CHAPTER IV.

Fringue, fringue sur la rivière;Fringue, fringue sur l'aviron!

The man at the bow paddle set the chorus, which was taken up by boat after boat. John, stretched at the bottom of a canoe with two wounded Highlanders, wondered where he had heard the voice before. His wits were not very clear yet. The canoe's gunwale hid all the landscape but a mountain-ridge high over his right, feathered with forest and so far away that, swiftly as the strokes carried him forward, its serrated pines and notches of naked rock crept by him inch by inch. He stared at these and prayed for the moment when the sun should drop behind them. For hours it had been beating down on him. An Indian sat high in the stern, steering; paddling rhythmically and with no sign of effort except that his face ran with sweat beneath its grease and vermilion. But not a feature of it twitched in the glare across which, hour after hour, John had been watching him through scorched eyelashes.

Athwart the stern, and almost at the Indian's feet, reclined a brawn of a man with his knees drawn high—a French sergeant in a spick-and-span white tunic with the badge of the Béarnais regiment. A musket lay across his thighs, so pointed that John looked straight down its barrel. Doubtless it was loaded: but John had plenty to distract his thoughts from such a trifle—in the heat, the glare, the torment of his wounds, and, worst of all, the incessant coughing of the young Highlander beside him. The lad had been shot through the lungs, and the wound imperfectly bandaged. A horrible wind issued from it with every cough.

How many men might be seated or lying in the fore part of the canoe John could not tell, being unable to turn his head. Once or twice a guttural voice there growled a word of comfort to the dying lad, in Gaelic or in broken English. And always the bowman sang high and clear, setting the chorus for the attendant boats, and from the chorus passing without a break into the solo. "En roulant ma boule" followed "Fringue sur l'aviron "; and from that the voice slid into a little love-chant, tender and delicate:

"À la claire fontaineM'en allant promener,J'ai trouvé l'eau si belleQue je m'y suis baigné.Il y a longtemps que je t'aime,Jamais je ne t'oublierai."

"II y a longtemps que je t'aime," broke in the chorus, the wide lake modulating the music as water only can. John remembered the abattis and all its slaughter, and marvelled what manner of men they were who, fresh from it, could put their hearts into such a song.

"Et patati, et patata!" rapped in the big sergeant. "For God's sake, Chameau, what kind of milk is this to turn a man's stomach?"

The chorus drowned his growls, and the bowman continued:

"Sur la plus haute brancheLe rossignol chantait,Chante, rossignol, chante,Toi qui as le cœur gai…Chante, rossignol, chante,Toi qui as le cœur gai;Tu as le cœur à rire,Moi je l'ai—t à pleurer.…"

"Gr-r-r—" As the song ended, the sergeant spat contemptuously over the gunwale. "La-la-la, rossignol! et la-la-la, rosier!" he mimicked. "We are notrosières, my friend."

"The song is true Canayan, m'sieur, and your comrades appear to like it."

"Par exemple! Listen, Monsieur Chameau, to something more in their line." He inflated his huge lungs and burst into a ditty of his own:

"C'est dans la ville de BordeauxQu'est arrivé trois beaux vaissaux—Qu'est arrivé trois beaux vaissaux:Les matelots qui sont dedans,Vrai Dieu, sont de jolis galants."

The man had a rich baritone voice, not comparable indeed with the bowman's tenor, yet not without quality; but he used it affectedly, and sang with a simper on his face. His face, brick red in hue, was handsome in its florid way; but John, watching the simper, found it detestable.

"C'est une dame de BordeauxQu'est amoureuse d'un matelot—"

Here he paused, and a few soldiers took up the refrain half-heartedly:

"—Va, ma servante, va moi chercherUn matelot pour m'amuser."

The song from this point became indecent, and set the men in the nearer boats laughing. At its close a few clapped their hands. But it was not a success, and the brick red darkened on the singer's face; darkened almost to purple when a voice in the distance took up the air and returned it mockingly, caricaturing arouladeto the life with the help of one or two ridiculous gracenotes: at which the soldiers laughed again.

"I think, m'sieur," suggested the bowman politely, "they do not know it very well, or they would doubtless have been heartier."

But the sergeant had heaved himself up with a curse and a lurch which sent the canoe rocking, and was scanning the boats for the fellow who had dared to insult him.

"How the devil can a man sing while that dog keeps barking!" he growled, and let out a kick at the limp legs of the young Highlander.

Another growl answered. It came from the wounded prisoner behind John—the man who had been muttering in Gaelic.

"It is a coward you are, big man. Go on singing your sculduddery, and let the lad die quiet!"

The sergeant scowled, not understanding. John, whose blood was up, obligingly translated the reproof into French. "He says—and I also—that you are a cowardly bully; and we implore you to sing in tune, another time. Par pitié, monsieur, ne scalpez-vous pas les demi-morts!"

The shaft bit, as he had intended, and the man's vanity positively foamed upon it. "Dog of aros-bif, congratulate yourself that you are half dead, or I would whip you again as we whipped you yesterday, and as my regiment is even now again whipping your compatriots." He jerked a thumb towards the south where, far up the lake, a pale saffron glow spread itself upon the twilight.

"The English are burning your fort, maybe," John suggested amiably.

"They are burning the mill, more like—or their boats. But after such a defeat, who cares?"

"If our general had only used his artillery—"

"Eh, what is that you're singing?Oui-da, if your general had only used his artillery? My little friend, that's a fine battle—that battle of 'If.' It is always won, too—only it has the misfortune never to be fought. So, so: and a grand battle it is too, for reputations. 'Ifthe guns had only arrivéd '; and 'ifthe brigadier Chose had brought up the reserves as ordered'; and 'ifthe right had extended itself, and that devil of a left had not straggled'—why then we should all be heroes, weros-bifs. Whereas we came on four to one, and we were beaten; and we are being carried north to Montreal and our general is running south from an army one-third of his size and burning fireworks on his way. And at Albany the ladies will take your standards and stitch 'If' on them in gold letters a foot long. Eh, but it was a glorious fight—faith of Sergeant Barboux!"

And Sergeant Barboux, having set his vanity on its legs again, pulled out his pipe and skin of tobacco.

"Holà, M. le Chameau!" he called; "the gentleman desires better music than mine. Sing for him 'Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre'!"

M. le Chameau lifted his voice obediently; and thereupon John recognised the note and knew to whose singing he had lain awake in the woods so far behind and (it seemed) those ages ago.

He had been young then, and all possibilities of glory lay beyond the horizons to which he was voyaging. Darkness had closed down on them, but the beat of the paddles drove him forward. He stared up at the peering stars and tried to bethink him that they looked down on the same world that he had known—on Albany—Halifax—perhaps even on Cleeve Court in Devonshire. The bowman's voice, ahead in the darkness, kept time with the paddles:

"Il reviendra-z; à Pâques—Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!Il reviendra-z à Pâques,Ou—à la Trinité!"

Yes, the question was of returning, now; a day had made that difference. Yet why should he wish to return? Of what worth would his return be? For weeks, for months, he had been living in a life ahead, towards which these paddles were faithfully guiding him; and if the hope had died out of it, and all the colour, what better lay behind that he should seek back to it?—a mother, who had shown him little love; a brother, who coldly considered him a fool; nearer, but only a little nearer—for already the leagues between seemed endless—a few friends, a few messmates…

His ribs hurt him intolerably; and his wrist, too, was painful. Yet his wounds troubled him with no thought of death. On the contrary, he felt quite sure of recovering and living on, and on, on, on—in those unknown regions ahead…

"La Trinité se passe—Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!La Trinité se passe—Malbrouck ne revient pas."

What were they like, those regions ahead? For he was young—less than twenty—and a life almost as long as an ordinary man's might lie before him yonder. He remembered an old discussion with a seminary priest at Douai, on Nicodemus's visit by night and his question, "How can a man be born when he is old?"… and all his thoughts harked back to the Church he had left—that Church so Catholic, so far-reaching, so secure of herself in all climes and amid all nations of men. There were Jesuits, he knew, up yonder, beyond the rivers, beyond the forests. He would find that Church there, steadfast as these stars and, alone with them, bridging all this long gulf. In his momentary weakness the repose She offered came on him as a temptation. Had he but anchored himself upon her, all these leagues had been as nothing. But he had cut himself adrift; and now the world, too, had cut him off, and where was he with his doubts?… Or was She following now and whispering, "Poor fool, you thought yourself strong, and I granted you a short licence; but I have followed, as I can follow everywhere, unseen, knowing the hour when you must repent and want me; and lo! my lap is open. Come, let its folds wrap you, and at once there is no more trouble; for within them time and distance are not, and all this voyage shall be as a dream."

No; he put the temptation from him. For it was a sensual temptation after all, surprising him in anguish and exhaustion and bribing with promise of repose. He craved after it, but set his teeth. "Yes, you are right, so far. The future has gone from me, and I have no hopes. But it seems I have to live, and I am a man. My doubts are my doubts, and this is no fair moment to abandon them. What I must suffer, I will try to suffer.…"

The bowman had lit a lantern in the bows and passed back the resinous brand to an Indian seated forward, who in turn handed it back over John's head toward Sergeant Barboux, but, seeing that he dozed, crawled aft over the wounded men and set it to the wick of a second lantern rigged on a stick astern. As the wick took fire, the Indian, who had been steering hitherto hour after hour, grunted out a syllable or two and handed his comrade the paddle. The pair changed places, and the ex-steersman—who seemed the elder by many years— crept cautiously forward; the lantern-light, as he passed it, falling warm on his scarlet trowsers and drawing fiery twinkles from his belt and silver arm-ring.

With a guttural whisper he crouched over John, so low that his body blotted out the lantern, the stars, the whole dim arch of the heavens. Was this murder? John shut his teeth. If this were to be the end, let it come now and be done with; he would not cry out. The Highland lad had ceased his coughing and lay unconscious, panting out the last of his life more and more feebly. The elder Highlander moaned from time to time in his sleep, but had not stirred for some while. Forward the bowman's paddle still beat time like a clock, and away in the darkness other paddles answered it.

A hand was groping with the bandages about John's chest and loosening them gently until his wound felt the edge of the night wind. All his muscles stiffened to meet the coming stroke.…

The Indian grunted and withdrew his hand. A moment, and John felt it laid on the wound again, with a touch which charmed away pain and the wind's chill together—a touch of smooth ointment.

Do what he would, a sob shook the lad from head to foot.

"Thanks, brother!" he whispered in French. The Indian did not answer, but replaced and drew close the bandage with rapid hands, and so with another grunt crawled forward, moving like a shadow, scarcely touching the wounded men as he went.

For a while John lay awake, gazing up into the stars. His pain had gone, and he felt infinitely restful. The vast heavens were a protection now, a shield flung over his helplessness. He had found a friend.

Why?

That he could not tell. But he had found a friend, and could sleep.

In his dreams he heard a splash. The young Highlander had died in the night, and Sergeant Barboux and the Indian lifted and dropped the body overboard.

But John à Cleeve slept on; and still northward through the night, down the long reaches of the lake, the canoe held her way.

They had threaded their course through the many islets at the foot of the lake, and were speeding down the headwaters of the Richelieu. The forests had closed in upon them, shutting out the mountains. The convoy—officered for the most part by Canadian militiamen with but a sprinkling of regulars such as Sergeant Barboux—soon began to straggle. The prisoners were to be delivered at Montreal. Montcalm had dispatched them thither, on short rations, for the simple reason that Fort Carillon held scarcely food enough to support his own army; but he could detach very few of his efficients for escort, and, for the rest, it did not certainly appear who was in command. Barboux, for example, was frankly insubordinate, and declared a dozen times a day that it did not become gentlemen of the Béarn and Royal Roussillon to take their orders from anycoureur de boiswho might choose to call himself Major.

Consequently the convoy soon straggled at will, the boatmen labouring if the fancy took them, or resting their paddles across their thighs and letting their canoes drift on the current. Now and again they met a train of bateaux labouring up with reinforcements, that had heard of the victory from the leading boats and hurrahed as they passed, or shouted questions which Barboux answered as a conscious hero of the fight and with no false modesty. But for hour after hour John lived alone with his own boat's company and the interminable procession of the woods.

They descended to the river, these woods, and overhung it—each bank a mute monotonous screen of foliage, unbroken by glade or clearing; pine and spruce and hemlock, maple and alder; piled plumes of green, motionless, brooding, through which no sunrays broke, though here and there a silver birch drew a shaft of light upon their sombre background. Here were no English woodlands, no stretches of pale green turf, no vistas opening beneath flattened boughs, with blue distant hills and perhaps a group of antlers topping the bracken. The wild life of these forests crawled among thickets or lurked in sinister shadows. No bird poured out its heart in them; no lark soared out of them, breasting heaven. At rare intervals a note fell on the ear—the scream of hawk or eagle, the bitter cackling laugh of blue jay or woodpecker, the loon's ghostly cry—solitary notes, and unhappy, as though wrung by pain out of the choking silence; or away on the hillside a grouse began drumming, or a duck went whirring down the long waterway until the sound sank and was overtaken again by the river's slow murmur.

When night had hushed down these noises, the forest would be silent for an hour or two, and then awake more horribly with the howling of wolves. John slept little of nights; not on account of the wolves, but because the mosquitoes allowed him no peace. (They were torture to a wounded man; but he declared afterwards that they cured his wounded arm willynilly, for they forced him to keep it active under pain of being eaten alive.) By day he dozed, lulled by the eternal woods, the eternal dazzle on the water, the eternal mutter of the flood, the paddle-strokes, M. le Chameau's singing.

They were now six in the canoe—the sergeant, le Chameau, the two Indians, John à Cleeve and the elder Highlander, Corporal Hugh McQuarters.

By this time—that is to say, having seen him—John understood the meaning of M. le Chameau's queer name. He was a hunchback, but a gay little man nevertheless; reputedly a genius in the art of shooting rapids. He was also a demon to work, when allowed; but the sergeant would not allow him.

It suited the sergeant's humour to lag behind the other boats by way of asserting his dignity and proving that he, Barboux, held himself at no trumpery colonial's beck and call. Also he had begun to nurse a scheme; as will appear by and by.

At present it amused him to order the canoe to shore for an hour or two in the heat of the day, lend his bayonet to the Indians, and watch, smoking, while they searched the banks and dug out musquashes. These they cooked and ate; which Barboux asserted to be good economy, since provisions were running short. It occurred to John that this might be a still better reason for hurrying forward, but he was grateful for the siesta under the boughs while the Indians worked. They were Ojibways both, the elder by name Menehwehna and the younger (a handsome fellow with a wonderful gift of silence) Muskingon.

Since that one stealthy act of kindness Menehwehna had given no sign of cordiality. John had tried a score of times to catch his eye, and had caught it once or twice, but only to find the man inscrutable. Yet he was by no means taciturn; but seemed, as his warpaint of soot and vermilion wore thinner, to thaw into what (for an Indian) might pass for geniality. After a successful rat-hunt he would even grow loquacious, seating himself on the bank and jabbering while he skinned his spoils, using for the most part a jargon of broken French (in which he was fluent) and native words of which Barboux understood very few and John none at all. When he fell back on Ojibway pure and simple, it was to address Muskingon, who answered in monosyllables, and was sparing of these. Muskingon and McQuarters were the silent men of the party—the latter by force as well as choice, since he knew no French and in English could only converse with John. He and Muskingon had this further in common—they both detested the sergeant.

John, for his part, had patched up a peace with the man, after this fashion: On the second day Barboux had called upon le Chameau for a song; and, the little hunchback having given "En roulant ma boule," demanded another.

"But it is monsieur's turn, who has a charming voice," suggested le Chameau politely.

"It has the misfortune to grate on the ears of our English milord," Barboux answered with an angry flush, stealing a malevolent glance at John. "And I do not sing to please myself."

John doubted this; but being by nature quick to forgive and repent a quarrel, he answered with some grace: "I was annoyed, Sergeant Barboux, and said what I thought would hurt rather than what was just. You possess, indeed, a charming voice, and I regret to have insulted it."

"You mean it?" asked Barboux, still red in the face, but patently delighted.

"So entirely that I shall not pardon myself until you have done us the favour to sing."

The sergeant held out his hand. "And that's very handsomely said! Given or taken, an apology never goes astray between brave fellows. And, after all," he added, "I had, if I remember, something the better of that argument! You really wish me to sing, then?"

"To be sure I do," Jack assured him, smiling.

Barboux cleared his throat, wagged his head once or twice impassively and trolled out:

"Belle meunière, en passant par ici,Ne suis-je-t'y pas éloigné d'ltalie.…"

From this graceful opening the song declined into the grossest filth; and it was easy to see, watching his face, why McQuarters, without understanding a word of French, had accused him of singing "sculduddery." John, though disgusted, could not help being amused by a performance which set him in mind now of a satyr and now of a mincing schoolgirl—vert galant avec un sourire de cantatrice— lasciviousness blowing affected kisses in the intervals of licking its chops. At the conclusion he complimented the singer, with a grave face.

Barboux bowed. "It has, to say true, a little more marrow in it than le Chameau'srossignolsandrosiers. Holà, Chameau; the Englishman here agrees that you sing well, but that your matter is watery stuff. You must let me teach you one or two of my songlets—"

"Pardon, m'sieur, mais ca sera un peu trop—trop vif; c'est-à dire pour moi," stammered the little hunchback.

Barboux guffawed. The idea of le Chameau as a ladies' man tickled him hugely, and he tormented the patient fellow with allusions to it, and to his deformity, twenty times a day.

And yet the sergeant was not ill-natured—until you happened to cross him, when his temper became damnable—but merely a big, vain, boisterous lout. John, having taken his measure, found it easy to study him philosophically and even to be passably amused by him. But he made himself, it must be owned, an affliction; and an affliction against which, since the boats had parted company, there was no redress. He was conceited, selfish, tyrannical, and inordinately lazy. He never took a hand with the paddle, but would compel the others to work, or to idle, as the freak took him. He docked the crew's allowance but fed himself complacently on more than full rations, proving this to be his due by discourse on the innate superiority of Frenchmen over Canadians, Englishmen or Indians. He would sit by the hour bragging of his skill with the gun, his victories in love, his feats of strength—baring his chest, arms, legs, and inviting the company to admire his muscles. He jested from sunrise until sundown, and never made a jest that did not hurt. Worst of all was it when he schooled le Chameau to sing his obscenities after him, line for line.

"No, no, I beg you, monsieur," the little fellow would protest, "c'est—c'est sale!"—and would blush like a girl.

"Sale, you dog? I'll teach you—" A blow would follow. M. Barboux was getting liberal with his blows. Once he struck Muskingon. Menehwehna growled ominously, and the growl seemed to warn not only Barboux but Muskingon, who for the moment had looked murderous.

John guessed that some tie, if not of blood-relationship, at least of strong affection, bound the two Indians together.

For himself, as soon as his wound allowed him to sit upright, which it did on the second day—the bullet having glanced across his ribs and left but its ugly track in the thin flesh covering them—the monotony of the woods and the ceaseless glint of the water were a drug which he could summon at will and so withdraw himself within a stupor untroubled by Barboux or his boastings. He suffered the man, but saw no necessity for heeding him.

He had observed two or three hanks of fishing-line dangling from the thin strips of cedar which sheathed the canoe within, a little below the gunwale. They had hooks attached, and from the shape of these hooks he judged them to belong to the Indians. He unhitched one of the lines, and more for the sake of killing time than for any set purpose, began to construct a gaudy salmon-fly with a few frayed threads of cloth from his tunic. After a minute or two he was aware of Muskingon watching him with interest, and by signs begged for a feather from the young Indian's top-knot. Muskingon drew one forth and, under instructions, plucked off a piece of fluff from the root of the feather, a small quill or two, and handed them over. With a length of red silk drawn from his sash John, within half an hour, was bending a very pretty fly on the hook. It did not in the least resemble any winged creature upon earth; but it had a meretricious air about it, and even a "killing" one when he finished up by binding its body tight with an inch of gilt thread from his collar. Meanwhile, his ambition growing with success, he had cast his eyes about, to alight on a long jointed cane which the canoe carried as part of its appanage, to be lifted on cross-legs and serve as the ridge of an awning on wet nights. It was cumbrous, but flexible in some small degree. Muskingon dragged it within reach, and sat watching while John whipped a loop to its end and ran the line through it.

He had begun in pure idleness, but now the production of the rod had drawn everyone's eyes. Barboux was watching him superciliously, and Menehwehna with grave attention, resting his paddle on his knees while the canoe drifted. Fish had been leaping throughout the afternoon—salmon by the look of them. John knew something of salmon; he had played and landed many a fish out of the Dart above Totnes, and in his own river below Cleeve Court. The sun had dropped behind the woods, the water was not too clear, and in short it looked a likely hour for feeding. He lifted his clumsy rod in his right hand, steadied it with his injured left, and put all his skill into the cast.

As he cast, the weight of his rod almost overbalanced him: a dart of pain came from his closing wound and he knew that he had been a fool and overtaxed his strength. But to his amazement a fish rose at once and gulped the fly down. He tossed the rod across to Muskingon, calling to him to draw it inboard and sit quite still; and catching the line, tautened it and slackened it out slowly, feeling up to the loop in which (as was to be expected) it had kinked and was sticking fast.

He had the line in both hands now, with Muskingon paying out the slack behind him; and if the hook held—the line had no gut—he felt confident of his fish. By the feel of him he was a salmon—or a black bass. John had heard of black bass and the sport they gave. A beauty, at any rate!

Yes, he was a salmon. Giving on the line but never slackening it, though it cut his forefinger cruelly (his left being all but useless to check the friction), John worked him to the top of the water and so, by little and little, to the side of the canoe. But his own strength was giving out, faster now than the salmon's. His wound had parted; and as he clenched his teeth he felt the line fraying. The fish would have been lost had not Muskingon, almost without shaking the canoe, dropped overboard, dived under and clenched both hands upon his struggles.

It was Menehwehna who dragged the salmon across the gunwale; for John had fainted. And when he recovered, Menehwehna was coolly gutting the monster—if a fish of eighteen pounds can be called a monster; as surely he can when taken in such fashion.

After this, John being out of action, Sergeant Barboux must take a turn with the rod. He did not (he protested) count on landing a fish; but the hooking of one had been so ridiculously prompt and easy that it was hard to see how he could fail.

But he did. He flogged the water till nightfall, confidently at first though clumsily, at length with the air of a Xerxes casting chains into the flood; but never a bite rewarded him. He gave over the rod in a huff, but began again at dawn, to lay it down after an hour and swear viciously. As he retired Muskingon took the pole; he had watched John's one and only cast and began to imitate it patiently, while the sergeant jeered and the canoe drifted. Towards noon he felt a bite, struck, and missed; but half an hour later he struck again and Menehwehna shouted and pointed as John's fly was sucked under in a noble swirl of water. Muskingon dragged back his rod and stretched out a hand for the line; but Barboux had already run forward and clutched it, at the same moment roughly thrusting him down on his seat; and then in a moment the mischief was done. The line parted, and the sergeant floundered back with a lurch that sent the canoe down to her gunwale.

McQuarters laughed aloud and grimly. Menehwehna's dark eyes shone. Even John, though the lurch obliged him to fling out both hands to balance the boat, and the sudden movement sent a dart of pain through his wound, could not hold back a smile. Barboux was furious.

"Eh? So you are pleased to laugh at me, master Englishman! Wait then, and we'll see who laughs last. And you, dog of an Indian, at what are you rubbing your hands?"

"Your exploit, O illustrious warrior," answered Menehwehna with gravity, "set me in mind of Manabozho; and when one thinks upon Manabozho it is permitted and even customary to rub the hands."

"Who the devil was Manabozho?"

"He was a very Great One—even another such Great One as yourself. It was he who made the earth once on a time, by accident. And another time he went fishing."

"Have a care, Menehwehna. I bid you beware if you are poking fun at me."

"I am telling of Manabozho. He went fishing in the lake and let down a line. 'King Fish,' said he, 'take hold of my bait,' and he kept saying this until the King Fish felt annoyed and said, 'This Manabozho is a nuisance. Here, trout, take hold of his line.' The trout obeyed, and Manabozho shouted, 'Wa-i-he! Wa-i-he! I have him!' while the canoe rocked to and fro. But when he saw the trout he called, 'Esa, esa! Shame upon you, trout; I fish for your betters.' So the trout let go; and again Manabozho sank his line, saying, 'O King Fish, take hold of my bait.' 'I shall lose my temper soon with this fellow,' said the King Fish; 'here, sunfish, take hold of his line.' The sunfish did so, and Manabozho's canoe spun round and round; but when he saw what he had caught, he cried out, 'Esa, esa! Shame upon you, sunfish; I am come for your betters.' So the sunfish let go, and again Manabozho—"

"Joli amphigouri!" yawned the sergeant. "Pardon, M. Menehwehna, but this story of yours seems likely to last."

"Not so, O chief; for this time the King Fish took the bait and swallowed Manabozho, canoe and all."

John laughed aloud; but enough sense remained in Barboux to cover his irritation. "Well, that was the last of him, and the Lord be praised!"

"There is much more of the story," said Menehwehna, "and all full of instruction."

"We will postpone it, anyhow. Take up your paddle, if you have not forgotten how to work."

So Menehwehna and the hunchback paddled anew, while the great Barboux sat and sulked—a sufficiently childish figure. Night fell, the canoe was brought to shore, and the Indians as usual lifted out the wounded men and laid them on beds of moss strewn with pine-boughs and cedar. While Menehwehna lit the camp-fire, Muskingon prepared John's salmon for supper, and began to grill it deftly as soon as the smoke died down on a pile of clear embers.

John sleepily watched these preparations, and was fairly dozing when he heard Barboux announce with an oath that for his impudence the dog of an Englishman should go without his share of the fish. The announcement scarcely awoke him—the revenge was so petty. Barboux in certain moods could be such a baby that John had ceased to regard him except as an object of silent mirth. So he smiled and answered sweetly that Sergeant Barboux was entirely welcome; for himself a scrap of biscuit would suffice. And with that he closed his eyes again.

But it seemed that, for some reason, the two Indians were angry, not to say outraged. By denying him his share Barboux had—no doubt ignorantly—broken some sacred law in the etiquette of hunting. Muskingon growled; the firelight showed his lips drawn back, like a dog's, from his white teeth. Menehwehna remonstrated. Even le Chameau seemed to be perturbed.

Barboux, however, did not understand; and as nobody would share in John's portion, ate it himself with relish amid an angry silence, which at length impressed him.

"Eh? What the devil's wrong with you all?" he demanded, looking about him.

Menehwehna broke into a queer growl, and began to rub his hands. "Manabozho—" he began.

"Fichtre! It appears we have not heard the end of him, then?"

"It is usual," Menehwehna explained, "to rub one's hands at the mention of Manabozho. In my tribe it is even necessary."

"Farceur de Manabozho! the habit has not extended to mine," growled Barboux. "Is this the same story?"

"O slayer of heads, it is an entirely different one." The sergeant winced, and John cast himself back on his leafy bed to smile up at the branches.Tueur de têtesmay be a high compliment from an Indian warrior, but a vocalist may be excused for looking twice at it.

"This Manabozho," Menehwehna continued tranquilly, "was so big and strong that he began to think himself everybody's master. One day he walked in the forest, cuffing the ears of the pine-trees for sport, and knocking them flat if they took it ill; and at length he came on a clearing. In the clearing was a lodge, and in the lodge was no one but a small child, curled up asleep with its toe in its mouth. Manabozho gazed at the child for a long while, and said he, 'I have never seen anyone before who could lie with his toe in his mouth. But I can do it, to be sure.' Whereupon he lay down in much the same posture as the child, and took his right foot in his hand. But it would not reach by a long way. 'How stupid I am,' cried Manabozho, 'when it was the left foot all the time!' So he tried the left foot, but this also would not reach. He rolled on his back, and twisted and bent himself, and strained and struggled until the tears ran down his face. Then he sat up in despair; and behold! he had awakened the child, and the child was laughing at him. 'Oh, oh!' cried Manabozho in a passion, 'am I then to be mocked by a babe!' And with that he drew a great breath and blew the child away over the mountains, and afterwards walked across and across the lodge, trampling it down until not a trace of it remained. 'After all,' said Manabozho, 'I can do something. And I see nobody hereabouts to deny that I can put my toe in my mouth!'"

As Menehwehna concluded, John waited for an explosion of wrath. None came. He raised his head after a minute and looked about him. Barboux sat smoking and staring into the camp-fire. The Indian had laid himself down to slumber, with his blanket drawn up to his ears.

Next morning Barboux and Menehwehna held a long colloquy aft, but in tones so low that John could not catch a word. By and by Muskingon was called into council, and lastly le Chameau.

The two Indians were arguing against some proposal of the sergeant's, which by the way they pointed and traced imaginary maps with their fingers, spreading their palms apart to indicate distances, plainly turned on a point of geography. Le Chameau's opinion seemed to settle the dispute in the sergeant's favour. Coming that afternoon to the mouth of a tributary stream on the left bank he headed the canoe for it without a word, and at once the paddles were busy, forcing her against the rapid current.

Then followed days during which, though reason might prove that in the river he held an infallible clue, John's senses lost themselves in the forest maze. It overlapped and closed upon him, folding him deeper and illimitably deeper. On the Richelieu he had played with thoughts of escape, noting how the canoe lagged behind its convoy, and speculating on the Indians' goodwill—faint speculations, since (without reckoning his own raw wound) McQuarters was almost too weak to stir as yet, and to abandon him would be a scurvy trick. So he had put aside his unformed plans, which at the best had been little better than hopes; and now the wilderness oppressed and smothered and buried them out of recollection.

Thevoyageursmade tedious progress; for almost at once they came to a chain of rapids around which the canoe had to be ported. The Indians toiled steadily, and le Chameau too, stripped to the waist and sweating; and by the end of the day each man carried a dark red weal on one shoulder, sunk in the flesh by the canoe's weight. John could walk, but was powerless to help, and McQuarters had to be lifted and carried with the baggage. Barboux confined himself to swearing and jeering at le Chameau's naked back—diable de torse, as he proclaimed it. The man was getting past endurance.

On the second day he called a halt, left le Chameau in charge of the camp and the prisoners, and went off with the Indians in search of a moose, whose lowing call had twice echoed through the woods during the night and been answered by Menehwehna on his birch-horn. The forest swallowed them, and a blessed relief fell on the camp—no more oaths and gibes for a while, but rest and green shade and the murmur of the rapids below.

After the noon-day meal the hunchback stretched himself luxuriously and began to converse. He was explaining the situation with the help of three twigs, which he laid in the form of a triangle—two long sides and a short base.

"Voyons, this long one will be the Richelieu and that other the St. Lawrence; and here"—he put his finger near the base—"here is Montreal. The sergeant knows what he is about. Those other boats, look you, will go around so—" He traced their course around the apex very slowly. "Whereaswe—!" A quick stroke of the finger across the base filled up the sentence, and the little man smiled triumphantly.

"I see," said John, picking up the short twig and bending it into an arch, "we are now climbing up this side of the slope, eh? And on the other there will likewise be a river?"

The boatman nodded. "A hard way to find, m'sieur. But have no fear. I have travelled it."

"Assuredly I have no fear with you, M.—"

"Guyon, m'sieur—Jean Bateese Guyon. This M. Barboux is a merry fellow—il ne peut pas se passer de ses enjouements. But I was not born like this." And here he touched his shoulder very simply and gravely.

"It was an accident then, M. Guyon?"

"An accident—oh, yes, be assured it was an accident." A flush showed on the little man's cheek, and his speech on a sudden became very rapid. "But as we were saying, I know the trail across yonder; and my brother Dominique he knows it even better. I wish we may see Dominique, m'sieur; there is no suchvoyageurfrom Quebec up to Michilimackinac, aye or beyond! He has been down the Cascades by night, himself only; it was when I had my—my accident, and he must go to fetch a surgeon. All along the river it is talked of yet. But it is nothing to boast of, for the hand of God must have been upon him. And as good as he is brave!"

"And where is your brother Dominique just now?"

"He will be at home, m'sieur. Soon they will be carrying the harvest at Boisveyrac, and he is now the seigneur's farmer. He will be worrying himself over the harvest, for Dominique takes things to heart, both of this world and the next; whereas—I am a good Catholic, I hope—but these things do not trouble me. It seems there is no time to be troubled." Bateese looked up shyly, with a blush like a girl's. "M'sieur may be able to tell me—or, maybe, he will think it foolish. This love of women, now?"

"Proceed, M. Guyon."

"Ah, you believe in it! When the sergeant begins his talk—c'est bien sale, is it not? But that is not the sort I mean. Well, Dominique is in love, and it brings him no happiness. He can never have what he wants, nor would it be right, and he knows it; but nevertheless he goes on craving for it and takes no pleasure in life for the want of it. I look at him, wondering. Then I say to myself, 'Bateese, when le bon Dieu broke you in pieces He was not unkind. Your heart is cracked and cannot hold love, like your brother's; but what of that, while God is pouring love into it all day long and never ceases? You are ugly, and no maid will ever want you for a husband; therefore you are lucky who cannot store away desire for this or that one, like poor Dominique, who goes about aching and fit to burst. You go singingÀ la claire fontaine, which is full of unhappiness and longing, but all the while you are happy enough.' Indeed, that is the truth, monsieur. I study this love of Dominique's, which makes him miserable; but I cannot judge it. I see that it brings pain to men."

"But delight also, my friend."

"And delight also—that is understood. M'sieur is, perhaps, in love? Or has been?"

"No, Bateese; not yet."

"But you will; with that face it is certain. Now shall I tell you?— to my guessing this love of women is like an untried rapid. Something smiles ahead for you, and you push for it andvoyez!in a moment down you go, fifteen miles an hour and the world spinning; and at the bottom of the fall, if the woman be good, sweet is the journey and you wonder, looking back from smooth water, down what shelves you were swept to her. That, I say, is what I suppose this love to be; but for myself I shall never try it. Since le bon Dieu broke the pitcher its pieces are scattered all over me, within; they hold nothing, but there they lie shining in their useless fashion."

"Not useless, perhaps, Bateese."

"In their useless fashion," he persisted. "They will smile and be gay at the sight of a pretty girl, or at the wild creatures in the woods yonder, or at the thoughts in a song, or for no better reason than that the day is bright and the air warm. But they can store nothing. It is the same with religion, monsieur, and with affairs of State; neither troubles my head. Dominique is devout, for example; and Father Launoy comes to talk with him, which makes him gloomy. The reverend Father just hears my sins and lets me go; he knows well enough that Bateese does not count. And then he and Dominique sit and talk politics by the hour. The Father declares that all the English are devils, and that anyone who fights for the Holy Church and is killed by them will rise again the third day."

John laughed aloud this time.

"I too think the reverend Father must be making some mistake," said Bateese gravely. "No doubt he has been misinformed."

"No doubt. For suppose now that I were a devil?"

"Oh, m'sieur," Bateese expostulated. "Ça serait bien dommage!But I hope, in any case, God would pardon me for talking with you, seeing that to contain anything, even hatred, is beyond me."

"Shall I tell you what I think, Bateese? I think we are all pitchers and perhaps made to be broken. Ten days ago I was brimful of ambitions; someone—le bon Dieu, or General Abercromby—has toppled me over and spilt them all; and here I lie on my side, not broken, but full of emptiness."

"Heh, heh—'full of emptiness'!" chuckled Bateese, to whom the phrase was new.

"It may be that in time someone will set me up again and pour into me wine of another sort. I hope for this, because it is painful to lie upset and empty; and I do not wish to be broken, for that must be even more painful—at the time, eh?"

Bateese glanced up, with a twitch of remembered pain.

"Indeed, m'sieur, it hurt—at the time."

"But afterwards—when the pieces have no more trouble, being released from pride—the pride of being a pitcher! Is it useless they are as they lie upturned, reflecting—what? My friend, if we only knew this we might discover that now, when it can no longer store up wine for itself, the pitcher is at last serving an end it was made for."

The little hunchback glanced up again quickly. "You are talking for my sake, monsieur, not for yourself! At your age I too could be melancholy for amusement. Ah, pardon," for John had blushed hotly. "Do I not know why you said it? Am I not grateful?"

He held out his hand. His eyes were shining.

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