WHO THE PIRATES WERE
How long I lay in the pirates' cave I could not tell; for day and night
were alike with the pale-blue flame quivering against the earth-wall,
gusts of cold air sweeping through the door, low-whispered talks from
the inner cave.
At last I surprised Le Borgne mightily by sitting bolt upright and
bidding him bring me a meal of buffalo-tongue or teal. With the stolid
repartee of the Indian he grunted back that I had tongue enough; but he
brought the stuff with no ill grace. After that he had much ado to
keep me off my feet. Finally, I promised by the soul of his
grandfather neither to spy nor listen about the doors of the inner
cave, and he let me up for an hour at a time to practise walking with
the aid of a lance-pole. As he found that I kept my word, he trusted
me alone in the cave, sitting crouched on the log-end with a buckskin
sling round my shattered sword-arm, which the wolves had not helped
that night at the stake.
In the food Le Borgne brought was always a flavour of simples or drugs.
One night--at least I supposed it was night from the chill of the air
blowing past the bearskin--just as Le Borgne stooped to serve me, his
torch flickered out. Before he could relight, I had poured the broth
out and handed back an empty bowl.
Then I lay with eyes tight shut and senses wide awake. The Indian sat
on the log-end watching. I did not stir. Neither did I fall asleep as
usual. The Indian cautiously passed a candle across my face. I lay
motionless as I had been drugged. At that he stalked off. Voices
began in the other apartment. Two or three forms went tip-toeing about
the cave. Shadows passed athwart the flame. A gust of cold; and with
half-closed eyes I saw three men vanish through the outer doorway over
fields no longer snow-clad.
Had spring come? How long had I lain in the cave? Before I gained
strength to escape, would M. Radisson have left for Quebec? Then came
a black wave of memory--thought of Jack Battle, the sailor lad,
awaiting our return to rescue him. From the first Jack and I had held
together as aliens in Boston Town. Should I lie like a stranded hull
while he perished? Risking spies on the watch, I struggled up and
staggered across the cave to that blue flame quivering so mysteriously.
As I neared, the mystery vanished, for it was nothing more than one of
those northern beds of combustibles--gas, tar, or coal--set burning by
the ingenious pirates. [1]
The spirit was willing enough to help Jack, but the flesh was weak.
Presently I sank on the heaped pelts all atremble. I had promised not
to spy nor eavesdrop, but that did not prohibit escape. But how could
one forage for food with a right arm in bands and a left unsteady as
aim of a girl? Le Borgne had befriended me twice--once in the storm,
again on the hill. Perhaps he might know of Jack. I would wait the
Indian's return. Meanwhile I could practise my strength by walking up
and down the cave.
The walls were hung with pelts. Where the dry clay crumbled, the roof
had been timbered. A rivulet of spring water bubbled in one dark
corner. At the same end an archway led to inner recesses. Behind the
skin doorway sounded heavy breathing, as of sleepers. I had promised
not to spy. Turning, I retraced the way to the outer door. Here
another pelt swayed heavily in the wind. Dank, earthy smells of
spring, odours of leaves water-soaked by melting snows, the faint
perfume of flowers pushing up through mats of verdure, blew in on the
night breeze.
Pushing aside the flap, I looked out. The spur of a steep declivity
cut athwart the cave. Now I could guess where I was. This was the
hill down which I had stumbled that night the voices had come from the
ground. Here the masked man had sprung from the thicket. Not far off
M. Radisson had first met the Indians. To reach the French Habitation
I had but to follow the river.
That hope set me pacing again for exercise; and the faster I walked the
faster raced thoughts over the events of the crowded years. Again the
Prince Rupert careened seaward, bearing little Hortense to England.
Once more Ben Gillam swaggered on the water-front of Boston Town,
boasting all that he would do when he had ship of his own. Then Jack
Battle, building his castles of fortune for love of Hortense, and all
unconsciously letting slip the secret of good Boston men deep involved
in pirate schemes. The scene shifted to the far north, and a masked
man had leaped from the forest dark only to throw down his weapon when
the firelight shone on my face. Again the white darkness of the storm,
the three shadowy figures and Le Borgne sent to guide us back to the
fort. Again, to beat of drum and shriek of fife, M. Radisson was
holding his own against the swarming savages that assailed the New
Englanders' fort. Then I was living over the unspeakable horror of the
Indian massacre ending in that awful wait on the crest of the hill.
The memory brought a chill as of winter cold. With my back to both
doors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may
say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the
heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions
leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery
of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate
ship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, could
screen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was another
partner to the venture, who could shield Ben from punishment in New
England. But the third partner was hiding inland to defraud the others
of the furs. That was the meaning of Ben's drunken threats. Who was
the third partner? Had not Eli Kirke planned trading in the north with
Mr. Stocking? Were the pirates some agents of my uncle? Did that
explain why my life had been three times spared? One code of morals
for the church and another for the trade is the way of many a man; but
would the agents of a Puritan deacon murder a rival in the dark of a
forest, or lead Indians to massacre the crew of partners, or take furs
gotten at the price of a tribe's extermination?
Turning that question over, I heard the inner door-flap lift. There
was no time to regain the couch, but a quick swerve took me out of the
firelight in the shadow of a great wolfskin against the wall. You will
laugh at the old idea of honour, but I had promised not to spy, and I
never raised my eyes from the floor. There was no sound but the
gurgling of the spring in the dark and the sharp crackle of the flame.
Thinking the wind had blown the flap, I stepped from hiding. Something
vague as mist held back in shadow. The lines of a white-clad figure
etched themselves against the cave wall. It floated out, paused, moved
forward.
Then I remember clutching at the wolfskin like one clinching a
death-grip of reality, praying God not to let go a soul's anchor-hold
of reason.
For when the figure glided into the slant blue rays of the shafted
flame it was Hortense--the Hortense of the dreams, sweet as the child,
grave as the grown woman-Hortense with closed eyes and moving lips and
hands feeling out in the dark as if playing invisible keys.
She was asleep.
Then came the flash that lighted the clouds of the past.
The interloper, the pirate, the leader of Indian marauders, the
defrauder of his partners, was M. Picot, the French doctor, whom Boston
had outlawed, and who was now outlawing their outlawry. We do not
reason out our conclusions, as I said before. At our supremest moments
we do not _think_. Consciousness leaps from summit to summit like the
forked lightnings across the mountain-peaks; and the mysteries of life
are illumined as a spread-out scroll. In that moment of joy and fear
and horror, as I crouched back to the wall, I did not _think_. I
_knew_--knew the meaning of all M. Picot's questionings on the fur
trade; of that murderous attack in the dark when an antagonist flung
down his weapon; of the spying through the frosted woods; of the
figures in the white darkness; of the attempt to destroy Ben Gillam's
fort; of the rescue from the crest of the hill; and of all those
strange delirious dreams.
It was as if the past focused itself to one flaming point, and the
flash of that point illumined life, as deity must feel to whom past and
present and future are one.
And all the while, with temples pounding like surf on rock and the roar
of the sea in my ears, I was not _thinking_, only _knowing_ that
Hortense was standing in the blue-shafted light with tremulous lips and
white face and a radiance on her brow not of this life.
Her hands ran lightly over imaginary keys. The blue flame darted and
quivered through the gloom. The hushed purr of the spring broke the
stillness in metallic tinklings. A smile flitted across the sleeper's
face. Her lips parted. The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tick
of clock in death-room.
"To get the memory of it," she said.
And there stole out of the past mocking memories of that last night in
the hunting-room, filling the cave with tuneless melodies like thoughts
creeping into thoughts or odour of flowers in dark.
But what was she saying in her sleep?
"Blind gods of chance"--the words that had haunted my delirium, then
quick-spoken snatches too low for me to hear--"no-no"--then more that
was incoherent, and she was gliding back to the cave.
She had lifted the curtain door--she was whispering--she paused as if
for answer-then with face alight, "The stars fight for us--" she said;
and she had disappeared.
The flame set the shadows flickering. The rivulet gurgled loud in the
dark. And I came from concealment as from a spirit world.
Then Hortense was no dream, and love was no phantom, and God--was what?
There I halted. The powers of darkness yet pressed too close for me to
see through to the God that was love. I only knew that He who throned
the universe was neither the fool that ignorant bigots painted, nor the
blind power, making wanton war of storm and dark and cold. For had not
the blind forces brought Hortense to me, and me to Hortense?
Consciousness was leaping from summit to summit like the forked
lightnings, and the light that burned was the light that transfigures
life for each soul.
The spell of a presence was there.
Then it came home to me what a desperate game the French doctor had
played. That sword-thrust in the dark meant death; so did the attack
on Ben Gillam's fort; and was it not Le Borgne, M. Picot's Indian ally,
who had counselled the massacre of the sleeping tribe? You must not
think that M. Picot was worse than other traders of those days! The
north is a desolate land, and though blood cry aloud from stones, there
is no man to hear.
I easily guessed that M. Picot would try to keep me with him till M.
Radisson had sailed. Then I must needs lock hands with piracy.
Hortense and I were pawns in the game.
At one moment I upbraided him for bringing Hortense to this wilderness
of murder and pillage. At another I considered that a banished
gentleman could not choose his goings. How could I stay with M. Picot
and desert M. de Radisson? How could I go to M. de Radisson and
abandon Hortense?
"Straight is the narrow way," Eli Kirke oft cried out as he expounded
Holy Writ.
Ah, well, if the narrow way is straight, it has a trick of becoming
tangled in a most terrible snarl!
Wheeling the log-end right about, I sat down to await M. Picot. There
was stirring in the next apartment. An ebon head poked past the door
curtain, looked about, and withdrew without detecting me. The face I
remembered at once. It was the wife of M. Picot's blackamoor. Only
three men had passed from the cave. If the blackamoor were one, M.
Picot and Le Borgne _must_ be the others.
Footsteps grated on the pebbles outside. I rose with beating heart to
meet M. Picot, who held my fate in his hands. Then a ringing
pistol-shot set my pulse jumping.
I ran to the door. Something plunged heavily against the curtain. The
robe ripped from the hangings. In the flood of moonlight a man pitched
face forward to the cave floor. He reeled up with a cry of rage,
caught blindly at the air, uttered a groan, fell back.
"M. Picot!"
Blanched and faint, the French doctor lay with a crimsoning pool wet
under his head. "I am shot! What will become of her?" he groaned. "I
am shot! It was Gillam! It was Gillam!"
Hortense and the negress came running from the inner cave. Le Borgne
and the blackamoor dashed from the open with staring horror.
"Lift me up! For God's sake, air!" cried M. Picot.
We laid him on the pelts in the doorway, Le Borgne standing guard
outside.
Hortense stooped to stanch the wound, but the doctor motioned her off
with a fierce impatience, and bade the negress lead her away. Then he
lay with closed eyes, hands clutched to the pelts, and shuddering
breath.
The blackamoor had rushed to the inner cave for liquor, when M. Picot
opened his eyes with a strange far look fastened upon me.
"Swear it," he commanded.
And I thought his mind wandering.
He groaned heavily. "Don't you understand? It's Hortense. Swear
you'll restore her--" and his breath came with a hard metallic rattle
that warned the end.
"Doctor Picot," said I, "if you have anything to say, say it quickly
and make your peace with God!"
"Swear you'll take her back to her people and treat her as a sister,"
he cried.
"I swear before God that I shall take Hortense back to her people, and
that I shall treat her like a sister," I repeated, raising my right
hand.
That seemed to quiet him. He closed his eyes.
"Sir," said I, "have you nothing more to say? Who are her people?"
"Is . . . is . . . any one listening?" he asked in short, hard breaths.
I motioned the others back.
"Listen"--the words came in quick, rasping breaths. "She is not
mine . . . it was at night . . . they brought her . . . ward o' the
court . . . lands . . . they wanted me." There was a sharp pause, a
shivering whisper. "I didn't poison her"--the dying man caught
convulsively at my hands--"I swear I had no thought of harming
her. . . . They . . . paid. . . . I fled. . . ."
"Who paid you to poison Hortense? Who is Hortense?" I demanded; for
his life was ebbing and the words portended deep wrong.
But his mind was wandering again, for he began talking so fast that I
could catch only a few words. "Blood! Blood! Colonel Blood!" Then
"Swear it," he cried.
That speech sapped his strength. He sank back with shut eyes and faint
breathings.
We forced a potion between his lips.
"Don't let Gillam," he mumbled, "don't let Gillam . . . have the furs."
A tremor ran through his stiffening frame. A little shuddering
breath--and M. Picot had staked his last pawn in life's game.
[1] In confirmation of Mr. Stanhope's record it may be stated that on
the western side of the northland in the Mackenzie River region are gas
and tar veins that are known to have been burning continuously for
nearly two centuries.