The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec

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!"

CHAPTER XXXI

IN THE FALL OF THE SNOW

Because the Father of Waters was frozen over and its track buried in snow, despatches from Quebec could only be conveyed by the hand of overland couriers. Winter had set in early that year, and with more than usual severity; and this was probably the reason why no messenger had lately arrived from the heights to inform the governor of Acadie as to what had taken place in and around the modest capital of New France.

The priest was not concerned by this silence. He had indeed lost much of his interest in the doings of the New World, since D'Archand had informed him of his popularity at home. He felt that he had made his advancement sure. During the weeks which followed autumn, when the maples were resigning their gorgeous vestments of red and gold, he had occupied himself in setting the affairs of his charge in order, looking to shortly receive a command to proceed to Rome, there to receive the reward of his stewardship. Onawa had passed out of his memory, and with her the brave young boy whom he had smitten in the forest by Couchicing. He sent no expedition out to search the land. He had done sufficient for glory. He was not the man to waste his energies upon works of supererogation. No slip could lose him that spiritual principality towards which he had pressed by word and act since the day of his ordination. As he strode through the snow the settlement seemed to shrink from him, and the trees to bow, as though foreseeing the power which was about to pass into his hands.

La Salle reached his chapel, recited vespers in the arrogant voice which made him feared, and returned to his quarters. A spirit of restlessness was over him, and when he could resist no longer he rose, and, taking his sword, lunged repeatedly at a knot in the wall, striking it full until his body began to sweat.

"No falling off," he muttered, as he examined the pricks in the wood. "No sign of weakness yet." He lowered the sword, and mechanically wiped the point in the tail of his skirt, then passed his firm hand caressingly down the blade, murmuring, with a self-conscious smile: "I have finished my fighting. Henceforth my wrist must stiffen and my arm rust, while the power which has controlled the sword shall pass into the use of tongue and pen."

A knock fell upon the door, and in response to his reply a personal attendant entered, and with a low reverence announced:

"A messenger to speak with you, Excellency."

At the governor's word a man was ushered in, clad in furs, his beard heavy with icicles, a pair of long snow-shoes slung upon his back. He made a profound genuflection and stood with bent head awaiting permission to speak.

"Come you from the upper fortress?" asked La Salle.

"Yes, Excellency, with despatches for France and a letter for your Holiness."

La Salle put out his hand for the communication, broke the thread, unfolded the sheet, and, holding it in the lamplight, bent over to read.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, his eyes lifting. "Laroche. What means this signature?"

"The noble commandant Roussilac has been stricken with sickness," hesitated the messenger.

"What ails him?" asked the priest.

The man faltered, but finally gained courage to reply: "It is said, Excellency, that the noble commandant acts strangely, as a man possessed by some unholy influence."

La Salle brought the letter again to his eyes, and hurriedly scanned the ill-written lines.