Heralds of Empire

by Agnes C. Laut

  CHAPTER XX

  WHO THE PIRATES WERE

  How long I lay in the pirates' cave I could not tell; for day and nightwere alike with the pale-blue flame quivering against the earth-wall,gusts of cold air sweeping through the door, low-whispered talks fromthe inner cave.

  At last I surprised Le Borgne mightily by sitting bolt upright andbidding him bring me a meal of buffalo-tongue or teal. With the stolidrepartee of the Indian he grunted back that I had tongue enough; but hebrought the stuff with no ill grace. After that he had much ado tokeep me off my feet. Finally, I promised by the soul of hisgrandfather neither to spy nor listen about the doors of the innercave, and he let me up for an hour at a time to practise walking withthe aid of a lance-pole. As he found that I kept my word, he trustedme alone in the cave, sitting crouched on the log-end with a buckskinsling round my shattered sword-arm, which the wolves had not helpedthat night at the stake.

  In the food Le Borgne brought was always a flavour of simples or drugs.One night--at least I supposed it was night from the chill of the airblowing past the bearskin--just as Le Borgne stooped to serve me, historch flickered out. Before he could relight, I had poured the brothout and handed back an empty bowl.

  Then I lay with eyes tight shut and senses wide awake. The Indian saton the log-end watching. I did not stir. Neither did I fall asleep asusual. The Indian cautiously passed a candle across my face. I laymotionless as I had been drugged. At that he stalked off. Voicesbegan in the other apartment. Two or three forms went tip-toeing aboutthe cave. Shadows passed athwart the flame. A gust of cold; and withhalf-closed eyes I saw three men vanish through the outer doorway overfields no longer snow-clad.

  Had spring come? How long had I lain in the cave? Before I gainedstrength to escape, would M. Radisson have left for Quebec? Then camea black wave of memory--thought of Jack Battle, the sailor lad,awaiting our return to rescue him. From the first Jack and I had heldtogether as aliens in Boston Town. Should I lie like a stranded hullwhile he perished? Risking spies on the watch, I struggled up andstaggered across the cave to that blue flame quivering so mysteriously.As I neared, the mystery vanished, for it was nothing more than one ofthose northern beds of combustibles--gas, tar, or coal--set burning bythe ingenious pirates. [1]

  The spirit was willing enough to help Jack, but the flesh was weak.Presently I sank on the heaped pelts all atremble. I had promised notto spy nor eavesdrop, but that did not prohibit escape. But how couldone forage for food with a right arm in bands and a left unsteady asaim of a girl? Le Borgne had befriended me twice--once in the storm,again on the hill. Perhaps he might know of Jack. I would wait theIndian's return. Meanwhile I could practise my strength by walking upand down the cave.

  The walls were hung with pelts. Where the dry clay crumbled, the roofhad been timbered. A rivulet of spring water bubbled in one darkcorner. At the same end an archway led to inner recesses. Behind theskin doorway sounded heavy breathing, as of sleepers. I had promisednot to spy. Turning, I retraced the way to the outer door. Hereanother pelt swayed heavily in the wind. Dank, earthy smells ofspring, odours of leaves water-soaked by melting snows, the faintperfume of flowers pushing up through mats of verdure, blew in on thenight breeze.

  Pushing aside the flap, I looked out. The spur of a steep declivitycut athwart the cave. Now I could guess where I was. This was thehill down which I had stumbled that night the voices had come from theground. Here the masked man had sprung from the thicket. Not far offM. Radisson had first met the Indians. To reach the French HabitationI had but to follow the river.

  That hope set me pacing again for exercise; and the faster I walked thefaster raced thoughts over the events of the crowded years. Again thePrince Rupert careened seaward, bearing little Hortense to England.Once more Ben Gillam swaggered on the water-front of Boston Town,boasting all that he would do when he had ship of his own. Then JackBattle, building his castles of fortune for love of Hortense, and allunconsciously letting slip the secret of good Boston men deep involvedin pirate schemes. The scene shifted to the far north, and a maskedman had leaped from the forest dark only to throw down his weapon whenthe firelight shone on my face. Again the white darkness of the storm,the three shadowy figures and Le Borgne sent to guide us back to thefort. Again, to beat of drum and shriek of fife, M. Radisson washolding his own against the swarming savages that assailed the NewEnglanders' fort. Then I was living over the unspeakable horror of theIndian massacre ending in that awful wait on the crest of the hill.

  The memory brought a chill as of winter cold. With my back to bothdoors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians maysay, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken theheavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitionsleap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mysteryof those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirateship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, couldscreen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was anotherpartner to the venture, who could shield Ben from punishment in NewEngland. But the third partner was hiding inland to defraud the othersof the furs. That was the meaning of Ben's drunken threats. Who wasthe third partner? Had not Eli Kirke planned trading in the north withMr. Stocking? Were the pirates some agents of my uncle? Did thatexplain why my life had been three times spared? One code of moralsfor the church and another for the trade is the way of many a man; butwould the agents of a Puritan deacon murder a rival in the dark of aforest, or lead Indians to massacre the crew of partners, or take fursgotten at the price of a tribe's extermination?

  Turning that question over, I heard the inner door-flap lift. Therewas no time to regain the couch, but a quick swerve took me out of thefirelight in the shadow of a great wolfskin against the wall. You willlaugh at the old idea of honour, but I had promised not to spy, and Inever raised my eyes from the floor. There was no sound but thegurgling of the spring in the dark and the sharp crackle of the flame.

  Thinking the wind had blown the flap, I stepped from hiding. Somethingvague as mist held back in shadow. The lines of a white-clad figureetched themselves against the cave wall. It floated out, paused, movedforward.

  Then I remember clutching at the wolfskin like one clinching adeath-grip of reality, praying God not to let go a soul's anchor-holdof reason.

  For when the figure glided into the slant blue rays of the shaftedflame it was Hortense--the Hortense of the dreams, sweet as the child,grave as the grown woman-Hortense with closed eyes and moving lips andhands feeling out in the dark as if playing invisible keys.

  She was asleep.

  Then came the flash that lighted the clouds of the past.

  The interloper, the pirate, the leader of Indian marauders, thedefrauder of his partners, was M. Picot, the French doctor, whom Bostonhad outlawed, and who was now outlawing their outlawry. We do notreason out our conclusions, as I said before. At our supremest momentswe do not _think_. Consciousness leaps from summit to summit like theforked lightnings across the mountain-peaks; and the mysteries of lifeare illumined as a spread-out scroll. In that moment of joy and fearand horror, as I crouched back to the wall, I did not _think_. I_knew_--knew the meaning of all M. Picot's questionings on the furtrade; of that murderous attack in the dark when an antagonist flungdown his weapon; of the spying through the frosted woods; of thefigures in the white darkness; of the attempt to destroy Ben Gillam'sfort; of the rescue from the crest of the hill; and of all thosestrange delirious dreams.

  It was as if the past focused itself to one flaming point, and theflash of that point illumined life, as deity must feel to whom past andpresent and future are one.

  And all the while, with temples pounding like surf on rock and the roarof the sea in my ears, I was not _thinking_, only _knowing_ thatHortense was standing in the blue-shafted light with tremulous lips andwhite face and a radiance on her brow not of this life.

  Her hands ran lightly over imaginary keys. The
blue flame darted andquivered through the gloom. The hushed purr of the spring broke thestillness in metallic tinklings. A smile flitted across the sleeper'sface. Her lips parted. The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tickof clock in death-room.

  "To get the memory of it," she said.

  And there stole out of the past mocking memories of that last night inthe hunting-room, filling the cave with tuneless melodies like thoughtscreeping into thoughts or odour of flowers in dark.

  But what was she saying in her sleep?

  "Blind gods of chance"--the words that had haunted my delirium, thenquick-spoken snatches too low for me to hear--"no-no"--then more thatwas incoherent, and she was gliding back to the cave.

  She had lifted the curtain door--she was whispering--she paused as iffor answer-then with face alight, "The stars fight for us--" she said;and she had disappeared.

  The flame set the shadows flickering. The rivulet gurgled loud in thedark. And I came from concealment as from a spirit world.

  Then Hortense was no dream, and love was no phantom, and God--was what?

  There I halted. The powers of darkness yet pressed too close for me tosee through to the God that was love. I only knew that He who thronedthe universe was neither the fool that ignorant bigots painted, nor theblind power, making wanton war of storm and dark and cold. For had notthe blind forces brought Hortense to me, and me to Hortense?

  Consciousness was leaping from summit to summit like the forkedlightnings, and the light that burned was the light that transfigureslife for each soul.

  The spell of a presence was there.

  Then it came home to me what a desperate game the French doctor hadplayed. That sword-thrust in the dark meant death; so did the attackon Ben Gillam's fort; and was it not Le Borgne, M. Picot's Indian ally,who had counselled the massacre of the sleeping tribe? You must notthink that M. Picot was worse than other traders of those days! Thenorth is a desolate land, and though blood cry aloud from stones, thereis no man to hear.

  I easily guessed that M. Picot would try to keep me with him till M.Radisson had sailed. Then I must needs lock hands with piracy.

  Hortense and I were pawns in the game.

  At one moment I upbraided him for bringing Hortense to this wildernessof murder and pillage. At another I considered that a banishedgentleman could not choose his goings. How could I stay with M. Picotand desert M. de Radisson? How could I go to M. de Radisson andabandon Hortense?

  "Straight is the narrow way," Eli Kirke oft cried out as he expoundedHoly Writ.

  Ah, well, if the narrow way is straight, it has a trick of becomingtangled in a most terrible snarl!

  Wheeling the log-end right about, I sat down to await M. Picot. Therewas stirring in the next apartment. An ebon head poked past the doorcurtain, looked about, and withdrew without detecting me. The face Iremembered at once. It was the wife of M. Picot's blackamoor. Onlythree men had passed from the cave. If the blackamoor were one, M.Picot and Le Borgne _must_ be the others.

  Footsteps grated on the pebbles outside. I rose with beating heart tomeet M. Picot, who held my fate in his hands. Then a ringingpistol-shot set my pulse jumping.

  I ran to the door. Something plunged heavily against the curtain. Therobe ripped from the hangings. In the flood of moonlight a man pitchedface forward to the cave floor. He reeled up with a cry of rage,caught blindly at the air, uttered a groan, fell back.

  "M. Picot!"

  Blanched and faint, the French doctor lay with a crimsoning pool wetunder his head. "I am shot! What will become of her?" he groaned. "Iam shot! It was Gillam! It was Gillam!"

  Hortense and the negress came running from the inner cave. Le Borgneand the blackamoor dashed from the open with staring horror.

  "Lift me up! For God's sake, air!" cried M. Picot.

  We laid him on the pelts in the doorway, Le Borgne standing guardoutside.

  Hortense stooped to stanch the wound, but the doctor motioned her offwith a fierce impatience, and bade the negress lead her away. Then helay with closed eyes, hands clutched to the pelts, and shudderingbreath.

  The blackamoor had rushed to the inner cave for liquor, when M. Picotopened his eyes with a strange far look fastened upon me.

  "Swear it," he commanded.

  And I thought his mind wandering.

  He groaned heavily. "Don't you understand? It's Hortense. Swearyou'll restore her--" and his breath came with a hard metallic rattlethat warned the end.

  "Doctor Picot," said I, "if you have anything to say, say it quicklyand make your peace with God!"

  "Swear you'll take her back to her people and treat her as a sister,"he cried.

  "I swear before God that I shall take Hortense back to her people, andthat I shall treat her like a sister," I repeated, raising my righthand.

  That seemed to quiet him. He closed his eyes.

  "Sir," said I, "have you nothing more to say? Who are her people?"

  "Is . . . is . . . any one listening?" he asked in short, hard breaths.

  I motioned the others back.

  "Listen"--the words came in quick, rasping breaths. "She is notmine . . . it was at night . . . they brought her . . . ward o' thecourt . . . lands . . . they wanted me." There was a sharp pause, ashivering whisper. "I didn't poison her"--the dying man caughtconvulsively at my hands--"I swear I had no thought of harmingher. . . . They . . . paid. . . . I fled. . . ."

  "Who paid you to poison Hortense? Who is Hortense?" I demanded; forhis life was ebbing and the words portended deep wrong.

  But his mind was wandering again, for he began talking so fast that Icould catch only a few words. "Blood! Blood! Colonel Blood!" Then"Swear it," he cried.

  That speech sapped his strength. He sank back with shut eyes and faintbreathings.

  We forced a potion between his lips.

  "Don't let Gillam," he mumbled, "don't let Gillam . . . have the furs."

  A tremor ran through his stiffening frame. A little shudderingbreath--and M. Picot had staked his last pawn in life's game.

  [1] In confirmation of Mr. Stanhope's record it may be stated that onthe western side of the northland in the Mackenzie River region are gasand tar veins that are known to have been burning continuously fornearly two centuries.