THE FLAGSTAFF TOWER.
Time pressing, the Commandant had gone straight from the orderly-room
in search of Father Joly. As a soldier and a good Catholic he
desired to be shriven, and as a man of habit he preferred the old
Cure to Father Launoy. To be sure the Cure was deaf as a post, but
on the other hand the Commandant's worst sins would bear to be
shouted.
"There is yet one thing upon my conscience," he wound up. "The fact
is, I feel pretty sure of myself in this business, but I have some
difficulty in trusting God."
It is small wonder that a confession so astonishing had to be
repeated twice, and even when he heard it Father Joly failed to
understand.
"But how is it possible to mistrust God?" he asked.
"Well, I don't know. I suppose that even in bringing New France so
near to destruction He is acting in loving mercy; but all the same it
will be a wrench to me if these English pass without paying us the
honour of a siege. For if we cannot force them to a fight, Montreal
is lost." The Commandant believed this absolutely.
Father Joly was Canadian born and bred; had received his education in
the Seminary of Quebec; and knowing nothing of the world beyond New
France, felt no doubt upon which side God was fighting. If it were
really necessary to New France that the English should be delayed--
and he would take the Commandant's word for it--why then delayed they
would be. This he felt able to promise. "And I in my heart of
hearts am sure of it," said the Commandant. "But in war one has to
take account of every chance, and this may pass sometimes for want of
faith."
So, like an honest gentleman, he took his absolution, and afterwards
went to Mass and spent half an hour with his mind withdrawn from all
worldly care, greatly to his soul's refreshment. But with the
ringing of the sanctus bell a drum began to beat--as it seemed, on
the very ridge of the chapel roof, but really from the leads of the
flagstaff tower high above it. Father Launoy paused in the
celebration, but was ordered by a quiet gesture to proceed. Even at
the close the garrison stood and waited respectfully for their
Commandant to walk out, and followed in decent order to the porch.
Then they broke into a run pell-mell for the walls.
But an hour passed before the first whaleboat with its load of red
uniforms pushed its way into sight through the forest screen.
Then began a spectacle--slow, silent, by little and little
overwhelming. It takes a trained imagination to realise great
numbers, and the men of Fort Amitie were soon stupefied and ceased
even to talk. It seemed to them that the forest would never cease
disgorging boats.
"A brave host, my children! But we will teach them that they handle
a wasps' nest."
His men eyed the Commandant in doubt; they could scarcely believe
that he intended to resist, now that the enemy's strength was
apparent. To their minds war meant winning or losing, capturing or
being captured. To fight an impossible battle, for the mere sake of
gaining time for troops they had never seen, did not enter into their
calculations.
So they eyed him, while still the flotilla increased against the far
background and came on--whaleboats, gunboats, bateaux, canoes; and
still in the lessening interval along the waterway the birds sang.
For the British moved, not as once upon Lake George startling the
echoes with drums and military bands, but so quietly that at half a
mile's distance only the faint murmur of splashing oars and creaking
thole-pins reached the ears of the watchers.
The Commandant suddenly lowered his glass and closed it with a snap,
giving thanks to God. For at that distance the leading boats began
heading in for shore.
"Etienne, he intends at least to summon us!"
So it proved. General Amherst was by no means the man to pass and
leave a hostile post in his rear. His detractors indeed accused him
of spending all his time upon forts, either in building or in
reducing them. But he had two very good reasons for pausing before
Fort Amitie; he did not know the strength of its defenders, and he
wanted pilots to guide his boats down the rapids below.
Therefore he landed and sent an officer forward to summon the
garrison.
The officer presented himself at the river-gate, and having politely
suffered Sergeant Bedard to blindfold him, was led to the
Commandant's quarters. A good hour passed before he reappeared, the
Commandant himself conducting him; and meantime the garrison amused
itself with wagering on the terms of capitulation.
At the gate the Englishman's bandage was removed. He saluted, and
was saluted, with extreme ceremony. The Commandant watched him out
of earshot, and then, rubbing his hands, turned with a happy smile.
"To your guns, my children!"
They obeyed him, while they wondered. He seemed to take for granted
that they must feel the compliment paid them by a siege in form.
The day was now well advanced, and it seemed at first
that the British meant to let it pass without a demonstration.
Toward nightfall, however, four gunboats descended the river,
anchored and dropped down the current, paying out their hawsers and
feeling their way into range. But the Fort was ready for them,
and opened fire before they could train their guns; a lucky shot
cut the moorings of one clean and close by the stem; and, the
current carrying her inshore, she was hulled twice as she drifted
down-stream. The other three essayed a few shots without effect in
the dusk, warped back out of range, and waited for daylight to
improve their marksmanship.
And with daylight began one of the strangest of sieges, between an
assailant who knew only that he had to deal with stout walls, and a
defender who dared not attempt even a show of a sortie for fear of
exposing the weakness of his garrison. The French had ammunition
enough to last for a month, and cannon enough to keep two hundred men
busy; and ran from one gun to another, keeping up pretences but doing
little damage in their hurry. Their lucky opening shots had
impressed Amherst, and he was one to cling to a notion of his enemy's
strength. He solemnly effected a new landing at six hundred yards'
distance, opened his lines across the north-western corner of the
fort, kept his men entrenching for two days and two nights, brought
up thirty guns, and, advancing them within two hundred yards, began
at his leisure to knock holes in the walls. Meantime, twenty guns,
anchored out in the river, played on the broad face of the fort and
swept the Commandant's lunette out of existence. And with all this
prodigious waste of powder but five of the garrison had fallen, and
three of these by the bursting of a single shell. The defenders
understood now that they were fighting for time, and told each other
that when their comedy was played out and the inevitable moment came,
the British General would not show himself fierce in revenge--
"provided," they would add, "the Seigneur does not try his patience
too far." It was Father Launoy who set this whisper going from lip
to lip, and so artfully that none suspected him for its author;
Father Launoy, who had been wont to excite the patriotism of the
faithful by painting the English as devils in human shape. He was a
brave man; but he held this resistance to be senseless and did not
believe for an instant that Montreal would use the delay or, using
it, would strike with any success.
At first the tremendous uproar of the enemy's artillery and its
shattering effect on the masonry of their fortress, had numbed the
militiamen's nerves; they felt the place tumbling about their ears.
But as the hours passed they discovered that round-shot could be
dodged and that even bursting shells, though effective against stones
and mortar, did surprisingly small damage to life and limb; and with
this discovery they began almost to taste the humour of the
situation. They fed and rested in bomb-proof chambers which the
Commandant and M. Etienne had devised in the slope of earth under the
_terre-plein_; and from these they watched and discussed in safety
the wreckage done upon the empty buildings across the courtyard.
One of these caves had at the beginning of the siege been assigned
to Diane; and from the mouth of it, seated with Felicite beside her,
she too watched the demolition; but with far different thoughts.
She knew better than these militiamen her father's obstinacy, and
that his high resolve reached beyond the mere gaining of time.
It seemed to her that God was drawing out the agony; and with the end
before her mind she prayed Him to shorten this cruel interval.
Early on the third morning the British guns had laid open a breach
six feet wide at the north-western angle, close by the foot of the
flagstaff tower; and Amherst, who had sent off a detachment of the
Forty-sixth with a dozen Indian guides to fetch a circuit through the
woods and open a feint attack in the rear of the fort, prepared for a
general assault. But first he resolved to summon the garrison again.
To carry his message he chose the same officer as before, a Captain
Muspratt of the Forty-fourth Regiment.
Now as yet the cannonade had not slackened, and it chanced that as
the General gave Muspratt his instructions, an artillery sergeant in
command of a battery of mortars on the left, which had been advanced
within two hundred yards of the walls, elevated one of his pieces and
lobbed a bomb clean over the summit of the flagstaff tower.
It was a fancy shot, fired--as the army learnt afterwards--for a
wager; but its effect staggered all who watched it. The fuse was
quick, and the bomb, mounting on its high curve, exploded in a direct
line between the battery and the flagstaff. One or two men from the
neighbouring guns shouted bravos. The sergeant slapped his thigh and
was turning for congratulations, but suddenly paused, stock-still and
staring upward.
The flagstaff stood, apparently untouched. But what had become of
the flag?
A moment before it had been floating proudly enough, shaking its
folds loose to the light breeze. Now it was gone. Had the explosion
blown it to atoms? Not a shred of it floated away on the wind.
A man on the sergeant's right called out positively that a couple of
seconds after the explosion, and while the smoke was clearing, he had
caught a glimpse of something white--something which looked like a
flag--close by the foot of the staff; and that an arm had reached up
and drawn it down hurriedly. He would swear to the arm; he had seen
it distinctly above the edge of the battlements. In his opinion the
fort was surrendering, and someone aloft there had been pulling down
the flag as the bomb burst.
The General, occupied for the moment in giving Captain Muspratt his
instructions, had not witnessed the shot. But he turned at the shout
which followed, caught sight of the bare flagstaff, and ordering his
bugler to sound the "Cease firing," sent forward the captain at once
to parley.
With Muspratt went a sergeant of the Forty-sixth and a bugler.
The sergeant carried a white flag. Ascending the slope briskly, they
were met at the gate by M. Etienne.
The sudden disappearance of the flag above the tower had mystified
the garrison no less thoroughly than the British. They knew the
Commandant to be aloft there with Sergeant Bedard, and the most of
the men could only guess, as their enemies had guessed, that he was
giving the signal of surrender.
But this M. Etienne could by no means believe; it belied his
brother's nature as well as his declared resolve. And so, while the
English captain with great politeness stated his terms--which were
unconditional surrender and nothing less--the poor gentleman kept
glancing over his shoulder and answering at random, "Yes, yes," or
"Precisely--if you will allow me," or "Excuse me a moment, until my
brother--" In short, he rambled so that Captain Muspratt could only
suppose his wits unhinged. It was scarce credible that a sane man
could receive such a message inattentively, and yet this old
gentleman did not seem to be listening!
Diane meanwhile stood at the mouth of her shelter with her eyes
lifted, intent upon the tower's summit. She, too had seen the flag
run down with the bursting of the bomb, and she alone had hit in her
mind on the true explanation--that a flying shard had cut clean
through the up-halliard close to the staff, and the flag--heavy with
golden lilies of her own working--had at once dropped of its own
weight. She had caught sight, too, of her father's arm reaching up
to grasp it, and she knew why. The flagstaff had a double set of
halliards.
She waited--waited confidently, since her father was alive up there.
She marvelled that he had escaped, for the explosion had seemed to
wrap the battlements in one sheet of fire. Nevertheless he was
safe--she had seen him--and she waited for the flag to rise again.
Minutes passed. She took a step forward from her shelter.
The firing had ceased and the courtyard was curiously still and
empty. Then four of the five militiamen posted to watch the back
of the building came hurrying across towards the gateway.
She understood--her senses being strung for the moment so tensely
that they seemed to relieve her of all trouble of thinking--she
understood that a parley was going forward at the gate and that these
men were hurrying from their posts to hear it. In her ears the
bugles still sounded the "Cease firing "; and still she gazed up at
the tower.
Yes--she had made no mistake! The spare halliards were shaking; in a
second or two--but why did they drag so interminably?--the flag would
rise again.
And it rose. Before her eyes, before the eyes of the parleyers in
the gateway and of the British watching from their batteries, it rose
above the edge of the battlements and climbed half-way up the mast,
or a little short of half-way. There it stopped--climbed a few feet
higher--and stopped again--climbed yet another foot--and slowly, very
slowly, fluttered downward.
With a dreadful surmise Diane started to run across the courtyard
toward the door at the foot of the tower; and even as she started a
yell went up from the rear of the fort, followed by a random volley
of musketry and a second yell--a true Iroquois war-whoop.
In the gateway Captain Muspratt called promptly to his bugler.
The first yell had told him what was happening; that the men of the
Forty-sixth, sent round for the feint attack, had found the rear wall
defenceless and were escalading, in ignorance of the parley at the
gate.
Quick as thought the bugler sounded the British recall, and its notes
were taken up by bugle after bugle down the slope. The Major
commanding the feint attack heard, comprehended after a fashion, and
checked his men; and the Forty-sixth, as a well-disciplined regiment,
dropped off its scaling ladders and came to heel.
But he could not check his Indian guides. Once already on their
progress down the river they had been baulked of their lust to kill;
and this restraint had liked them so little that already
three-fourths of Sir William Johnson's Iroquois were marching back to
their homes in dudgeon. These dozen braves would not be cheated a
second time if they could help it. Disregarding the shouts and the
bugle-calls they swarmed up the ladders, dropped within the fort, and
swept through the Commandant's quarters into the courtyard.
In the doorway at the foot of the flagstaff tower a woman's skirt
fluttered for an instant and was gone. They raced after it like a
pack of mad dogs, and with them ran one, an Ojibway, whom neither
hate nor lust, but a terrible fear, made fleeter than any.
Six of them reached the narrow doorway together, snarling and
jostling in their rage. The Ojibway broke through first and led the
way up the winding stairway, taking it three steps at a time, with
death behind him now--though of this he recked nothing--since he had
clubbed an Oneida senseless in the doorway, and these Indians,
Oneidas all, had from the start resented his joining the party of
guides.
Never a yard separated him from the musket-butt of the Indian who
panted next after him; but above, at the last turning of the stair
under a trap-door through which the sunlight poured, he caught again
the flutter of a woman's skirt. A ladder led through the hatchway,
and--almost grasping her frock--he sprang up after Diane, flung
himself on the leads, reached out, and clutching the hatch, slammed
it down on the foremost Oneida's head.
As he slipped the bolt--thank God it had a bolt!--he heard the man
drop from the ladder with a muffled thud. Then, safe for a moment,
he ran to the battlements and shouted down at the pitch of his voice.
"Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"
His voice sounded passing strange to him. Nor for two years had it
been lifted to pronounce an English word.
Having sent down his call he ran back swiftly to the closed hatchway;
and as he knelt, pressing upon it with both hands, his eyes met
Diane's.
She stood by the flagstaff with a pistol in her hand. But her hand
hung stiffly by her hip as it had dropped at the sound of his shout,
and her eyes stared on him. At her feet lay the Commandant, his hand
still rigid upon the halliards, his breast covered by the folds of
the fallen flag, and behind her, as the bursting shell had killed and
huddled it, the body of old Sergeant Bedard.
Why she stood there, pistol in hand, he could partly guess.
How these two corpses came here he could not guess at all.
The Commandant, mortally wounded, had grasped at the falling flag,
and with a dying effort had bent it upon the spare halliards and
tried to hoist. It lay now, covering a wound which had torn his
chest open, coat and flesh, and laid his ribs bare.
But John a Cleeve, kneeling upon the hatchway, understood nothing of
this. What beat on his brain was the vision of a face below--the
face of the officer commanding--turned upwards in blank astonishment
at his shout of "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"
The Indians were battering the hatch with their musket-butts.
The bolt shook. He pressed his weight down on the edge, keeping his
head well back to be out of the way of bullets. Luckily the timbers
of the hatch were stout, and moreover it had a leaden casing, but
this would avail nothing when the Indians began to fire at the
hinges--as they surely would.
He found himself saying aloud in French, "Run, mademoiselle!--I won't
answer for the hinges. Call again to the red-coats! They will
help."
But still, while blow after blow shook the hatch, Diane crouched
motionless, staring at him with wild eyes.
"They will help," he repeated with the air of one striving to speak
lucidly; then with a change of tone, "Give me your pistol, please."
She held it out obediently, at arm's length; but as he took it she
seemed to remember, and crept close.
"Non--non!" she whispered. "C'est a moi-que tu le dois, enfin!"
From the staircase--not close beneath the hatch, but, as it seemed,
far below their feet--came the muffled sound of shots, and between
the shots hoarse cries of rage.
"Courage!" whispered John. He could hear that men were grappling and
fighting down there, and supposed the Forty-sixth to be at hand.
He could not know that the parleyers at the gate, appalled for an
instant by the vision of Diane with a dozen savages in chase, had
rallied at a yell from Dominique Guyon, pelted after him to the
rescue, and were now at grips with the rearmost Oneidas--a locked and
heaving mass choking the narrow spirals of the stairway.
"Courage!" he whispered again, and pressing a knee on the edge of the
hatch reached out a hand to steady her. What mattered it if they
died now--together--he and she? "_Tu dois_"--she loved him; her lips
had betrayed her. "_Tu dois_"--the words sang through him,
thrilling, bathing him in bliss.
"O my love! O my love!"
The blows beat upward against the hatch and ceased. He sprang erect,
slid an arm around her and dragged her back--not a second too soon.
A gun exploded against the hinges at their feet, blowing one loose.
John saw the crevice gaping and the muzzle of a gun pushed through to
prise it open. He leaped upon the hatch, pistol in hand.
"Forty-sixth! Forty-sixth!"
What was that? Through the open crevice a British cheer answered
him. The man levering against his weight lost hold of the gun,
leaving it jammed. John heard the slide and thud of his fall.
"Hallo!" hailed a cheerful voice from the foot of the ladder.
"You there!--open the trap-way and show us some light!"
John knelt, slipped back the bolt, and turned to Diane. She had
fallen on her knees--but what had happened to her? She was cowering
before the joy in his face, shrinking away from him and yet
beseeching.
"Le pistolet--donne-moi le pistolet!"--her voice hissed on the word,
her eyes petitioned him desperately. "Ah, de grace! tu n'a pas le
droit--"
He understood. With a passing bitter laugh he turned from her
entreaties and hurled the pistol across the battlements into air.
A hand flung open the hatch. A British officer--Etherington, Major
of the Forty-sixth--pushed his head and shoulders through he opening
and stared across the leads, panting, with triumphant jolly face.