forest toward St. John River. No part of his person was covered with
armor. And instead of the rich and formal dress then worn by the
Huguenots even in the wilderness, he wore a complete suit of hunter's
buckskin which gave his supple muscles a freedom beautiful to see. His
young face was freshly shaved, showing the clean fine texture of the
skin. For having nearly finished his journey from the head of Fundy
Bay, he had that morning prepared himself to appear what he was in Fort
St. John--a man of good birth and nurture. His portables were rolled
tightly in a blanket and strapped to his shoulders. A hunting-knife and
two long pistols armed him. His head was covered with a cap of beaver
skin, and he wore moccasins. Not an ounce of unnecessary weight hampered
him.
The booming of cannon had met him so far off on that day's march that he
understood well the state of siege in which St. John would be found; and
long before there was any glimpse of D'Aulnay's tents and earthworks,
the problem of getting into the fort occupied his mind. For D'Aulnay's
guards might be extended in every direction. But the first task in hand
was to cross the river. One or two old canoes could be seen on the other
side; cast-off property of the Etchemin Indians who had broken camp.
Being on the wrong bank these were as useless to him as dream canoes.
But had a ferryman stood in waiting, it was perilous to cross in open
day, within possible sight of the enemy. So the soldier moved carefully
down to a shelter of rocks below the falls, opposite that place where
Van Corlaer had watched the tide sweep up and drown the rapids. From
this post he got a view of La Tour's small ship, yet anchored and safe
at its usual moorings. No human life was visible about it.
"The ship would afford me good quarters," said the soldier to himself,
"had I naught to do but rest. But I must get into the fort this night;
and how is it to be done?"
All the thunders of war, and all the effort and danger to be undertaken,
could not put his late companions out of his mind. He lay with hands
clasped under his head, and looked back at the trees visibly leafing in
the warm Easter air. They were much to this man in all their differences
and habits, their whisperings and silences. They had marched with him
through countless lone long reaches, passing him from one to another
with friendly recommendation. It hurt him to notice a broken or deformed
one among them; but one full and nobly equipped from root to top crown
was Nature's most triumphant shout. There is a glory of the sun and a
glory of the moon, but to one who loves them there is another glory of
the trees.
"In autumn," thought the soldier, "I have seen light desert the skies
and take to the trees and finally spread itself beneath them, a material
glow, flake on flake. But in the spring, before their secret is spoken,
when they throb, and restrain the force driving through them, then have
I most comfort with them, for they live as I live."
Shadows grew on the river, and ripples were arrested and turned back to
flow up stream. There was but one way for him to cross the river, and
that was to swim. And the best time to swim was when the tide brimmed
over the current and trembled at its turn, a broad and limpid expanse
of water, cold, dangerous, repellent to the chilled plunging body; but
safer and more easily paddled through than when the current, angular as
a skeleton, sought the bay at its lowest ebb.
Fortunately tide and twilight favored the young soldier together. He
stripped himself and bound his weapons and clothes in one tight packet
on his head. At first it was easy to tread water: the salt brine upheld
him. But in the middle of the river it was wise to sink close to the
surface and carry as small a ripple as possible; for D'Aulnay's guards
might be posted nearer than he knew. The water, deceptive at its outer
edges in iridescent reflection of warm clouds, was cold as glacier
drippings in midstream. He swam with desperate calmness, guarding
himself by every stroke against cramp. The bundle oppressed him. He
would have cast it off, but dared not change by a thought of variation
the routine of his struggle. Hardy and experienced woodsman as he was,
he staggered out on the other side and lay a space in the sand, too
exhausted to move.
The tide began to recede, leaving stranded seaweed in green or brown
streaks, the color of which could be determined only by the dullness or
vividness of its shine through the dusk. As soon as he was able, the
soldier sat up, shook out his blanket and rolled himself in it. The
first large stars were trembling out. He lay and smelled gunpowder
mingling with the saltiness of the bay and the evening incense of the
earth.
There was a moose's lip in his wallet, the last spoil of his wilderness
march, taken from game shot the night before and cooked at his morning
fire. He ate it, still lying in the sand. Lights began to appear in the
direction of D'Aulnay's camp, but the fort held itself dark and close.
He thought of the grassy meadow rivulet which was always empty at low
tide, and that it might afford him some shelter in his nearer approach
to the fort. He dressed and put on his weapons, but left everything else
except the blanket lying where he had landed. In this venture little
could be carried except the man and his life. The frontier graveyard
outlined itself dimly against the expanse of landscape. The new-turned
clay therein gave him a start. He crept over the border of stones, went
close, and leaned down to measure the length of the fresh grave with his
outstretched hands. A sigh of relief which was as strong as a sob burst
from the soldier.
"It is only that child we found at the stockade," he murmured, and
stepped on among the older mounds and leaped the opposite boundary, to
descend that dip of land which the tide invaded. Water yet shone there
on the grass. Too impatient to wait until the tide ran low, he found the
log, and moved carefully forward, through increasing dusk, on hands and
knees within closer range of the fort. Remembering that his buckskin
might make an inviting spot on the slope, he wrapped his dark blanket
around him. The chorus of insect life and of water creatures, which had
scarcely been tuned for the season, began to raise experimental notes.
And now a splash like the leap of a fish came from the river. The moon
would be late; he thought of that with satisfaction. There was a little
mist blown aloft over the stars, yet the night did not promise to be
cloudy.
The whole environment of Fort St. John was so familiar to the young
soldier that he found no unusual stone in his way. That side toward the
garden might be the side least exposed to D'Aulnay's forces at night. If
he could reach the southwest bastion unseen, he could ask for a ladder.
There was every likelihood of his being shot before the sentinels
recognized him, yet he might be more fortunate. Balancing these chances,
he moved toward that angle of shadow which the fortress lifted against
the southern sky. Long rays of light within the walls were thrown up and
moved on darkness like the pulsing motions of the aurora.
"Who goes there?" said a voice.
The soldier lay flat against the earth. He had imagined the browsing
sound of cattle near him. But a standing figure now condensed itself
from the general dusk, some distance up the slope betwixt him and the
bastion. The challenger was entirely apart from the fort. As he
flattened himself in breathless waiting for a shot which might follow, a
clatter began at his very ears, some animal bounded over him with a
glancing cut of its hoof, and galloped toward the trench below St.
John's gate. He heard another exclamation,--this rapid traveler had
probably startled another sentinel. The man who had challenged him
laughed softly in the darkness. All the Sable Island ponies must be
loose upon the slope. D'Aulnay's men had taken possession of the stable
and cattle, and the wild and frightened ponies were scattered. As his
ear lay so near the ground the soldier heard other little hoofs startled
to action, and a snort or two from suspicious nostrils. He crept away
from the sentinel without further challenge. It was evident that
D'Aulnay had encompassed the fort with guards.
The young soldier crept slowly down the rocky hillock, avoided another
sentinel, and, after long caution and self-restraint and polishing the
earth with his buckskin, crawled into the empty trench. The Sable Island
ponies continually helped him. They were so nervous and so agile that
the sentinels ceased to watch moving shadows.
The soldier looked up at St. John and its tower, knowing that he must
enter in some manner before the moon rose. He dreaded the red brightness
of moon-dawn, when guards whom he could discern against the stony ascent
might detect his forehead above the breastwork. Behind him stretched an
alluvial flat to the river's sands. The tide was running swiftly out,
and under starlight its swirls and long muscular sweeps could be
followed by a practiced eye.
As the soldier glanced warily in every direction, two lights left
D'Aulnay's camp and approached him, jerking and flaring in the hands of
men who were evidently walking over irregular ground. They might be
coming directly to take possession of the trench. But why should they
proclaim their intention with torches to the batteries of Fort St. John?
He looked around for some refuge from the advancing circle of smoky
shine, and moved backwards along the bottom of the trench. The light
stretched over and bridged him, leaving him in a stream of deep shadow,
protected by the breastwork from sentinels above. He could therefore
lift a cautious eye at the back of the trench, and scan the group now
moving betwixt him and the river. There were seven persons, only one of
whom strode the stones with reckless feet. This man's hands were tied
behind his back, and a rope was noosed around his neck and held at the
other end by a soldier.
"It is Klussman, our Swiss!" flashed through the soldier in the trench,
with a mighty throb of rage and shame, and anxiety for the lady in the
fort. If Klussman had been taken prisoner, the guns of St. John would
surely speak in his behalf when he was about to be hanged before its
very gate. Such a parade of the act must be discovered on the walls. It
was plain that Klussman had deserted to D'Aulnay, and was now enjoying
D'Aulnay's gratitude.
"The tree that doth best front the gates," said one of the men, pointing
with his torch to an elm in the alluvial soil: "my lord said the tree
that doth best front the gates."
"That hath no fit limbs," objected another.
"He said the tree that doth best front the gates," insisted the first
man. "Besides this one, what shrub hereabouts is tall enough for our
use?"
They moved down towards the elm. A stool carried by one man showed its
long legs grotesquely behind his back. There were six persons besides
the prisoner, all soldiers except one, who wore the coarse, long,
cord-girdled gown of a Capuchin. His hood was drawn over his face, and
the torches imperfectly showed that he was of the bare-footed order and
wore only sandals. He held up a crucifix and walked close beside
Klussman. But the Swiss gazed all around the dark world which he was so
soon to leave, and up at the fortress he had attempted to betray, and
never once at the murmuring friar.
The soldier in the trench heard a breathing near him, and saw that a
number of the ponies, drawn by the light, had left their fitful grazing
and were venturing step by step beyond the end of the trench. Some
association of this scene with soldiers who used to feed them at night,
after a hard day of drawing home the winter logs, may have stirred
behind their shaggy foreheads. He took his hunting-knife with sudden and
desperate intention, threw off his moccasins, cut his leggins short at
the middle of the leg, and silently divided his blanket into strips.
Preparations were going forward under the elm. One of the soldiers
climbed the tree and crept out upon an arched limb, catching the rope
end thrown up to him. Both torches were given to one man, that all the
others might set themselves to the task. Klussman stood upon the stool,
which they had brought for the purpose from the cook's galley in one of
their ships. His blond face, across which all his thoughts used to
parade, was cast up by the torches like a stiffened mask, hopeless yet
fearless in its expression.
"Come, Father Vincent," said the man who had made the knot, sliding down
the tree. "This is a Huguenot fellow, and good words are lost on him. I
wonder that my lord let him have a friar to comfort him."
"Retire, Father Vincent," said the men around the stool, with more
roughness than they would have shown to a favorite confessor of
D'Aulnay's. The Capuchin turned and walked toward the trench.
The soldier in the trench could not hear what they said, but he had time
for no further thought of Klussman. He had been watching the ponies
with the conviction that his own life hung on what he might drive them
to do. They alternately snuffed at Klussman's presence and put their
noses down to feel for springing grass. Before they could start and
wheel from the friar, the soldier had thrown his hunting-knife. It
struck the hind leg of the nearest pony and a scampering and snorting
hurricane swept down past the elm. Klussman's stool and the torch-bearer
were rolled together. Both lights were stamped out by the panic-struck
men, who thought a sally had been made from the fort. Father Vincent saw
the knife thrown, and turned back, but the man in the trench seized him
with steel muscles and dragged him into its hollow. If the good father
uttered cry against such violence, there was also noise under the elm,
and the wounded pony yet galloped and snorted toward the river. The
young soldier fastened his mouth shut with a piece of blanket, stripped
off his capote and sandals and tied him so that he could not move.
Having done all most securely and put the capote and sandals upon
himself, the soldier whispered at the friar's ear an apology which must
have amused them both,--
"Pardon my roughness, good father. Perhaps you will lend me your
clothes?"
XVI.
THE CAMP.
D'Aulnay's sentinels about the walls, understanding that all this
confusion was made by a stampede of ponies, kept the silence which had
been enjoined on them. But some stir of inquiry seemed to occur in the
bastions. Father Vincent, lying helpless in the trench, and feeling the
chill of lately opened earth through his shaven head and partly nude
body, wondered if he also had met D'Aulnay's gratitude for his recent
inquiry into D'Aulnay's fitness to receive the sacraments.
"But I will tell my lord of Charnisay the truth about his sins," thought
Father Vincent, unable to form any words with a pinioned mouth, "though
he should go the length of procuring my death."
The soldier with his buckskin covered by Father Vincent's capote stepped
out into the starlight and turned his cowled face toward the fort. He
intended to tell the sentinels that D'Aulnay had sent him with a message
to the commandant of St. John. The guards, discerning his capote, would
perhaps obey a beckoning finger, and believe that he had been charged
with silence; for not having heard the churchman's voice he dared not
try to imitate it, and must whisper. But that unforeseen element which
the wisest cannot rule out of their fate halted him before he took a
dozen steps up the hill.
"Where is Father Vincent de Paris?" called some impatient person below
the trench. Five figures coming from the tree gained distinctness as
they advanced, but it was a new-comer who demanded again,--
"Where is Father Vincent de Paris? Did he not leave the camp with you?"
The soldier went down directly where his gray capote might speak for
itself to the eye, and the man who carried the stool pointed with it
toward the evident friar.
"There stands the friar behind thee. He hath been tumbled into the
trench, I think."
"Is your affair done?"
"And well done, except that some cattle ran mad among us but now, and we
thought a sally had been made, so we put out our torches."
"With your stupid din," said the messenger from camp, "you will wake up
the guns of the fort at the very moment when Sieur D'Aulnay would send
his truce bearer in."
"I thank the saints I am not like to be used for his agent," said the
man who had been upset with the torches, "if the walls are to be stormed
as they were this morning."
"He wants Father Vincent de Paris," said the under officer from camp.
"Good father, you took more license in coming hither than my lord
intended."
The soldier made some murmured noise under his cowl. He walked beside
the officer and heard one man say to another behind him,--
"These holy folks have more courage than men-at-arms. My lord was minded
to throw this one out of the ship when he sailed from Port Royal."
"The Sieur D'Aulnay hath too much respect to his religion to do that,"
answered the other.
"You had best move in silence," said the officer, turning his head
toward them, and no further words broke the march into camp. D'Aulnay's
camp was well above the reach of high tide, yet so near the river that
soft and regular splashings seemed encroaching on the tents. The soldier
noticed the batteries on their height, and counted as ably as he could
for the cowl and night dimness the number of tents holding this little
army. Far beyond them the palpitating waters showed changeful surfaces
on Fundy Bay.
The capote was long for him. He kept his hands within the sleeves.
Before the guard-line was passed he saw in the middle of the camp an
open tent. A long torch stood in front of it with the point stuck in the
ground. The floating yellow blaze showed the tent's interior, its simple
fittings for rest, the magnificent arms and garments of its occupant,
and first of all, D'Aulnay de Charnisay himself, sitting with a rude
camp table in front of him. He was half muffled in a furred cloak from
the balm of that Easter night. Papers and an ink-horn were on the table,
and two officers stood by, receiving orders.
This governor of Acadia had a triangular face with square temples and
pointed beard, its crisp fleece also concealing his mouth except the
thin edges of his lips. It was a handsome nervous face of black tones;
one that kept counsel, and was not without humor. He noticed his
subordinate approaching with the friar. The men sent to execute Klussman
were dispersed to their tents.
"The Swiss hath suffered his punishment?" he inquired.
"Yes, my lord D'Aulnay. I met the soldiers returning."
"Did he say anything further concerning the state of the fort?"
"I know not, my lord. But I will call the men to be questioned."
"Let it be. He hath probably not lied in what he told me to-day of its
weak garrison. But help is expected soon with La Tour. Perhaps he told
more to the friar in their last conference."
"Heretics do not confess, my lord."
"True enough; but these churchmen have inquisitive minds which go into
men's affairs without confession," said the governor of Acadia with a
smile which lengthened slightly the thread-lines of his lips. D'Aulnay
de Charnisay had an eye with a keen blue iris, sorting not at all with
the pigments of his face. As he cast it on the returned friar his mere
review deepened to a scrutiny used to detecting concealments.
"Hath this Capuchin shrunk?" exclaimed D'Aulnay. "He is not as tall as
he was."
All present looked with quickened attention at the soldier, who expected
them to pull off his cowl and expose a head of thrifty clusters which
had never known the tonsure. His beaver cap lay in the trench with the
real Father Vincent.
He folded his arms on his breast with a gesture of patience which had
its effect. D'Aulnay's followers knew the warfare between their seignior
and Father Vincent de Paris, the only churchman in Acadia who insisted
on bringing him to account; and who had found means to supplant a
favorite priest on this expedition, for the purpose of watching him.
D'Aulnay bore it with assumed good-humor. He had his religious scruples
as well as his revenges and ambitions. But there were ways in which an
intruding churchman could be martyred by irony and covert abuse, and by
discomfort chargeable to the circumstances of war. Father Vincent de
Paris, on his part, bore such martyrdom silently, but stinted no word of
needed rebuke. A woman's mourning in the dusky tent next to D'Aulnay's
now rose to such wildness of piteous cries as to divert even him from
the shrinkage of Father Vincent's height. No other voice could be heard,
comforting her. She was alone with sorrow in the midst of an army of
fray-hardened men. A look of embarrassment passed over De Charnisay's
face, and he said to the officer nearest him,--
"Remove that woman to another part of the camp."
"The Swiss's wife, my lord?"
"The Swiss's widow, to speak exactly." He turned again with a frowning
smile to the silent Capuchin. "By the proofs she gives, my kindness hath
not been so great to that woman that the church need upbraid me."
Marguerite came out of the tent at a peremptory word given by the
officer at its opening. She did not look toward D'Aulnay de Charnisay,
the power who had made her his foolish agent to the destruction of the
man who loved her. Muffling her heartbroken cries she followed the
subaltern away into darkness--she who had meant at all costs to be
mistress of Penobscot. When distance somewhat relieved their ears,
D'Aulnay took up a paper lying before him on the table and spoke in some
haste to the friar.
"You will go with escort to the walls of the fort, Father Vincent, and
demand to speak with Madame La Tour. She hath, it appears, little
aversion to being seen on the walls. Give into her hand this paper."
The soldier under the cowl, dreading that his unbroken silence might be
noted against him, made some muttering remonstrance, at which D'Aulnay
laughed while tying the packet.
"When churchmen go to war, Father Vincent, they must expect to share its
risks, at least in offices of mediation. Look you: they tell me the
Jesuits and missionaries of Quebec and Montreal are ever before the
soldier in the march upon this New World. But Capuchins are a lazy,
selfish order. They would lie at their ease in a monastery, exerting
themselves only to spy upon their neighbors."
He held out the packet. The soldier in the capote had to step forward to
receive it, and D'Aulnay's eye fell upon the sandal advanced near the
torch.
"Come, this is not our Capuchin," he exclaimed grimly. "This man hath a
foot whiter than my own!"
The feeling that he was detected gave the soldier desperate boldness and
scorn of all further caution. He stood erect and lifted his face. Though
the folds of the cowl fell around it, the governor caught his
contemptuous eye.
"Wash thy heart as I have washed my feet, and it also will be white,
D'Aulnay de Charnisay!"
"There spoke the Capuchin," said D'Aulnay with a nod. His close face
allowed itself some pleasure in baiting a friar, and if he had suspected
Father Vincent of changed identity, his own men were not sure of his
suspicion the next instant.
"Our friar hath washed his feet," he observed insolently, pointing out
the evident fact. "Such penance and ablution he hath never before put
upon himself since he came to Acadia! I will set it down in my
dispatches to the king, for his majesty will take pleasure in such
news:--'Father Vincent de Paris, on this blessed Pâques day of the year
1645, hath washed his feet.'"
The men laughed in a half ashamed way which apologized to the holy man
while it deferred to the master, and D'Aulnay dismissed his envoy with
seriousness. The two officers who had taken his orders lighted another
torch at the blaze in front of the tent, and led away the willing friar.
D'Aulnay watched them down the avenue of lodges, and when their figures
entered blurred space, watched the moving star which indicated their
progress. The officer who had brought Father Vincent to this conference,
also stood musing after them with unlaid suspicion.
"Close my tent," said D'Aulnay, rising, "and set the table within."
"My lord," spoke out the subordinate, "I did not tell you the men were
thrown into confusion around the Swiss."