The Plowshare and the Sword Part 36

"Geoffrey!" murmured Madeleine softly to her self.

"For his sake," urged the dwarf. Then he paused and ground his teeth.

"But you?" she exclaimed.

"I!" Gaudriole uttered his malevolent chuckle. "To-morrow I shall be hopping about the fortress, full of wild fancies which shall mightily impress the superst.i.tious. I shall say how, as I lay on the hillside, I saw lightning strike the sentry dead, and how at the roll of thunder the door of this hut burst open and you pa.s.sed out in a flame of fire.

Laroche shall worship you as a saint to-morrow, if he worship aught but his belly and his sword, and shall keep the day holy in honour of Sainte Madeleine. Fear not for me. I have a clever tongue, lady, and a brave imagination, and if I am pushed can devise twenty men to do this deed. Come!" he whispered sharply. "The lights approach."

Madeleine permitted herself to be hurried away, and the ill-matched pair made no stop until the forest had closed behind. Not a sound came from the heights; only the watch-fires flickered gently in the wind.

"Which way?" cried Gaudriole.

"The sea," said Madeleine.

"There lies your path. 'Tis a mountainous country yonder. If you hide to-night, I will after dark to-morrow bring down a boat, and in that you may escape."

"I know how to find food, and the Indians will not harm me," she replied. "I have made myself friendly with them, and carry a marked stone which one of their sachems gave me."

"Say now the words, 'Back, dog!' and I leave you."

Madeleine turned reluctantly to the dwarf.

"Go, friend," she said, with her pitying smile Gaudriole went down on his sharp knees, and his crooked shoulders heaved.

"Lady, I am no man, but a beast who has done you what little service it might. My life shall continue as nature has fitted me, but when I come to die on the gallows, as such as I must end, I would have one blessed memory to carry with me into h.e.l.l. Suffer me to kiss your hand."

Madeleine hesitated, her lips parting pitifully, her eyes wet as the gra.s.s which brushed her skirt. Then, as the poor villain raised his hideous face, she bent and swiftly kissed his grimy brow. Her glorious hair for a moment streamed upon his elfin locks, then she was gone, breathing a little faster, while Gaudriole lay humped upon the ground.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

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 sh.o.r.e of Acadie at the beginning of winter. Master Grignion was an austere man, who, by dint of miserly practice and sharp dealing, had ama.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.p 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 c.u.mbersome. 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 ma.s.s 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 cutla.s.ses 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 b.u.t.ternuts 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 sh.o.r.es.

"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 a.s.sumed, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.sistance 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, la.s.s?" 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 la.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e. 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.