THE FORT SURRENDERS.
The red-coats, who had forced their way up the tower by weight of
numbers and at the point of the bayonet, were now ordered to face
about and clear the stairway; which they did, driving the mixed
rabble of Canadians and Indians down before them, and collecting the
dead and wounded as they went. Five of the Oneidas had been
bayoneted or trampled to death in the struggle; two of the garrison
would never fight again, and scarcely a man had escaped cuts or
bruises.
But Diane, as she followed her father's body down the stairs, knew
nothing of this. The dead and wounded had been removed. The narrow
lancet windows let in a faint light, enough to reveal some ugly
stains and splashes on the walls; but she walked with fixed unseeing
eyes. Once only on the way down her foot slid on the edge of a
slippery step, and she shivered.
In the sunlight outside the doorway a group of men, mauled and
sullen, some wearing bandages, others with blood yet trickling down
their faces, stood listening to an altercation between M. Etienne and
a couple of spick-and-span British officers. As their Commandant's
body came through the doorway they drew together with a growl.
Love was in that sound, and sorrow, and helpless rage. One or two
broke into sobs.
The British officers--one of them was the General himself, the other
his messenger, Captain Muspratt--bared their heads. M. Etienne,
checked in the midst of an harangue, stepped to Diane and took her
hand tenderly.
She gazed slowly around on the group of battered men. There was no
reproach in her look--Had she not failed as miserably as they?--and
yet it held a word of injustice. She could not know that for her
sake they carried these wounds. And Dominique Guyon, the one man who
could have answered her thoughts, stared savagely at the ground,
offering no defence.
"Dominique Guyon," commanded M. Etienne, "four of you will relieve
these _messieurs_ of their burden. Carry your master to the chapel,
where you will find Father Launoy and Father Joly."
"But pardon me, monsieur," interposed Amherst politely, "my soldiers
will be proud to bear so gallant a foe."
"I thank you "--M. Etienne's bow was stiff and obstinate--"but I
assert again that I still command this fortress, and the bearers
shall be of my choosing."
Diane laid a hand on her uncle's arm. "He is dead," said she.
"What matters it?" She did not understand this dispute. "Perhaps if
I promise M. le General that these men shall return to him when they
have laid my father in the chapel--"
The General--a tall, lean, horse-faced man with a shrewd and not
unkindly eye--yielded the point at once. "Willingly, mademoiselle,
and with all the respect an enemy may pay to your sorrow."
He ordered the men to give place to the new bearers.
In the chapel Diane sank on her knees, but not to pray--rather to
escape the consolations of the two priests and be alone with her
thoughts. And her thoughts were not of her father. The stroke had
fallen; but not yet could she feel the pain. He was happy; he alone
of them all had kept his quiet vow, and died disdaining defeat;
whereas she--ah, there lay the terrible thought!--she had not merely
failed, had not been overpowered. In the crisis, beside her father's
corpse, she had played the traitress to her resolve.
The two priests moved about the body, arranging it, fetching
trestles, draperies, and candles for the _lit de parade_, always with
stealthy glances at the bowed figure in the shadow just within the
door. But she knelt on, nor lifted her face.
In the sunlit courtyard without the two commanders were still
disputing. M. Etienne flatly refused to yield up his sword,
maintaining that he had never surrendered, had agreed to no terms of
capitulation; that the redcoats had swarmed over his walls in the
temporary absence of their defenders, gathered at the gateway to
parley under a flag of truce, and should be drawn off at once.
The mischief was, he could not be gainsaid. Major Etherington
explained--at first in English, to his General, and again, at his
General's request, in the best French he could command, for the
benefit of all, that he had indeed heard the recall blown, and had
with difficulty drawn off his men from the scaling-ladders,
persuading them (as he himself was persuaded) that the fort had
surrendered. He knew nothing of the white flag at the gateway, but
had formed his conclusions from the bugle-calls and the bare
flagstaff above the tower.
"Nevertheless, we had not capitulated," persisted M. Etienne.
The Major continued that, albeit he had tried his best, the Indians
were not to be restrained. They had poured into the fort, and,
although he had obeyed the bugles and kept his men back, it had cost
him grave misgivings. But when the Ojibway called down so urgently
from the summit of the tower, he had risked disobedience, hoping to
prevent the massacre which he knew to be afoot. He appealed to his
General to approve, or at least condone, this breach of orders.
For undoubtedly massacre had been prevented. Witness the crowd he
had found jammed in the stairway, and fighting ferociously.
Witness the scene that had met him at the head of the stairs.
Here he swung round upon John and beckoned him to stand out from the
listening group of red-coats.
"It can be proved, sir," he went on, addressing M. Etienne, "that the
lady--your niece, is she not?--owes her life, and more than her life
perhaps, to this savage. I claim only that, answering his call, I
led my men with all possible speed to the rescue. Up there on the
leads I found your brother lying dead, with a sergeant dead beside
him; and their wounds again will prove to you that they had perished
by the bursting of a shell. But this man alone stood on the hatchway
and held it against a dozen Iroquois, as your niece will testify.
What you suppose yourself to owe him, I won't pretend to say; but I
tell you--and I tell you, General--that cleaner pluck I never saw in
my life."
John, the soldiers pushing him forward, stood out with bent head.
He prayed that there might be no Ojibway interpreter at hand; he knew
of none in the fort but Father Launoy, now busy in the chapel laying
out the Commandant's body. Of all the spectators there was but one--
the General himself--who had not known him either as Ensign John a
Cleeve or as the wounded sergeant from Ticonderoga. He had met
Captain Muspratt at Albany, and remembered him well on the march up
the Hudson to Lake George. With Major Etherington he had marched,
messed, played at cards, and lived in close comradeship for months
together--only two years ago! It was not before their eyes that he
hung his head, but before the thought of two eyes that in the chapel
yonder were covered by the hands of a kneeling girl.
M. Etienne stepped forward and took his hand.
"I thank you, my friend--if you can understand my thanks."
Dominique Guyon, returning from the chapel, saw only an Indian
stepping back upon the ranks of the red-coats, who clapped him on the
shoulder for a good fellow; and Dominique paid him no more attention,
being occupied with M. Etienne's next words.
"Nevertheless," said M. Etienne, turning upon Amherst, "my duty to
his Majesty obliges me to insist that I have not capitulated; and
your troops, sir, though they have done me this service, must be at
once withdrawn."
And clearly, by all the rules of war, M. Etienne had the right on his
side. Amherst shrugged his shoulders, frowning and yet forced to
smile--the fix was so entirely absurd. As discipline went in these
North American campaigns, he commanded a well-disciplined army; but
numbers of provincials and bateau-men had filtered in through the
breaches almost unobserved during the parley, and were now strolling
about the fortifications like a crowd of inquisitive tourists.
He ordered Major Etherington to clear them out, and essayed once more
to reason with the enemy.
"You do not seriously urge me, monsieur, to withdraw my men and renew
the bombardment?"
"That is precisely what I require of you."
"But--good heavens, my dear sir!--look at the state of your walls!"
He waved a hand towards the defences.
"I see them; but _you_, sir, as a gentleman, should have no eyes for
their condition--on this side."
The General arched his eyebrows and glanced from M. Etienne to the
Canadians; he did not for a moment mean to appeal to them, but his
glance said involuntarily, "A pretty madman you have for commander!"
And in fact they were already murmuring. What nonsense was this of
M. Etienne's? The fort had fallen, as any man with eyes could see.
Their Commandant was dead. They had fought to gain time? Well, they
had succeeded, and won compliments even from their enemy.
Corporal Sans Quartier spoke up. "With all respect, M. le Capitaine,
if we fight again some of us would like to know what we are fighting
for."
M. Etienne swung round upon him.
"Tais-toi, poltron!"
A murmur answered him; and looking along the line of faces he read
sympathy, respect, even a little shame, but nowhere the response he
sought.
Nor did he reproach them. Bitter reproaches indeed shook his lips,
but trembled there and died unuttered. For five--maybe ten--long
seconds he gazed, and so turned towards the General.
"Achevez, monsieur! . . . Je vous demande pardon si vous me trouvez
un peu pointilleux." His voice shook; he unbuckled his sword, held
it for a moment between his hands as if hesitating, then offered it
to Amherst with the ghost of a bitter smile. "Cela ne vaut pas--sauf
a moi--la peine de le casser . . ."
He bowed, and would have passed on towards the chapel. Amherst
gently detained him.
"I spare you my compliments, sir, and my condolence; they would be
idly offered to a brave man at such a moment. Forgive me, though,
that I cannot spare to consult you on my own affairs. Time presses
with us. You have, as I am told, good pilots here who know the
rapids between this and Montreal, and I must beg to have them pointed
out to me."
M. Etienne paused. "The best pilots, sir, are Dominique Guyon there,
and his brother Bateese. But you will find that most of these men
know the river tolerably well."
"And the rest of your garrison? Your pardon, again, but I must hold
you responsible, to deliver up _all_ your men within the Fort."
"I do not understand . . . This, sir, is all the garrison of Fort
Amitie."
Amherst stared at the nineteen or twenty hurt and dishevelled men
ranged against the tower wall, then back into a face impossible to
associate with untruth.
"M. le Capitaine," said he very slowly, "if with these men you have
made a laughing-stock of me for two days and a half, why then I owe
you a grudge. But something else I owe, and must repay at once.
Be so good as to receive back a sword, sir, of which I am all
unworthy to deprive you."
But as he proffered it, M. Etienne put up both hands to thrust the
gift away, then covered his face with them.
"Not now, monsieur--not now! To-morrow perhaps . . . but not now, or
I may break it indeed!"
Still with his face covered, he tottered off towards the chapel.