LAND-LOCKED.
With the life of Master William Grignion, alderman, and subsequently
sheriff, of the City of London, these annals are not concerned. The
merchant's existence cannot, however, be altogether ignored, owing to a
certain venture on his part, which resulted in an English ship being
cast upon the shore of Acadie at the beginning of winter. Master
Grignion was an austere man, who, by dint of miserly practice and sharp
dealing, had amassed what in those days was a considerable fortune.
After marrying his only daughter to an impecunious peer, he occupied a
shameful old house upon Thames bank, the greater part of which was
stocked with bales of merchandise. From the single window of the
living-room, which was furnished below the degree of discomfort, the
old man could view the overtoppling houses upon London Bridge; and here
Master Grignion counted his gains each night, while his starved dog
slunk from corner to corner sniffing uselessly for a scrap of food.
Owing to the scarcity of English ships, no valuable cargo of tobacco,
and none of the products of New World grist-mills or tanneries, had for
many months crossed the seas. For weeks the alderman had been
engrossed by an idea, which grew in strength upon him--namely, that if
he built for himself a ship and despatched her to Virginia, he might
very possibly add materially to the already considerable store of gold
pieces which were secreted about his house from cellar to attic. But
Master Grignion knew well that the seas were held by England's foes,
and the nightmare of failure held him back from his project month after
month. One evening, however, while he watched the muddy Thames after a
good day of business, the finger of inspiration touched him, and,
gazing up into the London sky, which was not murky in those days, he
remarked: "Hitherto ships have been constructed for strength. Dutch,
French, and Spanish vessels are alike slow and cumbersome. It has
occurred to no man to build a ship for speed."
Having solved the problem, Master Grignion knew no rest until he had
found an enterprising shipbuilder, who was clever at his business and
at the same time weak in bargaining. Discovering in Devon the man he
required, the alderman divulged his plan; and from that day forward
until the _Dartmouth_ stood fully decked before Barnstaple the miser's
talk was of sailcloth and sailmaking, with masts, yards, gaffs, booms,
and bowsprits. The _Dartmouth_, when completed even to the
satisfaction of her avaricious owner, was undoubtedly ahead of the time.
One Silas Upcliff, an old sea-dog with a face red and yellow like a
ripe apple, and a fringe of snow-white whisker below the chin, a native
of Plymouth, and a man well salted by experience, volunteered to raise
a crew and sail the _Dartmouth_ to the Potomac; and, after a vast deal
of haggling over the questions of provisioning and wages, his offer was
accepted. And one fine day the brigantine shook out her wealth of
canvas and skimmed away westward, over the track of such brave vessels
as the Pelican, the little _Discovery_, and the Puritan _Mayflower_.
Trembling with pride and excitement, and a certain amount of fear lest
at the last moment his ship might be seized for the service of the
king, Master Grignion stood by while the anchor was heaved, shouting
his final injunction: "Fight not with your guns, Master Skipper.
Should an enemy attack you, let out more sail and fly." Silas Upcliff
nodded in stolid English style, and, as he drew away, turned to his
mate and muttered: "From the French, the storm, but most of all from
misers, good Lord deliver us."
From the French the _Dartmouth_ was indeed delivered, but not from the
storm. Hostile vessels were sighted, but the brigantine's speed
enabled her to show a particularly dainty stern to these privateers;
and all went well with her until the line of the American coast lifted
ominously distinct above the horizon before being blotted out by a mass
of fiery cloud. Then came the storm, which flung the little vessel far
from her course, carried her northwards, and finally cast her upon the
coast of Nova Scotia, after failing in its effort to wreck her on the
western spurs of Newfoundland. When the storm ceased, a freezing calm
set in, and for two days snow descended without intermission. Upcliff
gave the order to build a house out of pine logs, where he and his men
might take shelter while they repaired the ship; for the little
_Dartmouth_ had been terribly strained by the storm and pierced by the
sharp-toothed rocks. The skipper believed that he was near his
destined harbour, and was sorely puzzled by the snow and bitter cold;
but, when a sailor came hurriedly to report that he had seen the smoke
of a distant settlement and a tree stamped with the fleur-de-lys, the
captain began to greatly fear that the miserly alderman had lost his
venture, and he bade his men bring out their cutlasses and to see that
they were sharp.
When the snow ceased and the atmosphere became clear, a tall figure
came down among the pines, and gave a hearty welcome to the skipper and
his men. The visitor was Sir Thomas Iden, and he came not alone to
greet the master of the _Dartmouth_, for none other than Madeleine was
at his side.
The brave girl had travelled far that night of her release, and for two
days hurried eastward, keeping near the river, existing on butternuts
and the different kinds of berry which flourished in abundance at that
season of the year, until on the eve of the second day she saw the
smoke of a camp-fire rising from the beach. Descending, she revealed
herself boldly to the campers, who were none other than Sir Thomas and
his native wife; and when the former heard her story, and knew that she
was English at heart, if French in name, and further learnt that she
was the affianced of Geoffrey Viner, who had gone out to bring them
help, he bent with knightly grace and kissed her hand, and besought her
to accompany him to the land above the sea. Madeleine joyously
consented; and from that hour her troubles ceased.
Afterwards Jeremiah Hough came to the land beside the gulf, and with
him Penfold, fully recovered from his fever; and these men also took
Madeleine to their hearts--though the stern Puritan refused to trust
her--when they heard how she had served their comrade. In the pathless
land above the sea, a little to the east of Acadie, they settled
themselves; the knight, his wife, and Madeleine in one log-cabin in a
hollow; Hough and Penfold in another, placed in the heart of a dense
pine-wood. No marauding band had been abroad to trouble the land. The
only danger which appeared to threaten the Englishmen, now that winter
had set in, was the possibility that some Indian spy might carry the
news of their hiding-place into the town; and this danger was a very
real one, for, though they did not know of it, Onawa had followed La
Salle to Acadie.
It was Madeleine who sighted the _Dartmouth_ snowed up beside the
beach. She had gone out into the storm to run along the cliff and
fight against the mighty buffetings of the wind which had upset the
plans of Master Grignion. She sped back over the spruce-clad hills,
and coming first to the adventurers' hut stopped to tell them the
tidings. They ran forth, flushed with the hope that Geoffrey had
succeeded, and, standing upon a hill-top, argued concerning the
stranger's nationality, until they came regretfully to the decision
that she could not be from English shores.
"I saw never a ship so light in build," said Penfold. "See you the
number of her masts? She is made to run and not to fight, whereas our
English ships are made to fight and never to run. She is, if I mistake
not, a Dutch vessel."
"Peradventure the Lord shall deliver her also into our hands," quoth
Hough fervently.
The captain shook his grizzled head, and answered sadly: "Recall not
that day of our triumph. Then were we five good men. Now George, our
brother, lies on the Windy Arm, and friend Woodfield is no more, and
young Geoffrey has gone out into a strange country. Only you and I
remain, and my arm now lacks its former strength."
In the meantime Madeleine had run for her protector; and before the day
was done both Penfold and the Puritan knew of their error, and had
joined hands once again with men from their native land.
When Silas Upcliff learnt that he stood upon the perilous Nova Scotian
coast, he felt more shame than fear--shame to hear that the land was
mastered by the French. Had not those bold sea-brothers of England the
Cabots discovered it over a century earlier, and had not James the
First conferred his crown patent of the whole of Canada upon Sir
William Alexander, his Scottish favourite? The honest skipper well
knew that the magnanimous Charles had confirmed the bestowal of that
prodigious gift, acting, it must be assumed, under surprising
ignorance, seeing that the land was no more his to give than were the
New Netherlands or Peru. And at that time, when Roussilac held the St.
Lawrence and La Salle the priest ruled Acadie, the Scottish peer, who
was nominal lord of all the land, was peacefully engaged in writing
mediocre poetry in his castle of Stirling! Between the ostensible and
actual ownership spread a vast gulf of difference, as the men upon that
shore were to learn to their cost.
Silas Upcliff gave his compatriots a sailor's hearty handshake, and the
men who knew the land and its occupants rendered the new-comers what
assistance they might, while Hough lost no time in begging them to join
in an attack upon Acadie. To that Upcliff could only make the reply:
"My services are bought, my ship is armed for defence only, and my men
are sworn to run rather than to fight."
Then Madeleine offered her services as housewife to the crew, and when
the men knew that she loved an English lad, that she was a Huguenot,
and had formerly trodden the streets and lanes of Somerset and Devon,
that she even knew the familiar names above merchants' doors in Bristol
and Plymouth, and could quote them with a pretty accent, they fell in
love with her forthwith, from Upcliff himself to the rogue of a boy
before the mast. From that time forth she ruled them with a velvet
discipline, joining the workers engaged in repairing the ship's
injuries, and helping them by her happiness and approval.
"Hurry! hurry!" she would cry. "Ah, but you talk too much. She shall
float to-morrow. Then to break the ice and flee away!"
"Art in such hurry to lose us, lass?" said Upcliff on the second day
after the snow.
"But I shall not lose you," cried Madeleine. "I am going to sail away
with you. I shall bring good fortune and favouring winds; and if any
man be sick I will nurse him back to strength. None ever die whom I
watch over. The sick are ashamed even to think of death when they see
me so full of life. You will take me to my Geoffrey, in the land of
the free?"
"Ay, and to England if you will," cried the hearty skipper, who had
already heard her story. "But, my lass, your Geoffrey may be on his
way back, and you may but get south to find him gone."
"No," replied Madeleine, shaking her head decidedly. "He is not on his
way back. I think he is in trouble. I cannot understand, but I feel
that he is being punished for what he has not done, and I know that I
can help him. No one can help a man like the woman who loves him.
Geoffrey wants me, and I must go."
"You shall go, girl," promised the sea-dog; and, turning half aside,
muttered: "If the boy have played her false, I shall have it in my mind
to run out a line from the cross-tree and see him hanged."
"False!" cried Madeleine, with a scream of laughter. "Is the sun false
when the clouds will not let him shine? Why, I would slap your wicked
face, and cook you no supper to-night, if I believed that you spoke in
faith."
She ran away, kicking up the dusty snow, and throwing back a laugh
which filled the winter air with the breath of spring.
Each calm morning the boats of the deep-sea fishermen put out from
Acadie, and returned before evening with their frozen freight. The
Englishmen stifled their fires and stilled their voices when these
boats drew near. Their shelter was well hidden among the pines; the
snowed-up brigantine resembled nothing so much as a rock bearing a few
dead and stripped firs. Every night the sailors laughed at danger; but
each morning found them on the watch.
A week passed without event, until the evening of the eighth day
arrived and found the sailors packed within their log-hut at the back
of the ice-bound bay awaiting the call to supper. The three
adventurers were also present as the skipper's guests. The cabin was
warm and well lighted, equipped by the men's handiness with nautical
furniture from their ship. From the region beyond a curtain, which
divided the interior, came the smell of cookery and the joyful roaring
of a fire. A feeling of security was upon the company, because
snow-clouds were rolling up outside and the gulf was filled with fog.
As night drew on these grey clouds appeared to melt into feathers
innumerable, and the pines became snow-steeples, and the rocks huge
beds of down. The brigantine was locked within a sheet of ice, and
that mysterious silence which had so terrified Cabot the pioneer held
all the land in thrall. But the Englishmen cared for none of these
things. They knew that the colony of Acadie was being buried in the
snow; the unknown coast had no terrors; nor did they fear the black
winter sea which southwards groaned and tossed. So they gave each
other good cheer, and listened to Upcliff, who beguiled them with
reminiscences of his seafaring life until his throat was dry. Then he
paused to refresh himself with a rolled tobacco-leaf, and his sailors
broke the silence which ensued by singing melodiously a soft musical
chanty, which recalled to the mind of each his free and happy life upon
the main and the rollicking days ashore. This song also stirred into
activity a memory which lay latent in the skipper's mind.
"I saw the man who made that verse," he said, leaning over the circle,
and putting out his hand for silence. "Will tell you where I saw him.
'Twas on London street beside Globe Theatre, coming by Blackfriars, and
he stood with another honest gentleman watching us wild fellows roll
past. We were singing like boys on the road from school and making the
fat watchmen run. London town was a brave place for us young sailors
up from the West Country, and we were bent on having our pleasure,
though we had to pay for it before my Lord Mayor."
"What was the name of master?" asked one of the men.
"A comely gentleman," went on the captain, disregarding the questioner.
"Though methinks as pale as any wench who had lost her lover. Not a
wrinkle on the face of him, and the forehead of him wide and smooth,
ay, and as cold looking as any slab of stone from Portland cliff. But
the eyes of man! I caught the look of them, and they seemed to pass
through my brain learning in one glance more about me than ever I knew
myself. And the smile of man! Can see it now as he turned to his
fellow and said: 'The sailor is the man to drive our care away, good
Burbage.' And then he said softly those words you have now been
singing, 'One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant
never.' A Christian gentleman, they told me. A great actor, and a
poet who made money, they told me. Should watch his 'Tempest' played.
Would make you feel on shipboard, and hold on to a pillar of the pit to
steady your feet withal."
"He loved a mariner," said a voice. "The Englishman smells of salt
water, say they in France. 'Tis better, so honest Will did say, than
to smell of civet."
"How goes the weather?" demanded the captain suddenly.
"Snowing. Our little barque is but a drift."
The sailor who had sought to learn the poet's name repeated his
question, and while the information was being driven into his obtuse
head by half a dozen of his mates in concert, the curtain dividing the
cabin became suddenly agitated, a white hand fluttered for an instant,
and a bright voice called:
"Your food is ready, children."
The sailors rose, laughing as heartily at the pleasantry as though they
had not heard it before, and obeyed the summons gladly. To every man
was set a great bowl of stew, and the fair cook, resting her hands upon
her sides, watched them as they set to work.
"You are idle," she declared. "I have but little meat left, and you,
great children that you are, require so much feeding. In the morning I
shall turn you out to hunt. The snow shall have stopped by then, and
you may follow the deer by their fresh tracks."
Madeleine nodded severely at the sailors as she thus made known to them
her mind.
The crew were still over supper, and Silas was telling one of his sea
stories to ears which had already heard it a score of times, but
listened patiently because it was the master speaking, when a deep
sound broke among the hills and rolled onward through the snow, making
the rough coast throb.
The skipper's mouth was open to laugh at his own excellent wit, but
that sound brought his lips together, as it caused all his listeners to
start for the door. The same cry was upon every tongue, as their hands
dragged away the sail which stretched across the entrance:
"A gun!"
They poured into the terrible whiteness, huddling as close as sheep.
Nothing was visible, except the steady masses shed from the clouds like
wool. Not a sound, nor any sign of life. They waited, straining their
eyes out to sea, but the gun did not roar again.
"Cast your eyes over to the west," called a voice, and the master found
Sir Thomas at his side.
A glow in that direction filled the sky, making the surroundings weird,
and from time to time a red tongue of fire leapt up.
"'Tis a French ship bringing provisions," said the knight, pointing
into the unfathomable mass. "She has signalled, and yonder fire burns
to guide her in."
"Wreck her!" cried a Cornishman. "Let us build another fire on the
cliff to the east. With fortune, she shall steer for our beacon
instead of theirs."
"We should but make ourselves known," growled Upcliff.
A terrified shout broke upon his speech, and one of the men jumped
against the huddled party, shrieking in fear.
"What ails you, Jacob Sadgrove?" cried the skipper.
"God save me! A foul spirit close at my side. She grinned out of the
snow and floated away, her feet never touching ground. A warning--a
death warning, and I a miserable sinner."
The man grovelled upon his knees up to his waist in snow, flapping his
hands and groaning.
"Speak up, man!" said Sir Thomas. "What is that you saw?"
"He has seen a wyvern," spoke the master contemptuously. "Was always a
man to see more than other folk."
"Stood at my side and grinned in a fearsome manner," whined the sailor.
"The nose of her was slit like man yonder, and the ears of her were
like a dog's, and she breathed fire out of her mouth."
"Stay!" cried Hough, stepping out. "Say you that her face was marked
like mine?"
"The same," panted the man. "But dead and cold, and her eyes like
fish----"
The Puritan drowned his wailings by a bitter cry.
"Forgive me, friends," he cried. "The Lord delivered me that woman to
slay, and I, weak vessel that I am, drew back, and now am punished, and
in my punishment you must share. We are discovered."
"The name of that woman?" demanded Sir Thomas.
"The sister of your wife."
"I knew it," groaned the knight. "The agent of my son's death. Which
way went she?" he cried at the terrified sailor.
"She flew there--there," stuttered the man.
"Follow the tracks!"
"Nay, there are none. The snow already covers them."
"Her feet ne'er touched the snow," wailed the man. "Her feet were hot
from the everlasting fire."
"Peace, fool," said Upcliff. He turned to Hough. "Are our lives in
danger?"
"Never in greater. The woman is an Indian spy, who is now on her way
to the settlement, where rules a hot-headed priest who has sworn to
kill every Englishman in the land. They will be on us ere morning."
"There is only one way," said the master. "We must break the ice,
release our barque, and put out. The sea is calm."
"She will not float."
"She shall float."
Upcliff gave his orders coolly, and the sailors hastened to obey
through the muffling mists. The greater number attacked the ice with
axe and saw, while the minority dismantled the shelter and reconveyed
its contents to the ghostly ship. Every man worked his hardest,
longing for the sea. The blow of axes and the snarl of a long saw
sounded along the hidden coast.
Madeleine came down, all white with snow like a bride, and cheered them
on, and presently brought each man a bowl of soup to renew his
strength. A narrow lane opened through the ice, an ink-black passage
in the colourless plain, but beyond stretched a long white field before
the jagged edge where the snow wave curled in a monstrous lip.
The brigantine righted herself with a flutter and a plunge, casting the
snow from her yards, and the grinding of her keel made joyful music.
The toilers, sweating as though they had been reaping corn in summer,
laboured to open the path to the stagnant sea.
"The rent in her hold is plugged by solid ice," called the skipper.
"She shall carry that cargo bravely through this calm."
The big feathers of snow became spots of down, which lessened to the
degree of frost points before morning. The country began to unroll,
all padded with its monstrous coverlet; the trees masqueraded as
wool-stuffed Falstaffs; the cliffs seemed to have increased in the
night; the heavens were nearer the earth. The coast appalled in its
cold virginity.
"One more hour, and then for the sea," sang Upcliff. "Is everything
aboard?"
"All but the stove, captain. We wait for it to cool."
"Bring it out into the snow."
As Upcliff gave the order, a man crossed the brow of a western hill and
floundered knee-deep towards the bay. It was Hough, and he shouted as
he ran:
"The French are coming out!"