CHAPTER XXX.
LAND-LOCKED.
With the life of Master William Grignion, alderman, and subsequentlysheriff, of the City of London, these annals are not concerned. Themerchant's existence cannot, however, be altogether ignored, owing to acertain venture on his part, which resulted in an English ship beingcast upon the shore of Acadie at the beginning of winter. MasterGrignion was an austere man, who, by dint of miserly practice and sharpdealing, had amassed what in those days was a considerable fortune.After marrying his only daughter to an impecunious peer, he occupied ashameful old house upon Thames bank, the greater part of which wasstocked with bales of merchandise. From the single window of theliving-room, which was furnished below the degree of discomfort, theold man could view the overtoppling houses upon London Bridge; and hereMaster Grignion counted his gains each night, while his starved dogslunk from corner to corner sniffing uselessly for a scrap 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 formany months crossed the seas. For weeks the alderman had beenengrossed by an idea, which grew in strength upon him--namely, that ifhe built for himself a ship and despatched her to Virginia, he mightvery possibly add materially to the already considerable store of goldpieces which were secreted about his house from cellar to attic. ButMaster Grignion knew well that the seas were held by England's foes,and the nightmare of failure held him back from his project month aftermonth. One evening, however, while he watched the muddy Thames after agood day of business, the finger of inspiration touched him, and,gazing up into the London sky, which was not murky in those days, heremarked: "Hitherto ships have been constructed for strength. Dutch,French, and Spanish vessels are alike slow and cumbersome. It hasoccurred to no man to build a ship for speed."
Having solved the problem, Master Grignion knew no rest until he hadfound an enterprising shipbuilder, who was clever at his business andat the same time weak in bargaining. Discovering in Devon the man herequired, the alderman divulged his plan; and from that day forwarduntil the _Dartmouth_ stood fully decked before Barnstaple the miser'stalk was of sailcloth and sailmaking, with masts, yards, gaffs, booms,and bowsprits. The _Dartmouth_, when completed even to thesatisfaction of her avaricious owner, was undoubtedly ahead of the time.
One Silas Upcliff, an old sea-dog with a face red and yellow like aripe apple, and a fringe of snow-white whisker below the chin, a nativeof Plymouth, and a man well salted by experience, volunteered to raisea crew and sail the _Dartmouth_ to the Potomac; and, after a vast dealof haggling over the questions of provisioning and wages, his offer wasaccepted. And one fine day the brigantine shook out her wealth ofcanvas and skimmed away westward, over the track of such brave vesselsas the Pelican, the little _Discovery_, and the Puritan _Mayflower_.Trembling with pride and excitement, and a certain amount of fear lestat the last moment his ship might be seized for the service of theking, Master Grignion stood by while the anchor was heaved, shoutinghis final injunction: "Fight not with your guns, Master Skipper.Should an enemy attack you, let out more sail and fly." Silas Upcliffnodded in stolid English style, and, as he drew away, turned to hismate and muttered: "From the French, the storm, but most of all frommisers, good Lord deliver us."
From the French the _Dartmouth_ was indeed delivered, but not from thestorm. Hostile vessels were sighted, but the brigantine's speedenabled her to show a particularly dainty stern to these privateers;and all went well with her until the line of the American coast liftedominously distinct above the horizon before being blotted out by a massof fiery cloud. Then came the storm, which flung the little vessel farfrom her course, carried her northwards, and finally cast her upon thecoast of Nova Scotia, after failing in its effort to wreck her on thewestern spurs of Newfoundland. When the storm ceased, a freezing calmset in, and for two days snow descended without intermission. Upcliffgave the order to build a house out of pine logs, where he and his menmight take shelter while they repaired the ship; for the little_Dartmouth_ had been terribly strained by the storm and pierced by thesharp-toothed rocks. The skipper believed that he was near hisdestined harbour, and was sorely puzzled by the snow and bitter cold;but, when a sailor came hurriedly to report that he had seen the smokeof a distant settlement and a tree stamped with the fleur-de-lys, thecaptain began to greatly fear that the miserly alderman had lost hisventure, and he bade his men bring out their cutlasses and to see thatthey were sharp.
When the snow ceased and the atmosphere became clear, a tall figurecame down among the pines, and gave a hearty welcome to the skipper andhis men. The visitor was Sir Thomas Iden, and he came not alone togreet the master of the _Dartmouth_, for none other than Madeleine wasat his side.
The brave girl had travelled far that night of her release, and for twodays hurried eastward, keeping near the river, existing on butternutsand the different kinds of berry which flourished in abundance at thatseason of the year, until on the eve of the second day she saw thesmoke of a camp-fire rising from the beach. Descending, she revealedherself boldly to the campers, who were none other than Sir Thomas andhis native wife; and when the former heard her story, and knew that shewas English at heart, if French in name, and further learnt that shewas the affianced of Geoffrey Viner, who had gone out to bring themhelp, he bent with knightly grace and kissed her hand, and besought herto accompany him to the land above the sea. Madeleine joyouslyconsented; and from that hour her troubles ceased.
Afterwards Jeremiah Hough came to the land beside the gulf, and withhim Penfold, fully recovered from his fever; and these men also tookMadeleine to their hearts--though the stern Puritan refused to trusther--when they heard how she had served their comrade. In the pathlessland above the sea, a little to the east of Acadie, they settledthemselves; the knight, his wife, and Madeleine in one log-cabin in ahollow; Hough and Penfold in another, placed in the heart of a densepine-wood. No marauding band had been abroad to trouble the land. Theonly danger which appeared to threaten the Englishmen, now that winterhad set in, was the possibility that some Indian spy might carry thenews of their hiding-place into the town; and this danger was a veryreal one, for, though they did not know of it, Onawa had followed LaSalle to Acadie.
It was Madeleine who sighted the _Dartmouth_ snowed up beside thebeach. She had gone out into the storm to run along the cliff andfight against the mighty buffetings of the wind which had upset theplans of Master Grignion. She sped back over the spruce-clad hills,and coming first to the adventurers' hut stopped to tell them thetidings. They ran forth, flushed with the hope that Geoffrey hadsucceeded, and, standing upon a hill-top, argued concerning thestranger's nationality, until they came regretfully to the decisionthat she could not be from English shores.
"I saw never a ship so light in build," said Penfold. "See you thenumber of her masts? She is made to run and not to fight, whereas ourEnglish ships are made to fight and never to run. She is, if I mistakenot, a Dutch vessel."
"Peradventure the Lord shall deliver her also into our hands," quothHough fervently.
The captain shook his grizzled head, and answered sadly: "Recall notthat day of our triumph. Then were we five good men. Now George, ourbrother, lies on the Windy Arm, and friend Woodfield is no more, andyoung Geoffrey has gone out into a strange country. Only you and Iremain, and my arm now lacks its former strength."
In the meantime Madeleine had run for her protector; and before the daywas done both Penfold and the Puritan knew of their error, and hadjoined hands once again with men from their native land.
When Silas Upcliff learnt that he stood upon the perilous Nova Scotiancoast, he felt more shame than fear--shame to hear that the land wasmastered by the French. Had not those bold sea-brothers of England theCabots discovered it over a century earlier, and had not James theFirst conferred his crown patent of the whole of Canada upon SirWilliam Alexander, his Scottish favourite? The honest skipper wellknew that the magnanimous Charles had confirmed
the bestowal of thatprodigious gift, acting, it must be assumed, under surprisingignorance, seeing that the land was no more his to give than were theNew Netherlands or Peru. And at that time, when Roussilac held the St.Lawrence and La Salle the priest ruled Acadie, the Scottish peer, whowas nominal lord of all the land, was peacefully engaged in writingmediocre poetry in his castle of Stirling! Between the ostensible andactual ownership spread a vast gulf of difference, as the men upon thatshore were to learn to their cost.
Silas Upcliff gave his compatriots a sailor's hearty handshake, and themen who knew the land and its occupants rendered the new-comers whatassistance they might, while Hough lost no time in begging them to joinin 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 menare sworn to run rather than to fight."
Then Madeleine offered her services as housewife to the crew, and whenthe 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 Bristoland Plymouth, and could quote them with a pretty accent, they fell inlove with her forthwith, from Upcliff himself to the rogue of a boybefore the mast. From that time forth she ruled them with a velvetdiscipline, joining the workers engaged in repairing the ship'sinjuries, and helping them by her happiness and approval.
"Hurry! hurry!" she would cry. "Ah, but you talk too much. She shallfloat to-morrow. Then to break the ice and flee away!"
"Art in such hurry to lose us, lass?" said Upcliff on the second dayafter the snow.
"But I shall not lose you," cried Madeleine. "I am going to sail awaywith you. I shall bring good fortune and favouring winds; and if anyman be sick I will nurse him back to strength. None ever die whom Iwatch over. The sick are ashamed even to think of death when they seeme so full of life. You will take me to my Geoffrey, in the land ofthe free?"
"Ay, and to England if you will," cried the hearty skipper, who hadalready heard her story. "But, my lass, your Geoffrey may be on hisway back, and you may but get south to find him gone."
"No," replied Madeleine, shaking her head decidedly. "He is not on hisway back. I think he is in trouble. I cannot understand, but I feelthat he is being punished for what he has not done, and I know that Ican 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 mindto run out a line from the cross-tree and see him hanged."
"False!" cried Madeleine, with a scream of laughter. "Is the sun falsewhen the clouds will not let him shine? Why, I would slap your wickedface, and cook you no supper to-night, if I believed that you spoke infaith."
She ran away, kicking up the dusty snow, and throwing back a laughwhich filled the winter air with the breath of spring.
Each calm morning the boats of the deep-sea fishermen put out fromAcadie, and returned before evening with their frozen freight. TheEnglishmen stifled their fires and stilled their voices when theseboats drew near. Their shelter was well hidden among the pines; thesnowed-up brigantine resembled nothing so much as a rock bearing a fewdead and stripped firs. Every night the sailors laughed at danger; buteach morning found them on the watch.
A week passed without event, until the evening of the eighth dayarrived and found the sailors packed within their log-hut at the backof the ice-bound bay awaiting the call to supper. The threeadventurers were also present as the skipper's guests. The cabin waswarm and well lighted, equipped by the men's handiness with nauticalfurniture from their ship. From the region beyond a curtain, whichdivided the interior, came the smell of cookery and the joyful roaringof a fire. A feeling of security was upon the company, becausesnow-clouds were rolling up outside and the gulf was filled with fog.As night drew on these grey clouds appeared to melt into feathersinnumerable, and the pines became snow-steeples, and the rocks hugebeds of down. The brigantine was locked within a sheet of ice, andthat mysterious silence which had so terrified Cabot the pioneer heldall the land in thrall. But the Englishmen cared for none of thesethings. They knew that the colony of Acadie was being buried in thesnow; the unknown coast had no terrors; nor did they fear the blackwinter sea which southwards groaned and tossed. So they gave eachother good cheer, and listened to Upcliff, who beguiled them withreminiscences of his seafaring life until his throat was dry. Then hepaused to refresh himself with a rolled tobacco-leaf, and his sailorsbroke the silence which ensued by singing melodiously a soft musicalchanty, which recalled to the mind of each his free and happy life uponthe main and the rollicking days ashore. This song also stirred intoactivity 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, andhe stood with another honest gentleman watching us wild fellows rollpast. We were singing like boys on the road from school and making thefat watchmen run. London town was a brave place for us young sailorsup 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 awrinkle 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. Butthe eyes of man! I caught the look of them, and they seemed to passthrough my brain learning in one glance more about me than ever I knewmyself. And the smile of man! Can see it now as he turned to hisfellow and said: 'The sailor is the man to drive our care away, goodBurbage.' And then he said softly those words you have now beensinging, 'One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constantnever.' A Christian gentleman, they told me. A great actor, and apoet 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 tosteady your feet withal."
"He loved a mariner," said a voice. "The Englishman smells of saltwater, say they in France. 'Tis better, so honest Will did say, thanto 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 hisquestion, and while the information was being driven into his obtusehead by half a dozen of his mates in concert, the curtain dividing thecabin 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 theyhad not heard it before, and obeyed the summons gladly. To every manwas set a great bowl of stew, and the fair cook, resting her hands uponher 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 Ishall turn you out to hunt. The snow shall have stopped by then, andyou may follow the deer by their fresh tracks."
Madeleine nodded severely at the sailors as she thus made known to themher mind.
The crew were still over supper, and Silas was telling one of his seastories to ears which had already heard it a score of times, butlistened patiently because it was the master speaking, when a deepsound broke among the hills and rolled onward through the snow, makingthe rough coast throb.
The skipper's mouth was open to laugh at his own excellent wit, butthat sound brought his lips together, as it caused all his listeners tostart for the door. The same cry was upon every tongue, as their handsdragged away the sail which stretched across the entrance:
"A gun!"
They poured into the terrible whiteness, huddling as clos
e as sheep.Nothing was visible, except the steady masses shed from the clouds likewool. Not a sound, nor any sign of life. They waited, straining theireyes out to sea, but the gun did not roar again.
"Cast your eyes over to the west," called a voice, and the master foundSir 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, pointinginto the unfathomable mass. "She has signalled, and yonder fire burnsto guide her in."
"Wreck her!" cried a Cornishman. "Let us build another fire on thecliff to the east. With fortune, she shall steer for our beaconinstead of theirs."
"We should but make ourselves known," growled Upcliff.
A terrified shout broke upon his speech, and one of the men jumpedagainst 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 thesnow and floated away, her feet never touching ground. A warning--adeath warning, and I a miserable sinner."
The man grovelled upon his knees up to his waist in snow, flapping hishands and groaning.
"Speak up, man!" said Sir Thomas. "What is that you saw?"
"He has seen a wyvern," spoke the master contemptuously. "Was always aman 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 werelike a dog's, and she breathed fire out of her mouth."
"Stay!" cried Hough, stepping out. "Say you that her face was markedlike mine?"
"The same," panted the man. "But dead and cold, and her eyes likefish----"
The Puritan drowned his wailings by a bitter cry.
"Forgive me, friends," he cried. "The Lord delivered me that woman toslay, and I, weak vessel that I am, drew back, and now am punished, andin 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. Whichway 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 hotfrom the everlasting fire."
"Peace, fool," said Upcliff. He turned to Hough. "Are our lives indanger?"
"Never in greater. The woman is an Indian spy, who is now on her wayto the settlement, where rules a hot-headed priest who has sworn tokill 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 obeythrough the muffling mists. The greater number attacked the ice withaxe and saw, while the minority dismantled the shelter and reconveyedits contents to the ghostly ship. Every man worked his hardest,longing for the sea. The blow of axes and the snarl of a long sawsounded along the hidden coast.
Madeleine came down, all white with snow like a bride, and cheered themon, and presently brought each man a bowl of soup to renew hisstrength. A narrow lane opened through the ice, an ink-black passagein the colourless plain, but beyond stretched a long white field beforethe jagged edge where the snow wave curled in a monstrous lip.
The brigantine righted herself with a flutter and a plunge, casting thesnow 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 thedegree of frost points before morning. The country began to unroll,all padded with its monstrous coverlet; the trees masqueraded aswool-stuffed Falstaffs; the cliffs seemed to have increased in thenight; the heavens were nearer the earth. The coast appalled in itscold virginity.
"One more hour, and then for the sea," sang Upcliff. "Is everythingaboard?"
"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 andfloundered knee-deep towards the bay. It was Hough, and he shouted ashe ran:
"The French are coming out!"