark of life which still lingered in him

might be fanned to a flame. Meanwhile Ephraim Savage had ordered up the

two prisoners whom he had entrapped at Honfleur. Very foolish they

looked as they stood blinking and winking in the daylight from which

they had been so long cut off.

"Very sorry, captain," said the seaman, "but either you had to come with

us, d'ye see, or we had to stay with you. They're waiting for me over

at Boston, and in truth I really couldn't tarry."

The French soldier shrugged his shoulders and looked around him with a

lengthening face. He and his corporal were limp with sea-sickness, and

as miserable as a Frenchman is when first he finds that France has

vanished from his view.

"Which would you prefer, to go on with us to America, or go back to

France?"

"Back to France, if I can find my way. Oh, I must get to France again

if only to have a word with that fool of a gunner."

"Well, we emptied a bucket of water over his linstock and priming, d'ye

see, so maybe he did all he could. But there's France, where that

thickening is over yonder."

"I see it! I see it! Ah, if my feet were only upon it once more."

"There is a boat beside us, and you may take it."

"My God, what happiness! Corporal Lemoine, the boat! Let us push off at

once."

"But you need a few things first. Good Lord, who ever heard of a man

pushing off like that! Mr. Tomlinson, just sling a keg of water and a

barrel of meat and of biscuit into this boat. Hiram Jefferson, bring

two oars aft. It's a long pull with the wind in your teeth, but you'll

be there by to-morrow night, and the weather is set fair."

The two Frenchmen were soon provided with all that they were likely to

require, and pushed off with a waving of hats and a shouting of _bon

voyage_. The foreyard was swung round again and the _Golden Rod_ turned

her bowsprit for the west. For hours a glimpse could be caught of the

boat, dwindling away on the wave-tops, until at last it vanished into

the haze, and with it vanished the very last link which connected them

with the great world which they were leaving behind them.

But whilst these things had been done, the senseless man beneath the

mast had twitched his eyelids, had drawn a little gasping breath, and

then finally had opened his eyes. His skin was like gray parchment

drawn tightly over his bones, and the limbs which thrust out from his

clothes were those of a sickly child. Yet, weak as he was, the large

black eyes with which he looked about him were full of dignity and

power. Old Catinat had come upon deck, and at the sight of the man and

of his dress he had run forward, and had raised his head reverently and

rested it in his own arms.

"He is one of the faithful," he cried, "he is one of our pastors. Ah,

now indeed a blessing will be upon our journey!"

But the man smiled gently and shook his head. "I fear that I may not

come this journey with you," said he, "for the Lord has called me upon

a further journey of my own. I have had my summons and I am ready.

I am indeed the pastor of the temple at Isigny, and when we heard the

orders of the wicked king, I and two of the faithful with their little

one put forth in the hope that we might come to England. But on the

first day there came a wave which swept away one of our oars and all

that was in the boat, our bread, our keg, and we were left with no hope

save in Him. And then He began to call us to Him one at a time, first

the child, and then the woman, and then the man, until I only am left,

though I feel that my own time is not long. But since ye are also of

the faithful, may I not serve you in any way before I go?"

The merchant shook his head, and then suddenly a thought flashed upon

him, and he ran with joy upon his face and whispered eagerly to Amos

Green. Amos laughed, and strode across to the captain.

"It's time," said Ephraim Savage grimly.

Then the whisperers went to De Catinat. He sprang in the air and his

eyes shone with delight. And then they went down to Adele in her cabin,

and she started and blushed, and turned her sweet face away, and patted

her hair with her hands as woman will when a sudden call is made upon

her. And so, since haste was needful, and since even there upon the

lonely sea there was one coming who might at any moment snap their

purpose, they found themselves in a few minutes, this gallant man and

this pure woman, kneeling hand in hand before the dying pastor, who

raised his thin arm feebly in benediction as he muttered the words which

should make them forever one.

Adele had often pictured her wedding to herself, as what young girl has

not? Often in her dreams she had knelt before the altar with Amory in

the temple of the Rue St. Martin. Or sometimes her fancy had taken her

to some of those smaller churches in the provinces, those little refuges

where a handful of believers gathered together, and it was there that

her thoughts had placed the crowning act of a woman's life. But when

had she thought of such a marriage as this, with the white deck swaying

beneath them, the ropes humming above, their only choristers the gulls

which screamed around them, and their wedding hymn the world-old anthem

which is struck from the waves by the wind? And when could she forget

the scene? The yellow masts and the bellying sails, the gray drawn face

and the cracked lips of the castaway, her father's gaunt earnest

features as he knelt to support the dying minister, De Catinat in his

blue coat, already faded and weather-stained. Captain Savage with his

wooden face turned towards the clouds, and Amos Green with his hands in

his pockets and a quiet twinkle in his blue eyes! Then behind all the

lanky mate and the little group of New England seamen with their

palmetto hats and their serious faces!

And so it was done amid kindly words in a harsh foreign tongue, and the

shaking of rude hands hardened by the rope and the oar. De Catinat and

his wife leaned together by the shrouds when all was over and watched

the black side as it rose and fell, and the green water which raced past

them.

"It is all so strange and so new," she said. "Our future seems as vague

and dark as yonder cloud-banks which gather in front of us."

"If it rest with me," he answered, "your future will be as merry and

bright as the sunlight that glints on the crest of these waves.

The country that drove us forth lies far behind us, but out there is

another and a fairer country, and every breath of wind wafts us nearer

to it. Freedom awaits us there, and we bear with us youth and love, and

what could man or woman ask for more?"

So they stood and talked while the shadows deepened into twilight and

the first faint gleam of the stars broke out in the darkening heavens

above them. But ere those stars had waned again one more toiler had

found rest aboard the _Golden Rod_, and the scattered flock from Isigny

had found their little pastor once more.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE LAST PORT.

For three weeks the wind kept at east or north-east, always at a brisk

breeze and freshening sometimes into half a gale. The _Golden Rod_ sped

merrily upon her way with every sail drawing, alow and aloft, so that by

the end of the third week Amos and Ephraim Savage were reckoning out the

hours before they would look upon their native land once more. To the

old seaman who was used to meeting and to parting it was a small matter,

but Amos, who had never been away before, was on fire with impatience,

and would sit smoking for hours with his legs astride the shank of the

bowsprit, staring ahead at the skyline, in the hope that his friend's

reckoning had been wrong, and that at any moment he might see the

beloved coast line looming up in front of him.

"It's no use, lad," said Captain Ephraim, laying his great red hand upon

his shoulder. "They that go down to the sea in ships need a power of

patience, and there's no good eatin' your heart out for what you can't

get."

"There's a feel of home about the air, though," Amos answered.

"It seems to whistle through your teeth with a bite to it that I never

felt over yonder. Ah, it will take three months of the Mohawk Valley

before I feel myself to rights."

"Well," said his friend, thrusting a plug of Trinidado tobacco into the

corner of his cheek, "I've been on the sea since I had hair to my face,

mostly in the coast trade, d'ye see, but over the water as well, as far

as those navigation laws would let me. Except the two years that I came

ashore for the King Philip business, when every man that could carry a

gun was needed on the border, I've never been three casts of a biscuit

from salt water, and I tell you that I never knew a better crossing than

the one we have just made."

"Ay, we have come along like a buck before a forest fire. But it is

strange to me how you find your way so clearly out here with never track

nor trail to guide you. It would puzzle me, Ephraim, to find America,

to say nought of the Narrows of New York."

"I am somewhat too far to the north, Amos. We have been on or about the

fiftieth since we sighted Cape La Hague. To-morrow we should make land,

by my reckonin'."

"Ah, to-morrow! And what will it be? Mount Desert? Cape Cod?

Long Island?"

"Nay, lad, we are in the latitude of the St. Lawrence, and are more like

to see the Arcadia coast. Then with this wind a day should carry us

south, or two at the most. A few more such voyages and I shall buy

myself a fair brick house in Green Lane of North Boston, where I can

look down on the bay, or on the Charles or the Mystic, and see the ships

comin' and goin'. So I would end my life in peace and quiet."

All day Amos Green, in spite of his friend's assurance, strained his

eyes in the fruitless search for land, and when at last the darkness

fell he went below and laid out his fringed hunting tunic, his leather

gaiters, and his raccoon-skin cap, which were very much more to his

taste than the broadcloth coat in which the Dutch mercer of New York had

clad him. De Catinat had also put on the dark coat of civil life, and

he and Adele were busy preparing all things for the old man, who had

fallen so weak that there was little which he could do for himself.

A fiddle was screaming in the forecastle, and half the night through

hoarse bursts of homely song mingled with the dash of the waves and the

whistle of the wind, as the New England men in their own grave and

stolid fashion made merry over their home-coming.

The mate's watch that night was from twelve to four, and the moon was

shining brightly for the first hour of it. In the early morning,

however, it clouded over, and the _Golden Rod_ plunged into one of those

dim clammy mists which lie on all that tract of ocean. So thick was it

that from the poop one could just make out the loom of the foresail, but

could see nothing of the fore-topmast-stay sail or the jib. The wind

was north-east with a very keen edge to it, and the dainty brigantine

lay over, scudding along with her lee rails within hand's touch of the

water. It had suddenly turned very cold--so cold that the mate stamped

up and down the poop, and his four seamen shivered together under the

shelter of the bulwarks. And then in a moment one of them was up,

thrusting with his forefinger into the air and screaming, while a huge

white wall sprang out of the darkness at the very end of the bowsprit,

and the ship struck with a force which snapped her two masts like dried

reeds in a wind, and changed her in an instant to a crushed and

shapeless heap of spars and wreckage.

The mate had shot the length of the poop at the shock, and had narrowly

escaped from the falling mast, while of his four men two had been hurled

through the huge gap which yawned in the bows, while a third had dashed

his head to pieces against the stock of the anchor. Tomlinson staggered

forwards to find the whole front part of the vessel driven inwards, and

a single seaman sitting dazed amid splintered spars, flapping sails, and

writhing, lashing cordage. It was still as dark as pitch, and save the

white crest of a leaping wave nothing was to be seen beyond the side of

the vessel. The mate was peering round him in despair at the ruin which

had come so suddenly upon them when he found Captain Ephraim at his

elbow, half clad, but as wooden and as serene as ever.

"An iceberg," said he, sniffing at the chill air. "Did you not smell

it, friend Tomlinson?"

"Truly I found it cold, Captain Savage, but I set it down to the mist."

"There is a mist ever set around them, though the Lord in His wisdom

knows best why, for it is a sore trial to poor sailor men. She makes

water fast, Mr. Tomlinson. She is down by the bows already."

The other watch had swarmed upon deck and one of them was measuring the

well. "There is three feet of water," he cried, "and the pumps sucked

dry yesterday at sundown."

"Hiram Jefferson and John Moreton to the pumps!" cried the captain.

"Mr. Tomlinson, clear away the long-boat and let us see if we may set

her right, though I fear that she is past mending."

"The long-boat has stove two planks," cried a seaman.

"The jolly-boat, then?"

"She is in three pieces."

The mate tore his hair, but Ephraim Savage smiled like a man who is

gently tickled by some coincidence.

"Where is Amos Green?"

"Here, Captain Ephraim. What can I do?"

"And I?" asked De Catinat eagerly. Adele and her father had been

wrapped in mantles and placed for shelter in the lee of the round house.

"Tell him he can take his spell at the pumps," said the Captain to Amos.

"And you, Amos, you are a handy man with a tool. Get into yonder

long-boat with a lantern and see if you cannot patch her up."

For half an hour Amos Green hammered and trimmed and caulked, while the

sharp measured clanking of the pumps sounded above the dash of the seas.

Slowly, very slowly, the bows of the brigantine were settling down, and

her stern cocking up.

"You've not much time, Amos, lad," said the captain quietly.

"She'll float now, though she's not quite water-tight."

"Very good. Lower away! Keep up the pump in there! Mr. Tomlinson, see

that provisions and water are ready, as much as she will hold. Come

with me, Hiram Jefferson."

The seaman and the captain swung themselves down into the tossing boat,

the latter with a lantern strapped to his waist. Together they made

their way until they were under her mangled bows. The captain shook his

head when he saw the extent of the damage.

"Cut away the foresail and pass it over," said he.

Tomlinson and Amos Green cut away the lashings with their knives and

lowered the corner of the sail. Captain Ephraim and the seaman seized

it, and dragged it across the mouth of the huge gaping leak. As he

stooped to do it, however, the ship heaved up upon a swell, and the

captain saw in the yellow light of his lantern sinuous black cracks

which radiated away backwards from the central hole.

"How much in the well?" he asked.

"Five and a half feet."

"Then the ship is lost. I could put my finger between her planks as far

as I can see back. Keep the pumps going there! Have you the food and

water, Mr. Tomlinson?"

"Here, sir."

"Lower them over the bows. This boat cannot live more than an hour or

two. Can you see anything of the berg?"

"The fog is lifting on the starboard quarter," cried one of the men.

"Yes, there is the berg, quarter of a mile to leeward!"

The mist had thinned away suddenly, and the moon glimmered through once

more upon the great lonely sea and the stricken ship. There, like a

huge sail, was the monster piece of ice upon which they had shattered

themselves, rocking slowly to and fro with the wash of the waves.

"You must make for her," said Captain Ephraim. "There is no other

chance. Lower the gal over the bows! Well, then, her father first, if

she likes it better. Tell them to sit still, Amos, and that the Lord

will bear us up if we keep clear of foolishness. So! You're a brave

lass for all your niminy-piminy lingo. Now the keg and the barrel, and

all the wraps and cloaks you can find. Now the other man, the

Frenchman. Ay, ay, passengers first, and you have got to come.

Now, Amos! Now the seamen, and you last, friend Tomlinson."

It was well that they had not very far to go, for the boat was weighed

down almost to the edge, and it took the baling of two men to keep in

check the water which leaked in between the shattered planks. When all

were safely in their places. Captain Ephraim Savage swung himself

aboard again, which was but too easy now that every minute brought the

bows nearer to the water. He came back with a bundle of clothing which

he threw into the boat.

"Push off!" he cried.

"Jump in, then."

"Ephraim Savage goes down with his ship," said he quietly. "Friend

Tomlinson, it is not my way to give my orders more than once. Push off,

I say!"

The mate thrust her out with a boat-hook. Amos and De Catinat gave a

cry of dismay, but the stolid New Englanders settled down to their oars

and pulled off for the iceberg.

"Amos! Amos! Will you suffer it?" cried the guardsman in French.

"My honour will not permit me to leave him thus. I should feel it a

stain for ever."

"Tomlinson, you would not leave him! Go on board and force him to

come."

"The man is not living who could force him to do what he had no mind

for."

"He may change his purpose."

"He never changes his purpose."

"But you cannot leave him, man! You must at least lie by and pick him

up."

"The boat leaks like a sieve," said the mate. "I will take her to the

berg, leave you all there, if we can find footing, and go back for the

captain. Put your heart into it, my lads, for the sooner we are there

the sooner we shall get back."

But they had not taken fifty strokes before Adele gave a sudden scream.

"My God!" she cried, "the ship is going down!"

She had settled lower and lower in the water, and suddenly with a sound

of rending planks she thrust down her bows like a diving water-fowl, her

stern flew up into the air, and with a long sucking noise she shot down

swifter and swifter until the leaping waves closed over her high poop

lantern. With one impulse the boat swept round again and made backwards

as fast as willing arms could pull it. But all was quiet at the scene

of the disaster. Not even a fragment of wreckage was left upon the

surface to show where the _Golden Rod_ had found her last harbour.

For a long quarter of an hour they pulled round and round in the

moonlight, but not a glimpse could they see of the Puritan seaman, and

at last, when in spite of the balers the water was washing round their

ankles, they put her head about once more, and made their way in silence

and with heavy hearts to their dreary island of refuge.

Desolate as it was, it was their only hope now, for the leak was

increasing and it was evident that the boat could not be kept afloat

long. As they drew nearer they saw with dismay that the side which

faced them was a solid wall of ice sixty feet high without a flaw or

crevice in its whole extent. The berg was a large one, fifty paces at

least each way, and there was a hope that the other side might be more

favourable. Baling hard, they paddled round the corner, but only to

find themselves faced by another gloomy ice-crag. Again they went

round, and again they found that the berg increased rather than

diminished in height. There remained only one other side, and they

knew as they rowed round to it that their lives hung upon the result,

for the boat was almost settling down beneath them. They shot out from

the shadow into the full moonlight and looked upon a sight which none of

them would forget until their dying day.

The cliff which faced them was as precipitous as any of the others, and

it glimmered and sparkled all over where the silver light fell upon the

thousand facets of ice. Right in the centre, however, on a level with

the water's edge, there was what appeared to be a huge hollowed-out cave

which marked the spot where the Golden Rod had, in shattering herself,

dislodged a huge boulder, and so amid her own ruin prepared a refuge for

those who had trusted themselves to her. This cavern was of the richest

emerald green, light and clear at the edges, but toning away into the

deepest purples and blues at the back. But it was not the beauty of

this grotto, nor was it the assurance of rescue which brought a cry of

joy and of wonder from every lip, but it was that, seated upon an ice

boulder and placidly smoking a long corn-cob pipe, there was perched in

front of them no less a person than Captain Ephraim Savage of Boston.

For a moment the castaways could almost have believed that it was his

wraith, were wraiths ever seen in so homely an attitude, but the tones

of his voice very soon showed that it was indeed he, and in no very

Christian temper either.

"Friend Tomlinson," said he, "when I tell you to row for an iceberg I

mean you to row right away there, d'ye see, and not to go philandering

about over the ocean. It's not your fault that I'm not froze, and so I

would have been if I hadn't some dry tobacco and my tinder-box to keep

myself warm."

Without stopping to answer his commander's reproaches, the mate headed

for the ledge, which had been cut into a slope by the bows of the

brigantine, so that the boat was run up easily on to the ice. Captain

Savage seized his dry clothes and vanished into the back of the cave, to

return presently warmer in body, and more contented in mind. The

long-boat had been turned upside down for a seat, the gratings and

thwarts taken out and covered with wraps to make a couch for the lady,

and the head knocked out of the keg of biscuits.

"We were frightened for you, Ephraim," said Amos Green. "I had a heavy

heart this night when I thought that I should never see you more."

"Tut, Amos, you should have known me better."

"But how came you here, captain?" asked Tomlinson. "I thought that

maybe you had been taken down by the suck of the ship."

"And so I was. It is the third ship in which I have gone down, but they

have never kept me down yet. I went deeper to-night than when the

_Speedwell_ sank, but not so deep as in the _Governor Winthrop_. When I

came up I swam to the berg, found this nook, and crawled in. Glad I was

to see you, for I feared that you had foundered."

"We put back to pick you up and we passed you in the darkness. And what

should we do now?"

"Rig up that boat-sail and make quarters for the gal. Then get our

supper and such rest as we can, for there is nothing to be done

to-night, and there may be much in the morning."

CHAPTER XXVII.

A DWINDLING ISLAND.

Amos Green was aroused in the morning by a hand upon his shoulder, and

springing to his feet, found De Catinat standing beside him.

The survivors of the crew were grouped about the upturned boat,

slumbering heavily after their labours of the night. The red rim of the

sun had just pushed itself above the water-line, and sky and sea were

one blaze of scarlet and orange from the dazzling gold of the horizon to

the lightest pink at the zenith. The first rays flashed directly into

their cave, sparkling and glimmering upon the ice crystals and tingeing

the whole grotto with a rich warm light. Never was a fairy's palace

more lovely than this floating refuge which Nature had provided for

them.

But neither the American nor the Frenchman had time now to give a

thought to the novelty and beauty of their situation. The latter's face

was grave, and his friend read danger in his eyes.

"What is it, then?"

"The berg. It is coming to pieces."

"Tut, man, it is as solid as an island."

"I have been watching it. You see that crack which extends backwards

from the end of our grotto. Two hours ago I could scarce put my hand

into it. Now I can slip through it with ease. I tell you that she is

splitting across."

Amos Green walked to the end of the funnel-shaped recess and found, as

his friend had said, that a green sinuous crack extended away backwards

into the iceberg, caused either by the tossing of the waves, or by the

terrific impact of their vessel. He roused Captain Ephraim and pointed

out the danger to him.

"Well, if she springs a leak we are gone," said he. "She's been thawing

pretty fast as it is."

They could see now that what had seemed in the moonlight to be smooth

walls of ice were really furrowed and wrinkled like an old man's face by

the streams of melted water which were continually running down them.

The whole huge mass was brittle and honeycombed and rotten. Already

they could hear all round them the ominous drip, drip, and the splash

and tinkle of the little rivulets as they fell into the ocean.

"Hullo!" cried Amos Green, "what's that?"

"What then?"

"Did you hear nothing?"

"No."

"I could have sworn that I heard a voice."

"Impossible. We are all here."

"It must have been my fancy then."

Captain Ephraim walked to the seaward face of the cave and swept the

ocean with his eyes. The wind had quite fallen away now, and the sea

stretched away to the eastward, smooth and unbroken save for a single

great black spar which floated near the spot where the _Golden Rod_ had

foundered.

"We should lie in the track of some ships," said the captain

thoughtfully. "There's the codders and the herring-busses. We're over

far south for them, I reckon. But we can't be more'n two hundred mile

from Port Royal in Arcadia, and we're in the line of the St. Lawrence

trade. If I had three white mountain pines, Amos, and a hundred yards

of stout canvas I'd get up on the top of this thing, d'ye see, and I'd

rig such a jury-mast as would send her humming into Boston Bay. Then

I'd break her up and sell her for what she was worth, and turn a few

pieces over the business. But she's a heavy old craft, and that's a

fact, though even now she might do a knot or two an hour if she had a

hurricane behind her. But what is it, Amos?"

The young hunter was standing with his ear slanting, his head bent

forwards, and his eyes glancing sideways like a man who listens

intently. He was about to answer when De Catinat gave a cry and pointed

to the back of the cave.

"Look at the crack now."

It had widened by a foot since they had noticed it last, until it was

now no longer a crack. It was a pass.

"Let us go through," said the captain.

"It can but come out on the other side."

"Then let us see the other side."

He led the way and the other two followed him. It was very dark as they

advanced, with high dripping ice walls on either side and one little

zigzagging slit of blue sky above their heads. Tripping and groping

their way, they stumbled along until suddenly the passage grew wider and

opened out into a large square of flat ice. The berg was level in the

centre and sloped upwards from that point to the high cliffs which

bounded it on each side. In three directions this slope was very steep,

but in one it slanted up quite gradually, and the constant thawing had

grooved the surface with a thousand irregularities by which an active

man could ascend. With one impulse they began all three to clamber up

until a minute later they were standing not far from the edge of the

summit, seventy feet above the sea, with a view which took in a good

fifty miles of water. In all that fifty miles there was no sign of

life, nothing but the endless glint of the sun upon the waves.

Captain Ephraim whistled. "We are out of luck," said he.

Amos Green looked about him with startled eyes. "I cannot understand

it," said he. "I could have sworn--By the eternal, listen to that!" The

clear call of a military bugle rang out in the morning air. With a cry

of amazement they all three craned forward and peered over the edge.

A large ship was lying under the very shadow of the iceberg. They

looked straight down upon her snow-white decks, fringed with shining

brass cannon, and dotted with seamen. A little clump of soldiers stood

upon the poop going through the manual exercise, and it was from them

that the call had come which had sounded so unexpectedly in the ears of

the castaways. Standing back from the edge, they had not only looked

over the top-masts of this welcome neighbour, but they had themselves

been invisible from her decks. Now the discovery was mutual, as was

shown by a chorus of shouts and cries from beneath them.

But the three did not wait an instant. Sliding and scrambling down the

wet, slippery incline, they rushed shouting through the crack and into

the cave where their comrades had just been startled by the bugle-call

while in the middle of their cheerless breakfast. A few hurried words

and the leaky long-boat had been launched, their possessions had been

bundled in, and they were afloat once more. Pulling round a promontory

of the berg, they found themselves under the stern of a fine corvette,

the sides of which were lined with friendly faces, while from the peak

there drooped a huge white banner mottled over with the golden lilies of

France. In a very few minutes their boat had been hauled up and they

found themselves on board the _St. Christophe_ man-of-war, conveying

Marquis de Denonville, the new Governor-General of Canada, to take over

his duties.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN THE POOL OF QUEBEC.

A singular colony it was of which the shipwrecked party found themselves

now to be members. The _St. Christophe_ had left Rochelle three weeks

before with four small consorts conveying five hundred soldiers to help

the struggling colony on the St. Lawrence. The squadron had become

separated, however, and the governor was pursuing his way alone in the

hope of picking up the others in the river. Aboard he had a company of

the regiment of Quercy, the staff of his own household, Saint Vallier,

the new Bishop of Canada, with several of his attendants, three Recollet

friars, and five Jesuits bound for the fatal Iroquois mission,

half-a-dozen ladies on their way out to join their husbands, two

Ursuline nuns, ten or twelve gallants whom love of adventure and the

hope of bettering their fortunes had drawn across the seas, and lastly

some twenty peasant maidens of Anjou who were secure of finding husbands

waiting for them upon the beach, if only for the sake of the sheets, the

pot, the tin plates and the kettle which the king would provide for each

of his humble wards.

To add a handful of New England Independents, a Puritan of Boston, and

three Huguenots to such a gathering, was indeed to bring fire-brand and

powder-barrel together. And yet all aboard were so busy with their own

concerns that the castaways were left very much to themselves. Thirty

of the soldiers were down with fever and scurvy, and both priests and

nuns were fully taken up in nursing them. Denonville, the governor, a

pious-minded dragoon, walked the deck all day reading the Psalms of

David, and sat up half the night with maps and charts laid out before

him, planning out the destruction of the Iroquois who were ravaging his

dominions. The gallants and the ladies flirted, the maidens of Anjou

made eyes at the soldiers of Quercy, and the bishop Saint Vallier read

his offices and lectured his clergy. Ephraim Savage used to stand all

day glaring at the good man as he paced the deck with his red-edged

missal in his hand, and muttering about the "abomination of desolation,"

but his little ways were put down to his exposure upon the iceberg, and

to the fixed idea in the French mind that men of the Anglo-Saxon stock

are not to be held accountable for their actions.

There was peace between England and France at present, though feeling

ran high between Canada and New York, the French believing, and with

some justice, that the English colonists were whooping on the demons who

attacked them. Ephraim and his men were therefore received hospitably

on board, though the ship was so crowded that they had to sleep wherever

they could find cover and space for their bodies. The Catinats, too,

had been treated in an even more kindly fashion, the weak old man and

the beauty of his daughter arousing the interest of the governor

himself. De Catinat had, during the voyage, exchanged his uniform for a

plain sombre suit, so that, except for his military bearing, there was

nothing to show that he was a fugitive from the army. Old Catinat was

now so weak that he was past the answering of questions, his daughter

was forever at his side, and the soldier was diplomatist enough, after a

training at Versailles, to say much without saying anything, and so

their secret was still preserved. De Catinat had known what it was to

be a Huguenot in Canada before the law was altered. He had no wish to

try it after.

On the day after the rescue they sighted Cape Breton in the south, and

soon running swiftly before an easterly wind, saw the loom of the east

end of Anticosti. Then they sailed up the mighty river, though from

mid-channel the banks upon either side were hardly to be seen. As the

shores narrowed in, they saw the wild gorge of the Saguenay River upon

the right, with the smoke from the little fishing and trading station of

Tadousac streaming up above the pine trees. Naked Indians with their

faces daubed with red clay, Algonquins and Abenakis, clustered round the

ship in their birchen canoes with fruit and vegetables from the land,

which brought fresh life to the scurvy-stricken soldiers. Thence the

ship tacked on up the river past Mal Bay, the Ravine of the Eboulements

and the Bay of St. Paul with its broad valley and wooded mountains all

in a blaze with their beautiful autumn dress, their scarlets, their

purples, and their golds, from the maple, the ash, the young oak, and

the saplings of the birch. Amos Green, leaning on the bulwarks, stared

with longing eyes at these vast expanses of virgin woodland, hardly

traversed save by an occasional wandering savage or hardy

_coureur-de-bois_. Then the bold outline of Cape Tourmente loomed up

in front of them; they passed the rich placid meadows of Laval's

seigneury of Beaupre, and, skirting the settlements of the Island of

Orleans, they saw the broad pool stretch out in front of them, the falls

of Montmorenci, the high palisades of Cape Levi, the cluster of vessels,

and upon the right that wonderful rock with its diadem of towers and its

township huddled round its base, the centre and stronghold of French

power in America. Cannon thundered from the bastions above, and were

echoed back by the warship, while ensigns dipped, hats waved, and a

swarm of boats and canoes shot out to welcome the new governor, and to

convey the soldiers and passengers to shore.

The old merchant had pined away since he had left French soil, like a

plant which has been plucked from its roots. The shock of the shipwreck

and the night spent in their bleak refuge upon the iceberg had been too

much for his years and strength. Since they had been picked up he had

lain amid the scurvy-stricken soldiers with hardly a sign of life save

for his thin breathing and the twitching of his scraggy throat. Now,

however, at the sound of the cannon and the shouting he opened his eyes,

and raised himself slowly and painfully upon his pillow. "What is it,

father? What can we do for you?" cried Adele. "We are in America, and

here is Amory and here am I, your children."

But the old man shook his head. "The Lord has brought me to the

promised land, but He has not willed that I should enter into it," said

he. "May His will be done, and blessed be His name forever! But at

least I should wish, like Moses, to gaze upon it, if I cannot set foot

upon it. Think you, Amory, that you could lend me your arm and lead me

on to the deck?"

"If I have another to help me," said De Catinat, and ascending to the

deck, he brought Amos Green back with him. "Now, father, if you will

lay a hand upon the shoulder of each, you need scarce put your feet to

the boards."

A minute later the old merchant was on the deck, and the two young men

had seated him upon a coil of rope with his back against the mast, where

he should be away from the crush. The soldiers were already crowding

down into the boats, and all were so busy over their own affairs that

they paid no heed to the little group of refugees who gathered round the

stricken man. He turned his head painfully from side to side, but his

eyes brightened as they fell upon the broad blue stretch of water, the

flash of the distant falls, the high castle, and the long line of purple

mountains away to the north-west.

"It is not like France," said he. "It is not green and peaceful and

smiling, but it is grand and strong and stern like Him who made it.

As I have weakened, Adele, my soul has been less clogged by my body, and

I have seen clearly much that has been dim to me. And it has seemed to

me, my children, that all this country of America, not Canada alone, but

the land where you were born also, Amos Green, and all that stretches

away towards yonder setting sun, will be the best gift of God to man.

For this has He held it concealed through all the ages, that now His own

high purpose may be wrought upon it. For here is a land which is

innocent, which has no past guilt to atone for, no feud, nor ill custom,

nor evil of any kind. And as the years roll on all the weary and

homeless ones, all who are stricken and landless and wronged, will turn

their faces to it, even as we have done. And hence will come a nation

which will surely take all that is good and leave all that is bad,

moulding and fashioning itself into the highest. Do I not see such a

mighty people, a people who will care more to raise their lowest than to

exalt their richest--who will understand that there is more bravery in

peace than in war, who will see that all men are brothers, and whose

hearts will not narrow themselves down to their own frontiers, but will

warm in sympathy with every noble cause the whole world through?

That is what I see, Adele, as I lie here beside a shore upon which I

shall never set my feet, and I say to you that if you and Amory go to

the building of such a nation then indeed your lives are not misspent.

It will come, and when it comes, may God guard it, may God watch over it

and direct it!" His head had sunk gradually lower upon his breast and

his lids had fallen slowly over his eyes which had been looking away out

past Point Levi at the rolling woods and the far-off mountains. Adele

gave a quick cry of despair and threw her arms round the old man's neck.

"He is dying, Amory, he is dying!" she cried.

A stern Franciscan friar, who had been telling his beads within a few

paces of them, heard the cry and was beside them in an instant.

"He is indeed dying," he said, as he gazed down at the ashen face.

"Has the old man had the sacraments of the Church?"

"I do not think that he needs them," answered De Catinat evasively.

"Which of us do not need them, young man!" said the friar sternly. "And

how can a man hope for salvation without them? I shall myself

administer them without delay."

But the old Huguenot had opened his eyes, and with a last flicker of

strength he pushed away the gray-hooded figure which bent over him.

"I left all that I love rather than yield to you," he cried, "and think

you that you can overcome me now?"

The Franciscan started back at the words, and his hard suspicious eyes

shot from De Catinat to the weeping girl.

"So!" said he. "You are Huguenots, then!"

"Hush! Do not wrangle before a man who is dying!" cried De Catinat in a

voice as fierce as his own.

"Before a man who is dead," said Amos Green solemnly.

As he spoke the old man's face had relaxed, his thousand wrinkles had

been smoothed suddenly out, as though an invisible hand had passed over

them, and his head fell back against the mast. Adele remained

motionless with her arms still clasped round his neck and her cheek

pressed against his shoulder. She had fainted.

De Catinat raised his wife and bore her down to the cabin of one of the

ladies who had already shown them some kindness. Deaths were no new

thing aboard the ship, for they had lost ten soldiers upon the outward

passage, so that amid the joy and bustle of the disembarking there were

few who had a thought to spare upon the dead pilgrim, and the less so

when it was whispered abroad that he had been a Huguenot. A brief order

was given that he should be buried in the river that very night, and

then, save for a sailmaker who fastened the canvas round him, mankind

had done its last for Theophile Catinat. With the survivors, however,

it was different, and when the troops were all disembarked, they were

mustered in a little group upon the deck, and an officer of the

governor's suite decided upon what should be done with them. He was a

portly, good-humoured, ruddy-cheeked man, but De Catinat saw with

apprehension that the friar walked by his side as he advanced along the

deck, and exchanged a few whispered remarks with him. There was a

bitter smile upon the monk's dark face which boded little good for the

heretics.

"It shall be seen to, good father, it shall be seen to," said the

officer impatiently, in answer to one of these whispered injunctions.

"I am as zealous a servant of Holy Church as you are."

"I trust that you are, Monsieur de Bonneville. With so devout a

governor as Monsieur de Denonville, it might be an ill thing even in

this world for the officers of his household to be lax."

The soldier glanced angrily at his companion, for he saw the threat

which lurked under the words.

"I would have you remember, father," said he, "that if faith is a

virtue, charity is no less so." Then, speaking in English: "Which is

Captain Savage?"

"Ephraim Savage of Boston."

"And Master Amos Green?"

"Amos Green of New York."

"And Master Tomlinson?"

"John Tomlinson of Salem."

"And master mariners Hiram Jefferson, Joseph Cooper, Seek-grace Spalding,

and Paul Cushing, all of Massachusetts Bay?"

"We are all here."

"It is the governor's order that all whom I have named shall be conveyed

at once to the trading brig _Hope_, which is yonder ship with the white

paint line. She sails within the hour for the English provinces."

A buzz of joy broke from the castaway mariners at the prospect of being

so speedily restored to their homes, and they hurried away to gather

together the few possessions which they had saved from the wreck.

The officer put his list in his pocket and stepped across to where De

Catinat leaned moodily against the bulwarks.

"Surely you remember me," he said. "I could not forget your face, even

though you have exchanged a blue coat for a black one."

De Catinat grasped the hand which was held out to him.

"I remember you well, De Bonneville, and the journey that we made

together to Fort Frontenac, but it was not for me to claim your

friendship, now that things have gone amiss with me."

"Tut, man; once my friend always my friend."

"I feared, too, that my acquaintance would do you little good with

yonder dark-cowled friar who is glowering behind you."

"Well, well, you know how it is with us here. Frontenac could keep them

in their place, but De la Barre was as clay in their hands, and this new

one promises to follow in his steps. What with the Sulpitians at

Montreal and the Jesuits here, we poor devils are between the upper and

the nether stones. But I am grieved from my heart to give such a

welcome as this to an old comrade, and still more to his wife."

"What is to be done, then?"

"You are to be confined to the ship until she sails, which will be in a

week at the furthest."

"And then?"

"You are to be carried home in her and handed over to the Governor of

Rochelle to be sent back to Paris. Those are Monsieur de Denonville's

orders, and if they be not carried out to the letter, then we shall have

the whole hornet's nest about our ears."

De Catinat groaned as he listened. After all their strivings and trials

and efforts, to return to Paris, the scorn of his enemies, and an object

of pity to his friends, was too deep a humiliation. He flushed with

shame at the very thought. To be led back like the home-sick peasant

who has deserted from his regiment! Better one spring into the broad

blue river beneath him, were it not for little pale-faced Adele who had

none but him to look to. It was so tame! So ignominious! And yet in

this floating prison, with a woman whose fate was linked with his own,

what hope was there of escape?

De Bonneville had left him, with a few blunt words of sympathy, but the

friar still paced the deck with a furtive glance at him from time to

time, and two soldiers who were stationed upon the poop passed and

repassed within a few yards of him. They had orders evidently to mark

his movements. Heart-sick he leaned over the side watching the Indians

in their paint and feathers shooting backwards and forwards in their

canoes, and staring across at the town where the gaunt gable ends of

houses and charred walls marked the effect of the terrible fire which a

few years before had completely destroyed the lower part.

As he stood gazing, his attention was drawn away by the swish of oars,

and a large boat full of men passed immediately underneath where he

stood.

It held the New Englanders, who were being conveyed to the ship which

was to take them home. There were the four seamen huddled together, and

there in the sheets were Captain Ephraim Savage and Amos Green,

conversing together and pointing to the shipping. The grizzled face of

the old Puritan and the bold features of the woodsman were turned more

than once in his direction, but no word of farewell and no kindly wave

of the hand came back to the lonely exile. They were so full of their

own future and their own happiness, that they had not a thought to spare

upon his misery. He could have borne anything from his enemies, but

this sudden neglect from his friends came too heavily after his other

troubles. He stooped his face to his arms and burst in an instant into

a passion of sobs. Before he raised his eyes again the brig had hoisted

her anchor, and was tacking under full canvas out of the Quebec basin.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE VOICE AT THE PORT-HOLE.

That night old Theophile Catinat was buried from the ship's side, his

sole mourners the two who bore his own blood in their veins. The next

day De Catinat spent upon deck, amid the bustle and confusion of the

unlading, endeavouring to cheer Adele by light chatter which came from a

heavy heart. He pointed out to her the places which he had known so

well, the citadel where he had been quartered, the college of the

Jesuits, the cathedral of Bishop Laval, the magazine of the old company,

dismantled by the great fire, and the house of Aubert de la Chesnaye,

the only private one which had remained standing in the lower part.

From where they lay they could see not only the places of interest, but

something also of that motley population which made the town so

different to all others save only its younger sister, Montreal. Passing

and repassing along the steep path with the picket fence which connected

the two quarters, they saw the whole panorama of Canadian life moving

before their eyes, the soldiers with their slouched hats, their plumes,

and their bandoleers, habitants from the river _cotes_ in their rude

peasant dresses, little changed from their forefathers of Brittany or

Normandy, and young rufflers from France or from the seigneuries, who

cocked their hats and swaggered in what they thought to be the true

Versailles fashion. There, too, might be seen little knots of the men

of the woods, _coureurs-de-bois_ or _voyageurs_, with leathern hunting

tunics, fringed leggings, and fur cap with eagle feather, who came back

once a year to the cities, leaving their Indian wives and children in

some up-country wigwam. Redskins, too, were there, leather-faced

Algonquin fishers and hunters, wild Micmacs from the east, and savage

Abenakis from the south, while everywhere were the dark habits of the

Franciscans, and the black cassocks and broad hats of the Recollets, and

Jesuits, the moving spirits of the whole.