THE WHITE DARKNESS
How much of those instructions we carried out I leave untold.
Certainly we could not have been less grateful as guests than Ben
Gillam's men were inhospitable as hosts. A more sottish crew of rakes
you never saw. 'Twas gin in the morning and rum in the afternoon and
vile potions of mixed poisons half the night, with a cracking of the
cook's head for withholding fresh kegs and a continual scuffle of
fighters over cheating at cards. No marvel the second officer flogged
and carved at the knaves like an African slaver. The first night the
whole crew set on us with drawn swords because we refused to gamble the
doublets from our backs. La Chesnaye laid about with his sword and I
with my rapier, till the cook rushed to our rescue with a kettle of
lye. After that we escaped to the deck of the ship and locked
ourselves inside Ben Gillam's cabin. Here we heard the weather-vanes
of the fort bastions creaking for three days to the shift of fickle
winds. Shore-ice grew thicker and stretched farther to mid-current.
Mock suns, or sun-dogs, as we called them, oft hung on each side of the
sun. La Chesnaye said these boded ill weather.
Sea-birds caught the first breath of storm and wheeled landward with
shrill calls, and once La Chesnaye and I made out through the ship's
glass a vast herd of caribou running to sniff the gale from the crest
of an inland hill.
"If Radisson comes not back soon we are storm-bound here for the
winter. As you live, we are," grumbled the merchant.
But prompt as the ring of a bell to the clapper came Pierre Radisson on
the third day, well pleased with what he had done and alert to keep two
of us outside the fort in spite of Ben's urgings to bring the French in
for refreshments.
The wind was shifting in a way that portended a nor'easter, and the
weather would presently be too inclement for us to remain outside.
That hastened M. Radisson's departure, though sun-dogs and the long,
shrill whistling of contrary winds foretold what was brewing.
"Sink me, after such kindness, I'll see you part way home! By the Lord
Harry, I will!" swore Ben.
M. Radisson screwed his eyes nigh shut and protested he could not
permit young Captain Gillam to take such trouble.
"The young villain," mutters La Chesnaye, "he wants to spy which way we
go."
"Come! Come!" cries Ben. "If you say another word I go all the way
with you!"
"To spy on our fort," whispers La Chesnaye.
M. Radisson responds that nothing would give greater pleasure.
"I've half a mind to do it," hesitates Ben, looking doubtfully at us.
"To be sure," urges M. Radisson, "come along and have a Christmas with
our merry blades!"
"Why, then, by the Lord, I will!" decides Gillam. "That is," he added,
"if you'll send the marquis and his man, there, back to my fort as
hostages."
M. Radisson twirled his mustaches thoughtfully, gave the marquis the
same instructions in French as he had given us when we were left in the
New Englander's fort, and turning with a calm face to Ben, bade him get
into our canoe.
But when we launched out M. Radisson headed the craft up-stream in the
wrong direction, whither we paddled till nightfall. It was cold enough
in all conscience to afford Ben Gillam excuse for tipping a flask from
his jacket-pouch to his teeth every minute or two; but when we were
rested and ready to launch again, the young captain's brain was so
befuddled that he scarce knew whether he were in Boston or on Hudson
Bay.
This time we headed straight down-stream, Ben nodding and dozing from
his place in the middle, M. Radisson, La Chesnaye, and I poling hard to
keep the drift-ice off. We avoided the New Englander's fort by going
on the other side of the island, and when we shot past Governor
Brigdar's stockades with the lights of the Prince Rupert blinking
through the dark, Ben was fast asleep.
And all the while the winds were piping overhead with a roar as from
the wings of the great storm bird which broods over all that northland.
Then the blore of the trumpeting wind was answered by a counter fugue
from the sea, with a roll and pound of breakers across the sand of the
traverse. Carried by the swift current, we had shot into the bay. It
was morning, but the black of night had given place to the white
darkness of northern storm. Ben Gillam jerked up sober and grasped an
idle pole to lend a hand. Through the whirl of spray M. Radisson's
figure loomed black at the bow, and above the boom of tumbling waves
came the grinding as of an earthquake.
"We are lost! We are lost!" shrieked Gillam in panic, cowering back to
the stern. "The storm's drifted down polar ice from the north and
we're caught! We're caught!" he cried.
He sprang to his feet as if to leap into that white waste of seething
ice foam. 'Twas the frenzy of terror, which oft seizes men adrift on
ice. In another moment he would have swamped us under the pitching
crest of a mountain sea. But M. Radisson turned. One blow of his pole
and the foolish youth fell senseless to the bottom of the canoe.
"Look, sir, look!" screamed La Chesnaye, "the canoe's getting
ice-logged! She's sunk to the gun'ales!"
But at the moment when M. Radisson turned to save young Gillam, the
unguided canoe had darted between two rolling seas. Walls of ice rose
on either side. A white whirl--a mighty rush--a tumult of roaring
waters--the ice walls pitched down--the canoe was caught--tossed
up--nipped--crushed like a card-box--and we four flung on the drenching
ice-pans to a roll of the seas like to sweep us under, with a footing
slippery as glass.
"Keep hold of Gillam! Lock hands!" came a clarion voice through the
storm. "Don't fear, men! There is no danger! The gale will drive us
ashore! Don't fear! Hold tight! Hold tight! There's no danger if
you have no fear!"
The ice heaved and flung to the roll of the drift.
"Hold fast and your wet sleeves will freeze you to the ice! Steady!"
he called, as the thing fell and rose again.
Then, with the hiss of the world serpent that pursues man to his doom,
we were scudding before a mountain swell. There was the splintering
report of a cannon-shot. The ice split. We clung the closer. The
rush of waves swept under us, around us, above us. There came a crash.
The thing gave from below. The powers of darkness seemed to close over
us, the jaws of the world serpent shut upon their prey, the spirit of
evil shrieked its triumph.
Our feet touched bottom. The waves fell back, and we were ashore on
the sand-bar of the traverse.
"Run! Run for your lives!" shouted Radisson. Jerking up Gillam, whom
the shock had brought to his senses. "Lock hands and run!"
And run we did, like those spirits in the twilight of the lost, with
never a hope of rescue and never a respite from fear, hand gripping
hand, the tide and the gale and the driving sleet yelping wolfishly at
our heels! Twas the old, old story of Man leaping undaunted as a
warrior to conquer his foes--turned back!--beaten!--pursued by serpent
and wolf, spirit of darkness and power of destruction, with the light
of life flickering low and the endless frosts creeping close to a heart
beating faint!
Oh, those were giants that we set forth to conquer in that harsh
northland--the giants of the warring elements! And giants were needed
for the task.
Think you of that when you hear the slighting scorn of the rough
pioneer, because he minceth not his speech, nor weareth ruffs at his
wrists, nor bendeth so low at the knee as your Old-World hero!
The earth fell away from our feet. We all four tumbled forward. The
storm whistled past overhead. And we lay at the bottom of a cliff that
seemed to shelter a multitude of shadowy forms. We had fallen to a
ravine where the vast caribou herds had wandered from the storm.
Says M. Radisson, with a depth of reverence which words cannot tell,
"Men," says he, "thank God for this deliverance!"
* * * * * *
So unused to man's presence were the caribou, or perhaps so stupefied
by the storm, they let us wander to the centre of the herd, round which
the great bucks had formed a cordon with their backs to the wind to
protect the does and the young. The heat from the multitude of bodies
warmed us back to life, and I make no doubt the finding of that herd
was God Almighty's provision for our safety.
For three days we wandered with nothing to eat but wild birds done to
death by the gale. [1] On the third day the storm abated; but it was
still snowing too heavily for us to see a man's length away. Two or
three times the caribou tossed up their heads sniffing the air
suspiciously, and La Chesnaye fell to cursing lest the wolf-pack should
stampede the herd. At this Gillam, whose hulking body had wasted from
lack of bulky rations, began to whimper--
"If the wolf-pack come we are lost!"
"Man," says Radisson sternly, "say thy prayers and thank God we are
alive!"
The caribou began to rove aimlessly for a time, then they were off with
a rush that bare gave us chance to escape the army of clicking hoofs.
We were left unprotected in the falling snow.
The primal instincts come uppermost at such times, and like the wild
creatures of the woods facing a foe, instantaneously we wheeled back to
back, alert for the enemy that had frightened the caribou.
"Hist!" whispers Radisson. "Look!"
Ben Gillam leaped into the air as if he had been shot, shrieking out:
"It's him! It's him! Shoot him! The thief! The traitor! It's him!"
He dashed forward, followed by the rest of us, hardly sure whether Ben
were sane.
Three figures loomed through the snowy darkness, white and silent as
the snow itself--vague as phantoms in mist--pointing at us like wraiths
of death--spirit hunters incarnate of that vast wilderness riding the
riotous storm over land and sea. One swung a weapon aloft. There was
the scream as of a woman's cry--and the shrieking wind had swept the
snow-clouds about us in a blind fury that blotted all sight. And when
the combing billows of drift passed, the apparition had faded. We four
stood alone staring in space with strange questionings.
"Egad!" gasped Radisson, "I don't mind when the wind howls like a wolf,
but when it takes to the death-scream, with snow like the skirts of a
shroud----"
"May the Lord have mercy on us!" muttered La Chesnaye, crossing
himself. "It is sign of death! That was a woman's figure. It is sign
of death!"
"Sign of death!" raged Ben, stamping his impotent fury, "'tis him--'tis
him! The Judas Iscariot, and he's left us to die so that he may steal
the furs!"
"Hold quiet!" ordered M. Radisson. "Look, you rantipole--who is that?"
'Twas Le Borgne, the one-eyed, emerging from the gloom of the snow like
a ghost. By signs and Indian words the fellow offered to guide us back
to our Habitation.
We reached the fort that night, Le Borgne flitting away like a shadow,
as he had come. And the first thing we did was to hold a service of
thanks to God Almighty for our deliverance.
[1] See Radisson's account--Prince Society (1885), Boston--Bodleian
Library.--Canadian Archives, 1895-'96.