*CHAPTER VI*
*PRISONERS OF WAR*
"You've fought like Britons, lads! You've done all that brave men coulddo! It remains for us but to die like heroes," cried Mr. Rogers, thefirst mate, who, though seriously wounded himself, had led the fightsince the captain fell.
The remnant of the crew cheered these words of the mate, who was alreadyleaning on a dismantled gun for support.
And what a remnant it was! Out of a crew of fifty, only nineteen menremained alive, and most of these were wounded. The condition of theship, which had sustained this unequal contest, was pitiable in theextreme. Both the fore-mast and the main-topmast were over the side,giving the _Duncan_ a heavy list to starboard. In several places herhull was almost rent asunder, while her decks forward were partly awash.Each instant she threatened to founder.
The merchantman had fought for three hours with one of the best Frenchfrigates afloat, and several times she had repelled boarders. Theenemy's broadsides had ripped open some of her seams, and there werealready eight feet of water in the hold. The last gun was put out ofaction, owing to the angle of the decks.
"There's one more shot in the locker, lads, and by Davy Jones, if theFrenchmen attempt to board us again I'll send them aloft!" exclaimed Mr.Rogers, half raising himself from the gun to look at the frigate, whosefire had now considerably slackened.
Suddenly the "Cease fire!" was sounded aboard the French ship, and Jack,leaving Jamie to the care of a seaman for a moment, clambered up thesteep deck to see what had happened.
"They're sending a boat, Mr. Rogers!" he cried. "She'll be alongside ina minute, sir. Shall I hail them?"
"Tell them that if they set a foot aboard my ship I'll fire thepowder-magazine and blow the vessel up," cried the first officerfiercely.
The boat came quickly alongside, and an officer hailed them. "Do youstrike, messieurs? Do you strike?" he called, in a queer accent, halfFrench, half English. "If so, haul down that ensign, messieurs, if youpleeze!"
Jack leapt into the mizzen shrouds. "Stand off, messieurs!" he shouted."Come aboard at your peril, and we will blow up the ship!" At thesewords a panic seized the boarders. Those who were climbing up the sidehastily dropped back again into the boat, which quickly pulled off, lestthe terrible threat should be carried out.
Then Captain Alexandre, seeing that nothing was to be gained, and thatthe _Duncan_ was on the point of foundering, sent his chief officer witha second boat offering the highest honours of war. His respect for agallant enemy was such that he did not even ask them to lower thattattered ensign, which still floated proudly at the mizzen-top, whereJamie had made it fast. The carnage had already been dreadful, and heknew that unless he offered honourable terms, men like these wouldinfinitely prefer to go down with a sinking ship than lower theircolours.
The terms offered to the Englishmen were as follows: They were to remainprisoners of war aboard the frigate until she reached Quebec, when thecaptain would mention their honourable and brave conduct to theGovernor, and if he were willing, they should then receive theirliberty.
"And what is the alternative?" asked Mr. Rogers.
"The alternative," replied the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders andlooking uneasily around the horizon, as though he half expected to seean English cruiser appear in the distance, "is, that you may take yourluck aboard this derelict. But come, gentlemen, make up your mindsquickly. The _Sapphire_ must sail within half-an-hour."
The mate cast his eyes around and saw but a helpless wreck, with pilesof dead and wounded upon her decks. At that instant the vessel gave asudden lurch as though preparing to descend into the gulfs, and some onecried--
"Look out! She's going, lads!"
"M'sieur, for the sake of these brave men, who have wives and children,I accept your generous conditions, but, for myself, I will stay with thecaptain." And at these words a deathly pallor spread over the mate'sface. He lifted his hands to his eyes, as though to shut out the sightof the dead. Then he reeled and fell. They picked him up, but he wasdead. So they laid him beside his captain and carried the woundedaboard the frigate. Jamie and three others were still unconscious whenthey reached the frigate's deck. The rest stood by to see the last oftheir old ship. It was a sight never to be forgotten. They coulddistinctly see the body of Captain Forbes propped against the stump ofthe mast, with more than half of his crew lying dead beside him, as thederelict went down.
"Hist! She's going!" came a hollow cry, which was half a sob, as theyclustered around the bulwarks of the foreigner.
"Stand by to fire a salute!" cried Captain Alexandre, who was achivalrous Frenchman.
And as the _Duncan_ took her final plunge, and the tattered ensign wentunder, the _Sapphire_ paid her last tribute of respect to a valiant foeby a salute of seventeen guns.
Scarcely had the smoke rolled away and the last reverberation ceased,when the frigate turned her head towards the Gulf of St. Lawrence, andleft that lonely, watery grave behind.
Jamie's wound was not very severe, although at times it was exceedinglypainful, and after the ball had been extracted from his shoulder, hesoon recovered much of his usual health.
Jack was his constant attendant. Day and night he scarcely left him,but nursed him most assiduously with all the solicitude of a mother; andno wonder, for Jamie was a hero now, and with all the ship's companytoo. His bravery in carrying the colours aloft on a sinking ship, withthe bullets flying all around him, and his body a mark for all theenemy's sharpshooters, his persistence in completing the task, after abullet had shattered his shoulder--this had made him a conspicuous hero,not only amongst his comrades, but also amongst the officers and crew ofthe _Sapphire_.
Jamie, however, like all true heroes, bore his triumphs modestly and hiswound patiently, though, to tell the truth, he was just a little proudof the latter, and especially was he proud of Captain Forbes' words tohim when he regained the deck--
"Well done!" He would never forget those words, spoken as the captainbreathed his last.
Jack, however, was just a little envious of Jamie's first wound, for,strange to say, although Jack had been in the thick of the fight, andthe men had fallen around him in heaps, yet he had not received ascratch during the whole engagement.
What exciting adventures had already fallen to the lot of these two ladssince they left the old school and village so precipitately! Yet eventhese adventures were but a foretaste, compared with those that yetawaited them out there, in the west.
Every day Jamie grew stronger, and as he and Jack paced the deck theytalked of all these strange events which had happened to them since theyleft Burnside. What was the old Squire thinking of now, when his lastand youngest son had left him to fight for the Empire? What did OldClick and Mr. Beagle say when they found the village lock-up empty andthe birds flown? And old Dr. Birch, what did he think of the truants?
And they laughed over it all, with all the sang-froid and carelessnessof youth, and yet they grieved when they remembered their friend,Captain Forbes, in his ocean grave. They could ill-spare him, yet thememory of him would always be with them, to spur them on to brave andmanly deeds, for he had died like an English gentleman, and a brave sonof Empire, fighting to the last for the flag that he loved, as many aman still would do, before that great land out there, beyond the ship'sbow--the Canadas--would pass from the hands of the French, to become, asthe ages unfolded, the greatest jewel in the British Crown.
But what did the future contain for them? They often asked each otherthis question, as at evening they watched that great ball of firedescend into the azure main. And when they had watched that shaft ofcrimson fade into a duller glow, they retired to the cabin that had beenallotted to them, and pledged each other that, come good or ill, theywould be friends and comrades--to the Gates. And if God willed it--forat this time they were specially drawn to think of His mercies and Hiswatchfulness over them--they would yield their lives a willingsacrifice,
like Captain Forbes, at the shrine of duty. For while theircountry needed men to fight her battles, whether by land or sea, even atthe farthest bounds of Empire they would faithfully serve and aswillingly die.
That pledge was never forgotten, and through all the dangers andmisadventures that befell them, amid the virgin, trackless forests andthe rivers and great lakes of North America, it was never broken.
Thus the voyage continued, with calm seas and fair winds, for more thana week, but the journey to the Gulf was not destined to be entirelywithout excitement, for one afternoon, when the wind had freshened a bitfrom the south-east, they were all startled by a sudden cry from thewatch aloft of--
"Sail ho!"
"Where away?" called the officer of the watch.
"To the south-west, low down, sir!"
After a careful examination the sail was made out to be nothing lessthan an English cruiser, on the watch-out for the enemy's ships, andCaptain Alexandre, feeling that after his recent fight he was in no fitcondition to meet such a foe, crowded on all sail and stood away N.N.W.with the cruiser in full chase.
All the afternoon the chase continued, and the cruiser was slowly butsurely gaining, and had it not been that towards evening the frigate raninto a fog off the Banks of Newfoundland, there is little doubt but thatshe would soon have been overhauled and compelled to fight, and would inall probability have been captured.
All night the Frenchman kept on, changing his course several times tododge his pursuer, and next morning, although the fog had lifted, theEnglish cruiser was nowhere to be seen.
Two days afterwards they entered the Gulf; leaving Louisburg and the IleRoyale on their left they stretched across that vast inland sea, and inanother four days entered the St. Lawrence River.
The lads were charmed by the wonderful scenery which bordered the river.The bold cliffs and headlands, and the forest-lined banks, the samewhich Jacques Cartier and his brave little band of voyagers beheld forthe first time in 1535, when through every inlet in this great continentthey sought a way to the spicy groves of the East Indies, and thefar-famed and wondrous, but distant, Cathay, which they fondly imaginedlay beyond this new continent, as in truth it really did.
While the frigate was working her way up the St. Lawrence, an incidentoccurred that was destined to have important consequences on theafter-life of our two heroes.
When the ship was anchored for the night off one of the small Frenchsettlements below Quebec, a fierce Iroquois chief was brought aboard asa prisoner. A great price had been set upon his scalp by the FrenchGovernor, for he was the greatest chief in all the "Five Nations," andhis people had been the bitterest enemies of the Canadas, since the daysof Champlain.
"What a fine warrior he is!" said Jack. "What a pity he is to be put todeath when he reaches Quebec!"
"Fine, indeed!" said one of the soldiers who had brought him aboard."He has taken more paleface scalps than any man of his race!"
He was a man of powerful stature, with a defiant look, and an eye asproud and piercing as that of the eagle had once been, whose long whitefeathers now adorned his hair. Erect and brave, with a sullen ferocityof demeanour, he looked scornfully upon his captors, whose pettytyrannies and insults could not drag from him an exclamation of anger orpain, for he seemed possessed of all the stoicism for which his race wasfamous.
The fierce and implacable Iroquois, who formed that wonderfulconfederation called the Five Nations, consisting of the Mohawks,Senecas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and the Cayugas, and later the Tuscaroras,were the most powerful of all the Indian tribes. They were the deadlyenemies of the Canadas, and during the whole period of the French warswere the irreconcilable foes of the latter, and more or less thefaithful allies of the English, though their paleface friends did notalways show them that consideration which was their due.
They jealously guarded the passes and rapids that lay between Quebec andMont Royale (Montreal) and right away to the "Thousand Islands" and thelakes, they took every occasion to harass the French, who had come tosteal their lands, to rob them of their hunting-grounds, and drive themtowards the setting sun.
They scalped all the outlying bands of soldiers who had the misfortuneto fall into their hands; they waylaid the fur-traders and the_voyageurs_, destroyed the harvests and burned the villages of thesettlers beyond the forts.
So tiresome did they become that at length a price was paid for everyIroquois scalp that was brought into Quebec. It was, therefore,considered a matter of no small importance when the renowned "WhiteEagle," the most powerful chief of the Iroquois, had been captured.
Parties of soldiers from the various forts had been repeatedlydispatched to trap him and to bring him in dead or alive, but this wilyfoe, retreating before his enemies, generally drew them into the forestand harassed them in the rear and the van, then cut off their supplies,and scalped the stragglers, eluding their vigilance at every turn.
This desperate chief was now chained to one of the guns on board the_Sapphire_, and for two days he was the object of cruelty andill-treatment, chiefly from those who had brought him aboard. He waskept without food or water. He was taunted with the fact that a heavyprice was set upon his head, and that he would soon be tortured orroasted alive.
Though hungry and parched with thirst, he was too proud to ask hiscaptors for a drink of water. He remained sullen and obdurate, andrefused to speak. Once a tormentor offered him a pannikin of salt waterto drink, and then, because he refused it, threw it over him. But heremained as immovable as a statue. Once a marlin-spike was hurled athim. A white man would have dodged to avoid such an unwelcome missile,but this mighty chief was too proud. He never winced or moved a muscle,though the spike went perilously near his face.
Jack and Jamie both remonstrated, but were told to mind their ownbusiness, and as the Iroquois had been allied with the English, andspoke a smattering of their tongue, they were forbidden to converse withor even to approach him. To speak to him was what they both very muchlonged to do, for he was the first real Indian they had seen, and verydifferent from the wretched specimens who hung about the settlements ofthe white men. They admired the haughty pride and fearlessness of thischild of the forest.
"He must be parched with thirst," said Jamie, on the afternoon of thesecond day. "I will give him a drink of water, whatever the Frenchiessay."
And he immediately took a pannikin of fresh water and held it to thechief's mouth, for his hands were bound. Before the water could touchhis lips the pannikin was dashed to the ground, and the boys wereordered away, but the look of gratitude that came into the chief's eyesshowed that he had understood that a kindness was intended.
Soon after this the chief was removed to a cabin for greater security,but next morning, when the officer in charge of him unlocked the door,the prisoner was gone and there was no trace of him. He had in somemysterious way slipped his bonds during the night, dropped through theopen porthole into the river, and made his way to the shore withoutbeing observed.
Great was the consternation on board when it was found that White Eagle,the terror of the settlements, had escaped, but though a search was madefor him in every part of the ship, it was only too evident that he hadobtained his freedom, and was at liberty to harass his enemies oncemore.
They had now reached the Ile d'Orleans, a huge island that lay inmid-stream, just below the great Falls of the Montmorency. Now piles oflofty cliffs fringed the northern bank of the river, rising sheer out ofthe water at high tide. Then they reached the mouth of the St. CharlesRiver, while before them, crowning a lofty summit, with its churches andhouses, ramparts and bastions, stood the city of Quebec.
The _Sapphire_ fired a salute, which was replied to by one of the forts,and the next moment she anchored beneath the frowning guns of thecitadel--the Gibraltar of North America.
Under Wolfe's Flag; or, The Fight for the Canadas Page 6