The Plowshare and the Sword Part 27

"Why do ye waste your men against that wall?" he shouted at the chiefs.

"Bring every man round to the east. Follow me, warriors. Follow, we shall conquer yet."

He might as profitably have addressed the stones. He ran in among the fighters, dealing blows with the flat of his sword, and pointing through the shadows to the fierce conflict upon the edge of the valley.

"There!" he shouted, trying to recall some scattered words of the language. "There, where the sun rises!"

At length he made himself clear, and a section of the fighters, more cool-headed than the remainder, professed themselves willing to follow, and some of the hot-headed chiefs, perceiving method in the Englishman's madness, turned also calling back their men.

Twice had the Mohawks broken through the front line and been repulsed before reaching the cannon, which spouted its hail down the valley. A barrier of French dead piled the s.p.a.ce beside the artillery. Roussilac strode to and fro, withdrawing men from points where they could ill be spared that he might throw them upon the side where the lines wavered.

Here the flower of the fighting-men struggled. Laroche fought here like the brave man he undoubtedly was, swearing fearfully, but never ceasing from the skilful sword-play which freed many a brown warrior from the burden of the fight. A charm seemed to protect his great body, the arrows leaving him unscathed, the blows of the tomahawks seeming to deflect as they descended, until the soldiers fought for the pride of place at the side of the priest, whom they believed to be under the special protection of the saints.

"Infidels, unbelieving and unbaptised! Down, down!" shouted Laroche, blinking the sweat from his eyes.

Repeatedly the Iroquois turned the line at the weak spot which Nature had overlooked in her plan of fortification, but Roussilac was prepared always with a band waiting to stem the rush. This could not last. His soldiers were thinning, and there seemed to be no limit to the numbers of the Indians. They pressed up in horde upon horde, their shouts cleaving the moist wind, their arrows inexhaustible, their courage undiminished. Then the word came that the Cayugas and Senacas were giving way upon the west with the manifest intention of strengthening their allies.

"Let them come," cried Roussilac loudly, for his men's benefit. "Only send me as many soldiers as can be spared from that position." But to himself he muttered: "The game is up," and he wrung his brain for a _ruse de guerre_.

"Send me a dozen men with a cannon yonder to work round and attack these savages in the rear," he said to one of his captains, who had been put out of the fight by a wound in the arm. "If they can but raise sufficient noise they may appear as a relieving force. It disheartens even a brute to fight between two foes."

"We cannot spare the men, Excellency."

"They must be spared," replied Roussilac.

A messenger rushed up, breathless and triumphant.

"Excellency, the Algonquins are coming to our aid in force," he panted.

For the first time in many hours the commandant smiled.

"You spoke truly," he said to the captain. "We cannot spare those men."

He turned and recoiled with a shiver. St Agapit, a long, black figure, stood beside him in the wet wreaths of the dawn.

"Your cousin is dead," said the priest. "He died but half an hour ago, with a curse upon his tongue. You have lost me that man's soul."

He half lifted his hand and moved away, seeing nothing of the great struggle, heeding the clamour not at all, because the sun was about to rise and he had his Ma.s.s to say.

While light was breaking over the cliffs in the east, where the fishermen of Tadousac hid themselves throughout that night, Oskelano brought his men clear of the forest and disposed them upon the plain.

The old man was no mean general. He sent out his spies, and when the men returned with the information that the French were being crushed by superior numbers he divided his force into three bands. The first he sent like a wedge between the Onondagas and the force advancing from the west under Hough's leadership; the second he flung to the north of the Mohawks and Oneidas; and, having thus completely separated the allied forces, he threw his third band upon the rear of the men who were slowly carrying the position from the valley.

The Cayugas and Senacas were beaten back to the river. The Onondagas, attacked on two sides and at first mistaking foe for friend, were shattered at a first charge and fled for the forest. The fighters in the valley alone held their ground, until the light became strong; and then Roussilac drew up his entire force and directed in person a charge which hurled the stubborn Mohawks back upon the axes of the Algonquins awaiting them upon the lower ground. The survivors fled and were pursued by the northern tribe. The French flung themselves down exhausted, while Laroche wiped his sword and streaming face, and panted a benediction upon dead and wounded and living alike.

Thus the Iroquois Confederacy received a shattering blow from which it never recovered; and the land was made secure to France for a long two hundred years.

CHAPTER XXII.

OB AND AZURE.

After that complete repulse of the Iroquois tribes the French found themselves so weak as to be practically at the mercy of a foe. Another resolute attack must have driven them from their position. But the Iroquois bands were completely disorganised; the few English scattered about the maritime provinces, including that remnant of Scots in the east, who had settled Newfoundland and Nova Scotia only to see their territories wrested from them, were entirely inadequate even in combination to menace the supremacy of the House of Bourbon; and it may be questioned whether, at that time, any Scotsman would have stood to fight side by side with the English. Soon another ship would arrive from Ma.r.s.eilles, bringing, not only provisions and ammunition, but a reinforcement of men, prepared to till the ground as settlers should, but far more ready to continue the French error of attempting to colonise with the sword. On the heels of the discovery of two Dutch bodies among the Indian slain, La Salle returned, and conveyed to Roussilac the information that an English spy was escaping south.

Gaudriole also announced that Van Vuren and his company were bearing in that same direction. Roussilac's hand was forced. If these men escaped him the fortress might be called upon to resist, not only an English, but possibly a Dutch invasion also. He sent out twenty men immediately to cut off the Hollanders, leaving the garrison depleted to no more than fifty men available for defence; and the commandant made haste to reward Oskelano for his services as suitably as his resources would permit, and sent him home, fearful lest the treacherous Algonquin might discover, and take advantage of, his weakness.

When La Salle stood before him, and announced that the English spy was the guest of one Madame Labroquerie, a widow living with her daughter in the country to the south, the commandant refused to betray himself, but replied that he would accompany the priest and be a witness to the hanging of the Englishman. At the same time, he considered, he might keep the oath which he had sworn to his dead cousin. Having given the order for a troop of men to attend upon his person, he abandoned the subject which awoke in him unpleasant memories, and bowing haughtily to La Salle--for he and the priest were in a manner rivals--congratulated him upon his appointment to the governorship of Acadie, the confirmation of which, signed by the Cardinal himself, had lately been delivered by the hand of the master of the _St. Wenceslas_.

"This fortress will be the weaker for your loss, Sir Priest," he said, feigning a sorrow which he could not feel. "May I seek to know when you propose to set forth to the undertaking of your new responsibilities?"

"If my work here be finished what time the _St. Wenceslas_ sails homeward I shall depart with her," La Salle replied, flashing a disdainful glance upon Roussilac. "But I have yet to rid this land of its English vermin."

With that implied scorn of the governor, and suggestion of his own superiority, La Salle departed to make his preparations; and an hour later a troop of hors.e.m.e.n rode forth, Roussilac at the head, and beside him Gaudriole jesting for his chief's amus.e.m.e.nt; on the other side the two priests--for Laroche accompanied his senior--and behind six soldiers, riding two abreast on bright bay ponies, their weapons flashing in the sunlight.

There had been war in the grove. An angry scene pa.s.sed between mother and daughter when Madeleine returned after seeing her lover upon his way. For the first time in her life the girl lost her sweet patience, and returned word for word so hotly that Madame at length became afraid, and backed away, yet muttering:

"Men shall stay your pride, girl, if a weak woman may not."

"They also shall find that a resolute mind is not quickly broken,"

Madeleine returned.

"The law against heresy is still in being," Madame threatened, made still more bitter by the knowledge that her daughter and Geoffrey had together outwitted her. "I have borne with you, because you are my child. Our Lady punishes me for my lack of devotion. I had speech but recently with a holy priest. We shall see, when that priest returns.

We shall see!"

"Drive me from you with that bitter tongue, as you drove out Jean-Marie," cried Madeleine, her fair throat swelling like a bird in song. "So shall you die without son or daughter at your side, and none but an Indian shall see you to your grave."

At that Madame put up her hand with a superst.i.tious gesture, and limped away, her yellow face wrinkled with rage; nor did she speak again to her daughter until the Indian servant entered the cabin to announce the coming of a warlike band. Then she croaked at Madeleine: "'Tis the holy priest. Know you not, girl, how those are punished who conspire to aid an enemy of their country?" Then she hasted away to don the cap and gown which she had kept against the coming of a change of fortune.

There came a sound of voices, the troop rode into the grove, and Madeleine, as she stood trembling at the door, was greeted by Gaudriole, who bowed and grinned as he announced his Excellency the Commandant to visit the Madame Labroquerie and the fair lady her daughter.

"I am Madeleine Labroquerie," stammered the girl, frightened for a moment by the brave show of mounted men.

"Cousin," cried a half-familiar voice, "hast put a friend and relative out of memory?"

Dazzled by the sunlight after the gloom of the cabin, Madeleine shaded her eyes. She saw before her a tall man, sallow and dark, his hair falling in snaky lines to his shoulders, the golden fleur-de-lys worked upon his blue surcoat making his face the more sickly by comparison.

Before she could return his salutation he had dropped to his knee and kissed her hand.

"Years have pa.s.sed since we parted, cousin," he said. "The present finds me with position, and you with beauty. I knew not that you were here until your brother told me."

"Arnaud!" she exclaimed, giddy with amazement at finding the boy who had been the autocrat of childhood's games grown into a man of power.

Then, because her heart was so tender to all that breathed, she forgot the character of the man who was looking down upon her with increasing wonder to find how the plain child with the tangle of flaming hair had blossomed into this lovely creature, and asked quickly: "Jean-Marie--what of him?"

Roussilac was not a man to tell ill-news gently. Wasting neither words nor sentiment, he replied: "Your brother died but recently of fever, calling upon your name with his last breath."

His final words were intended to show her that he had been by the sick man's side until the end.

Madeleine turned white and tottered. Then, as her strong heart recovered, she said:

"Let me call my mother. My father has long been dead. We have remained poor, Arnaud," she added defiantly. "But if you have ascended, we have at least not descended."