CHRISMATION.
The day following the duel La Salle was under the hands of the
surgeon--who, in the ignorance of that age, treated his patient for
loss of blood by letting yet more--and Roussilac was sending forth men
with the charge to find the hiding-place of the Englishman, and to fail
not at their peril. However, they did at that time fail. Not even the
cunning hunchback Gaudriole had been able to discover the habitation of
the mysterious swordsman who had dared to enter the fortress and openly
defy its officers and men.
Even the Indian might have walked behind the scrub of tangled
willow-growth over the cave-dwelling, and known nothing of it, had his
eyes or his nose failed to discern the thread of wood-smoke often
curling above the blackened crater of a hollow tree which had been
ingeniously converted into a chimney. A grass-covered knoll made the
roof of the dwelling, the entrance to which only became apparent from a
stone causeway, shelving gradually between the roots of pine trees, and
enclosed by massive logs which banked the eastern front of the burrow.
Upon the threshold of this rude home a brown boy was playing with a
wolf-hound, while awaiting his father's return from that daring visit
to the fortress.
Around him Nature thundered like a great organ. The leaden waters of
the great discharge roared where the bush made a screen which no eyes
could pierce; the falls of the Ouiataniche smoked below. Spray flew
above the scrub, bathing the dog's fur and the strong arms of the
child. The one bayed, the other shouted, to the hard north wind that
swept overhead, lashing the branches, tearing the summits of the pines,
snatching the dry wisps of grass and whirling them under the clouds.
The dark bush groaned. The great rocks bore their buffetings with
hollow protests. Ravens croaked as they swung up and down; divers
wailed from the weedy creeks. The boughs chafed, and the plumed
foliage clashed together, loosening a rain of cones and showers of pine
needles.
"I want to grow. I want to be strong," shouted the boy to his panting
companion. "I want to wear a sword and fight. I want to be a soldier
and shed blood. I want to live!"
The dog broke away barking, and rushed through the scrub. The child
ran after him, and they met upon the dripping rocks, which made a
natural fortification to the cave beyond.
A magnificent spectacle rolled away, as full of sound and motion as a
battlefield. Well had the Indians named that place the Region of the
Lost Waters. Islands heaved out of the raging expanse, small and
densely covered with torn vegetation, every ridge of pine-crested rock
moaning under the north wind, splintered and rough and ragged, scarred
like the duellist's arm. About these islands the separate torrents
thundered, seeking outlets for escape. There were a hundred channels,
each striving to be the main, each at war with all others, each leaping
white-crested down to join its rivals at the stupendous fall. Every
separate discharge lifted up its voice to drown the combined clamour of
its rivals.
A canoe shot the rapids between two islands, quivering like an arrow in
its flight. It swept down, a mere feather upon the water, with only a
shell of rough bark between its two occupants and the hereafter. The
steerer, a handsome and pure-blooded woman of the Cayugas, crouched
like a figure of bronze against the cross-piece, wielding her paddle
with an easy carelessness which spoke of perfect confidence. By a turn
of her wrist the shell of bark swept off a projecting rock; by a deft
motion of her body, almost too subtle for the sight, the canoe glanced
from a reef where the waves were wild; another, more determined,
motion, and the fragile thing pierced a sheet of spray and swept to the
shore. The child caught the shell and held fast, while the man who had
conquered the fighting priest jumped nimbly to the sand.
"Brave boy, Richard," he cried. "Your mother and I looked out from
yonder bend between the islands, knowing that our son would be awaiting
us. Tell me now, how have you fared during our absence?"
The boy put out his lean arms, already tight with muscle, to greet his
mother.
"I have been hunting by the moon," he answered. "Last night I shot a
deer, and to-day have cut it up. A portion of the meat is cooking now."
The soldier of fortune reached an arm round the boy's shoulders and
drew him close. "You are a man, my Richard. You shall never know what
it is to lack strength."
Night settled down. The lord of the isles left the cave, and, seating
himself upon a bank, smoked a long pipe, which he had received as a
gift from Shuswap, chief of the Cayugas, with whom he had allied
himself by marriage. Silently he drew the smoke through the painted
stem, then handed the pipe to his wife, and she smoked and passed the
quaint object to her son, who smoked also with a strange expression of
sternness upon his child's features.
"Was the meat good, father?" he asked, as he handed back the pipe.
"Somewhat too fresh, my son," the man answered.
"Was the deer well shot?"
"It was well done, Richard."
"It is not easy to shoot straight in the moonlight," the boy said.
"But I shot no more than once. My arrow went true to the side of the
neck, and Blood followed and pulled the creature down."
The great hound looked up with open mouth, and heavily flapped his tail.
The boy spoke both English and Cayuga, the former more perfectly than
the latter. His father and mother spoke both languages, each having
taught the other the words of a strange tongue. The woman was tall, of
a type which was soon to grow extinct, her features as regular as those
of a Greek statue, her eyes and hair a deep black, her skin a trifle
darker than fawn-colour. Like all the proud daughters of the Iroquois,
she knew well how to handle the axe and bow. Among her own people, in
the days of maidenhood, her name had been Tuschota; but by her English
husband she was called Mary.
He, the lord of the isles, was almost mean in stature, with a lean,
careworn face marked with decisive lines of character, grey-eyed and
thin-lipped. His body was clad in a much mended suit of faded red, an
old hat partly covered by a broken feather, with moccasins and leggings
of his wife's make. A short sword swung behind him by a rough belt of
buckskin, and a hunting-knife, the blade hiding in a beaded sheath,
hung closely to his right hip. It was hard to tell his age; he had the
eager face of youth under the bleached hair of middle-age. His wife
and only child called him Thomas or Father, as did the neighbouring
Indians of the allied Iroquois tribes; but none of them knew him by any
other name, except that of Gitsa, the sun, or, as they intended to
convey, "The strong one who sometimes covers his face."
"Father," young Richard exclaimed nervously, "shall you go away
to-night?"
"Be silent, child," said the mother. "It is not for the young to know
the father's will."
"Nay, Mary," said the grave man. "I love the lad's spirit. Let him
speak his mind."
Richard came nearer and put out his hand, a flush upon his brow. He
patted the hound's back, its head, handled the frayed hem of his
father's cloak, and then his brown fingers passed on to caress the hilt
of the sword upon which his eyes had been fixed while his hand wandered.
"Father," he exclaimed, in a burst of boyish passion, "I want to wear a
sword."
The man's grey eyes kindled as he heard this strong boy speak. Child
as he was in years, the father's spirit was in him, and the father
rejoiced.
"What would you do with a sword?" he said, frowning. "Would you cut
your bread, or make kindling wood for the fire? Have you not your bow
and arrows?"
"I can bring you down the bird flying, or the beast running. I can
shoot you the salmon in the water. Now I would learn the sword, that I
may go out with you, and fight with you, and--and protect you, my
father."
The man did not smile; but he frowned no more.
"Son," he said, in tones that were still severe, "you are yet over
young to join the brotherhood of the sword. The same is a mighty
weapon, never a servant, but rather a tyrant, who shall destroy his
wearer in the end. Know you that the Master of the world said once,
'All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword'? Even as
the tongue is the sword, an unruly member which no man can restrain.
It answers an enemy without thought, even as the tongue throws back an
angry word. It passes a death sentence lightly, even as the tongue
curses an enemy's soul. It strikes a vulnerable spot in one mad
moment; and when the passion sinks, then the hand fails, and the eye
shall close for shame. Only the sword changes not, remaining cold to
the eye, ready to the hand, and responsive to the first evil thought in
the heart. You shall wear the sword some day, my son. Be content till
then."
"I want to fight Frenchmen," the boy muttered. "Father, let me draw
your sword. Let me see it flash in the moon. Let me feel its point."
The father's hand closed upon that of the boy, pressing the little palm
strongly against the hilt. "Do not draw that sword, child," he said.
"The virgin hand should hold a virgin blade."
He rose suddenly and disappeared along the white causeway. The mother
and son were alone on the knoll, the black pines torn by the wind
behind, the spray flying in front. The mother put out her well-shaped
arm to the smouldering pipe, and drew at the mouthpiece, watching the
excited boy over the triangular bowl. She spoke in the liquid language
of the Cayugas, "Remember that you are very young, my son."
Richard turned passionately, and fanned away the tobacco smoke which
wreathed itself between their eyes.
"I have lived fifteen years. I am strong. See these arms! See how
long they are, and mark how the muscle swells when I lift my hand. I
am weary of killing fish and birds and beasts. I would kill men."
"You would be a man of blood, son?"
"Even as my father. He has taught me to hunt. But when he goes down
to the great river he leaves me here. You he often takes; but I am
left. He goes down to fight. I have watched him when he cleans his
sword. There is blood upon his sword. It is the blood of men."
"With whom would you fight?" said the mother, her voice reflecting the
boy's passion.
"With the savage Algonquins in the far-away lands, the enemies of the
Iroquois. And with the Frenchmen whom my father hates."
More the boy would have said, but at that moment the lord of the place
returned with a sheathed sword and a velvet belt. The sword, a short
blade like that which he himself wore, as slight almost as a whip, he
tested on the ground, and in his stern manner pointed out a spot upon
the summit of the knoll where the moonlight played free from shadow,
saying, "Stand there."
The boy obeyed, stretching out an expectant hand.
His father gave him the virgin sword, fixing him with his stern eye,
and suddenly whipped out his own blade, and exclaimed, in a voice which
was meant to strike terror into the child's heart, "On guard!"
The boy did not wince, but threw up his point like an old soldier, and
his face became wild when along his right arm there thrilled for the
first time an indescribable strength and joy as the two blades met.
By instinct he caught the point, and parried the edge. By instinct he
lunged at the vital spots, stepping forward, darting aside, falling
back, never resting upon the wrong foot nor misjudging the distance.
His father, who tested him so severely, smiled despite himself, and
Richard saw the smile, and, confident that he could pass his father's
guard, stepped out and took up the attack in a reckless endeavour to
inflict a wound upon his teacher's arm.
The stern soldier of fortune played with the boy under the rushing
north wind and the swaying light of the moon, while the mother stood
near on the slope of the knoll, her eyes flashing, her nostrils
distended, her bosom heaving with the passion of the sword-play. She
noted how nobly the boy responded to his blood--the enduring blood of
the high-bred Cayuga mingled with the fighting strain of the
Englishman. She watched the sureness of his hand, the boldness of his
eye. She saw how readily the use of the sword came to him, and once
she sighed, because her husband had made her Christian, and she
remembered the warning of the unseen God which her lord had lately
repeated, "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."
A cry broke from her lips. Her husband's sword flashed suddenly across
her vision, drew back, lowered, and fell like the falcon which had made
its blow, and the point sprinkled a few drops of blood upon the
bleached grass.
"Thomas," she exclaimed in her native tongue, "why have you wounded
your son?"
"It is his baptism to the sword," her husband answered.
Maddened, not by the pain in his shoulder, which indeed he scarcely
felt, nor by the sight of his blood flicked contemptuously at his feet,
but at the indignity of the wound, the boy rushed at his father, and
hit at him blindly as with a stick; and when the master caught and held
him, and by the act reminded him that he was yet a child, he began to
sob violently with rage.
"You shall pay," he flamed. "I will have your blood for mine. I will
fight you again. I will kill you. I will----"
"Peace, child," interrupted his mother. "He is your father."
"Take him and see to him, Mary. I did but prick his shoulder," said
the father. "So fiercely did he press upon me that I feared he might
throw himself upon my point. The lesson shall teach him prudence."
"I am dishonoured--wounded," moaned Richard.
The father opened his doublet and displayed his chest, which upon both
sides was marred by many a scar. Richard beheld, and blinked away his
angry tears, as the passion departed from him.
"Must I too be wounded before I am a soldier?" he said.
"Ay, a hundred times," his father answered; and the boy turned away
then with his former look of pride, and permitted his mother to wash
and bandage the slight wound upon his shoulder.
Soon they came out together to the knoll where the silent man sat with
the north wind roaring into his ears the song of battle. He looked up
when they were near, and called, "Richard!"
The boy came, subdued and tired, and stood before his father.
"Kneel."
The boy obeyed. The lord of the isles fastened the velvet sword-belt
to his son's waist, secured the coveted sword in its place, then stood,
and drew out his own well-tested blade.
With it he struck the boy smartly upon the shoulder exactly over the
wound, smiling when the child compressed his lips fiercely but refused
to wince, and loudly called:
"Arise, Sir Richard!"