Fort Amity

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  THE FLAGSTAFF TOWER.

  Time pressing, the Commandant had gone straight from the orderly-roomin search of Father Joly. As a soldier and a good Catholic hedesired to be shriven, and as a man of habit he preferred the oldCure to Father Launoy. To be sure the Cure was deaf as a post, buton the other hand the Commandant's worst sins would bear to beshouted.

  "There is yet one thing upon my conscience," he wound up. "The factis, I feel pretty sure of myself in this business, but I have somedifficulty in trusting God."

  It is small wonder that a confession so astonishing had to berepeated twice, and even when he heard it Father Joly failed tounderstand.

  "But how is it possible to mistrust God?" he asked.

  "Well, I don't know. I suppose that even in bringing New France sonear to destruction He is acting in loving mercy; but all the same itwill be a wrench to me if these English pass without paying us thehonour of a siege. For if we cannot force them to a fight, Montrealis lost." The Commandant believed this absolutely.

  Father Joly was Canadian born and bred; had received his education inthe Seminary of Quebec; and knowing nothing of the world beyond NewFrance, felt no doubt upon which side God was fighting. If it werereally necessary to New France that the English should be delayed--and he would take the Commandant's word for it--why then delayed theywould be. This he felt able to promise. "And I in my heart ofhearts am sure of it," said the Commandant. "But in war one has totake account of every chance, and this may pass sometimes for want offaith."

  So, like an honest gentleman, he took his absolution, and afterwardswent to Mass and spent half an hour with his mind withdrawn from allworldly care, greatly to his soul's refreshment. But with theringing of the sanctus bell a drum began to beat--as it seemed, onthe very ridge of the chapel roof, but really from the leads of theflagstaff tower high above it. Father Launoy paused in thecelebration, but was ordered by a quiet gesture to proceed. Even atthe close the garrison stood and waited respectfully for theirCommandant to walk out, and followed in decent order to the porch.Then they broke into a run pell-mell for the walls.

  But an hour passed before the first whaleboat with its load of reduniforms pushed its way into sight through the forest screen.Then began a spectacle--slow, silent, by little and littleoverwhelming. It takes a trained imagination to realise greatnumbers, and the men of Fort Amitie were soon stupefied and ceasedeven to talk. It seemed to them that the forest would never ceasedisgorging boats.

  "A brave host, my children! But we will teach them that they handlea wasps' nest."

  His men eyed the Commandant in doubt; they could scarcely believethat he intended to resist, now that the enemy's strength wasapparent. To their minds war meant winning or losing, capturing orbeing captured. To fight an impossible battle, for the mere sake ofgaining time for troops they had never seen, did not enter into theircalculations.

  So they eyed him, while still the flotilla increased against the farbackground and came on--whaleboats, gunboats, bateaux, canoes; andstill in the lessening interval along the waterway the birds sang.For the British moved, not as once upon Lake George startling theechoes with drums and military bands, but so quietly that at half amile's distance only the faint murmur of splashing oars and creakingthole-pins reached the ears of the watchers.

  The Commandant suddenly lowered his glass and closed it with a snap,giving thanks to God. For at that distance the leading boats beganheading in for shore.

  "Etienne, he intends at least to summon us!"

  So it proved. General Amherst was by no means the man to pass andleave a hostile post in his rear. His detractors indeed accused himof spending all his time upon forts, either in building or inreducing them. But he had two very good reasons for pausing beforeFort Amitie; he did not know the strength of its defenders, and hewanted pilots to guide his boats down the rapids below.

  Therefore he landed and sent an officer forward to summon thegarrison.

  The officer presented himself at the river-gate, and having politelysuffered Sergeant Bedard to blindfold him, was led to theCommandant's quarters. A good hour passed before he reappeared, theCommandant himself conducting him; and meantime the garrison amuseditself with wagering on the terms of capitulation.

  At the gate the Englishman's bandage was removed. He saluted, andwas saluted, with extreme ceremony. The Commandant watched him outof earshot, and then, rubbing his hands, turned with a happy smile.

  "To your guns, my children!"

  They obeyed him, while they wondered. He seemed to take for grantedthat they must feel the compliment paid them by a siege in form.

  The day was now well advanced, and it seemed at firstthat the British meant to let it pass without a demonstration.Toward nightfall, however, four gunboats descended the river,anchored and dropped down the current, paying out their hawsers andfeeling their way into range. But the Fort was ready for them,and opened fire before they could train their guns; a lucky shotcut the moorings of one clean and close by the stem; and, thecurrent carrying her inshore, she was hulled twice as she drifteddown-stream. The other three essayed a few shots without effect inthe dusk, warped back out of range, and waited for daylight toimprove their marksmanship.

  And with daylight began one of the strangest of sieges, between anassailant who knew only that he had to deal with stout walls, and adefender who dared not attempt even a show of a sortie for fear ofexposing the weakness of his garrison. The French had ammunitionenough to last for a month, and cannon enough to keep two hundred menbusy; and ran from one gun to another, keeping up pretences but doinglittle damage in their hurry. Their lucky opening shots hadimpressed Amherst, and he was one to cling to a notion of his enemy'sstrength. He solemnly effected a new landing at six hundred yards'distance, opened his lines across the north-western corner of thefort, kept his men entrenching for two days and two nights, broughtup thirty guns, and, advancing them within two hundred yards, beganat his leisure to knock holes in the walls. Meantime, twenty guns,anchored out in the river, played on the broad face of the fort andswept the Commandant's lunette out of existence. And with all thisprodigious waste of powder but five of the garrison had fallen, andthree of these by the bursting of a single shell. The defendersunderstood now that they were fighting for time, and told each otherthat when their comedy was played out and the inevitable moment came,the British General would not show himself fierce in revenge--"provided," they would add, "the Seigneur does not try his patiencetoo far." It was Father Launoy who set this whisper going from lipto lip, and so artfully that none suspected him for its author;Father Launoy, who had been wont to excite the patriotism of thefaithful by painting the English as devils in human shape. He was abrave man; but he held this resistance to be senseless and did notbelieve for an instant that Montreal would use the delay or, usingit, would strike with any success.

  At first the tremendous uproar of the enemy's artillery and itsshattering effect on the masonry of their fortress, had numbed themilitiamen's nerves; they felt the place tumbling about their ears.But as the hours passed they discovered that round-shot could bedodged and that even bursting shells, though effective against stonesand mortar, did surprisingly small damage to life and limb; and withthis discovery they began almost to taste the humour of thesituation. They fed and rested in bomb-proof chambers which theCommandant and M. Etienne had devised in the slope of earth under the_terre-plein_; and from these they watched and discussed in safetythe wreckage done upon the empty buildings across the courtyard.

  One of these caves had at the beginning of the siege been assignedto Diane; and from the mouth of it, seated with Felicite beside her,she too watched the demolition; but with far different thoughts.She knew better than these militiamen her father's obstinacy, andthat his high resolve reached beyond the mere gaining of time.It seemed to her that God was drawing out the agony; and with the endbefore her mind she prayed Him to shorten this cruel interval.

  Early on the third morn
ing the British guns had laid open a breachsix feet wide at the north-western angle, close by the foot of theflagstaff tower; and Amherst, who had sent off a detachment of theForty-sixth with a dozen Indian guides to fetch a circuit through thewoods and open a feint attack in the rear of the fort, prepared for ageneral assault. But first he resolved to summon the garrison again.

  To carry his message he chose the same officer as before, a CaptainMuspratt of the Forty-fourth Regiment.

  Now as yet the cannonade had not slackened, and it chanced that asthe General gave Muspratt his instructions, an artillery sergeant incommand of a battery of mortars on the left, which had been advancedwithin two hundred yards of the walls, elevated one of his pieces andlobbed a bomb clean over the summit of the flagstaff tower.

  It was a fancy shot, fired--as the army learnt afterwards--for awager; but its effect staggered all who watched it. The fuse wasquick, and the bomb, mounting on its high curve, exploded in a directline between the battery and the flagstaff. One or two men from theneighbouring guns shouted bravos. The sergeant slapped his thigh andwas turning for congratulations, but suddenly paused, stock-still andstaring upward.

  The flagstaff stood, apparently untouched. But what had become ofthe flag?

  A moment before it had been floating proudly enough, shaking itsfolds loose to the light breeze. Now it was gone. Had the explosionblown it to atoms? Not a shred of it floated away on the wind.

  A man on the sergeant's right called out positively that a couple ofseconds after the explosion, and while the smoke was clearing, he hadcaught a glimpse of something white--something which looked like aflag--close by the foot of the staff; and that an arm had reached upand drawn it down hurriedly. He would swear to the arm; he had seenit distinctly above the edge of the battlements. In his opinion thefort was surrendering, and someone aloft there had been pulling downthe flag as the bomb burst.

  The General, occupied for the moment in giving Captain Muspratt hisinstructions, had not witnessed the shot. But he turned at the shoutwhich followed, caught sight of the bare flagstaff, and ordering hisbugler to sound the "Cease firing," sent forward the captain at onceto parley.

  With Muspratt went a sergeant of the Forty-sixth and a bugler.The sergeant carried a white flag. Ascending the slope briskly, theywere met at the gate by M. Etienne.

  The sudden disappearance of the flag above the tower had mystifiedthe garrison no less thoroughly than the British. They knew theCommandant to be aloft there with Sergeant Bedard, and the most ofthe men could only guess, as their enemies had guessed, that he wasgiving the signal of surrender.

  But this M. Etienne could by no means believe; it belied hisbrother's nature as well as his declared resolve. And so, while theEnglish captain with great politeness stated his terms--which wereunconditional surrender and nothing less--the poor gentleman keptglancing over his shoulder and answering at random, "Yes, yes," or"Precisely--if you will allow me," or "Excuse me a moment, until mybrother--" In short, he rambled so that Captain Muspratt could onlysuppose his wits unhinged. It was scarce credible that a sane mancould receive such a message inattentively, and yet this oldgentleman did not seem to be listening!

  Diane meanwhile stood at the mouth of her shelter with her eyeslifted, intent upon the tower's summit. She, too had seen the flagrun down with the bursting of the bomb, and she alone had hit in hermind on the true explanation--that a flying shard had cut cleanthrough the up-halliard close to the staff, and the flag--heavy withgolden lilies of her own working--had at once dropped of its ownweight. She had caught sight, too, of her father's arm reaching upto grasp it, and she knew why. The flagstaff had a double set ofhalliards.

  She waited--waited confidently, since her father was alive up there.She marvelled that he had escaped, for the explosion had seemed towrap the battlements in one sheet of fire. Nevertheless he wassafe--she had seen him--and she waited for the flag to rise again.

  Minutes passed. She took a step forward from her shelter.The firing had ceased and the courtyard was curiously still andempty. Then four of the five militiamen posted to watch the backof the building came hurrying across towards the gateway.She understood--her senses being strung for the moment so tenselythat they seemed to relieve her of all trouble of thinking--sheunderstood that a parley was going forward at the gate and that thesemen were hurrying from their posts to hear it. In her ears thebugles still sounded the "Cease firing "; and still she gazed up atthe tower.

  Yes--she had made no mistake! The spare halliards were shaking; in asecond or two--but why did they drag so interminably?--the flag wouldrise again.

  And it rose. Before her eyes, before the eyes of the parleyers inthe gateway and of the British watching from their batteries, it roseabove the edge of the battlements and climbed half-way up the mast,or a little short of half-way. There it stopped--climbed a few feethigher--and stopped again--climbed yet another foot--and slowly, veryslowly, fluttered downward.

  With a dreadful surmise Diane started to run across the courtyardtoward the door at the foot of the tower; and even as she started ayell went up from the rear of the fort, followed by a random volleyof musketry and a second yell--a true Iroquois war-whoop.

  In the gateway Captain Muspratt called promptly to his bugler.The first yell had told him what was happening; that the men of theForty-sixth, sent round for the feint attack, had found the rear walldefenceless and were escalading, in ignorance of the parley at thegate.

  Quick as thought the bugler sounded the British recall, and its noteswere taken up by bugle after bugle down the slope. The Majorcommanding the feint attack heard, comprehended after a fashion, andchecked his men; and the Forty-sixth, as a well-disciplined regiment,dropped off its scaling ladders and came to heel.

  But he could not check his Indian guides. Once already on theirprogress down the river they had been baulked of their lust to kill;and this restraint had liked them so little that alreadythree-fourths of Sir William Johnson's Iroquois were marching back totheir homes in dudgeon. These dozen braves would not be cheated asecond time if they could help it. Disregarding the shouts and thebugle-calls they swarmed up the ladders, dropped within the fort, andswept through the Commandant's quarters into the courtyard.

  In the doorway at the foot of the flagstaff tower a woman's skirtfluttered for an instant and was gone. They raced after it like apack of mad dogs, and with them ran one, an Ojibway, whom neitherhate nor lust, but a terrible fear, made fleeter than any.

  Six of them reached the narrow doorway together, snarling andjostling in their rage. The Ojibway broke through first and led theway up the winding stairway, taking it three steps at a time, withdeath behind him now--though of this he recked nothing--since he hadclubbed an Oneida senseless in the doorway, and these Indians,Oneidas all, had from the start resented his joining the party ofguides.

  Never a yard separated him from the musket-butt of the Indian whopanted next after him; but above, at the last turning of the stairunder a trap-door through which the sunlight poured, he caught againthe flutter of a woman's skirt. A ladder led through the hatchway,and--almost grasping her frock--he sprang up after Diane, flunghimself on the leads, reached out, and clutching the hatch, slammedit down on the foremost Oneida's head.

  As he slipped the bolt--thank God it had a bolt!--he heard the mandrop from the ladder with a muffled thud. Then, safe for a moment,he ran to the battlements and shouted down at the pitch of his voice.

  "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

  His voice sounded passing strange to him. Nor for two years had itbeen lifted to pronounce an English word.

  Having sent down his call he ran back swiftly to the closed hatchway;and as he knelt, pressing upon it with both hands, his eyes metDiane's.

  She stood by the flagstaff with a pistol in her hand. But her handhung stiffly by her hip as it had dropped at the sound of his shout,and her eyes stared on him. At her feet lay the Commandant, his handstill rigid upon the halliards, his breast covered by t
he folds ofthe fallen flag, and behind her, as the bursting shell had killed andhuddled it, the body of old Sergeant Bedard.

  Why she stood there, pistol in hand, he could partly guess.How these two corpses came here he could not guess at all.The Commandant, mortally wounded, had grasped at the falling flag,and with a dying effort had bent it upon the spare halliards andtried to hoist. It lay now, covering a wound which had torn hischest open, coat and flesh, and laid his ribs bare.

  But John a Cleeve, kneeling upon the hatchway, understood nothing ofthis. What beat on his brain was the vision of a face below--theface of the officer commanding--turned upwards in blank astonishmentat his shout of "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

  The Indians were battering the hatch with their musket-butts.The bolt shook. He pressed his weight down on the edge, keeping hishead well back to be out of the way of bullets. Luckily the timbersof the hatch were stout, and moreover it had a leaden casing, butthis would avail nothing when the Indians began to fire at thehinges--as they surely would.

  He found himself saying aloud in French, "Run, mademoiselle!--I won'tanswer for the hinges. Call again to the red-coats! They willhelp."

  But still, while blow after blow shook the hatch, Diane crouchedmotionless, staring at him with wild eyes.

  "They will help," he repeated with the air of one striving to speaklucidly; then with a change of tone, "Give me your pistol, please."

  She held it out obediently, at arm's length; but as he took it sheseemed to remember, and crept close.

  "Non--non!" she whispered. "C'est a moi-que tu le dois, enfin!"

  From the staircase--not close beneath the hatch, but, as it seemed,far below their feet--came the muffled sound of shots, and betweenthe shots hoarse cries of rage.

  "Courage!" whispered John. He could hear that men were grappling andfighting down there, and supposed the Forty-sixth to be at hand.He could not know that the parleyers at the gate, appalled for aninstant by the vision of Diane with a dozen savages in chase, hadrallied at a yell from Dominique Guyon, pelted after him to therescue, and were now at grips with the rearmost Oneidas--a locked andheaving mass choking the narrow spirals of the stairway.

  "Courage!" he whispered again, and pressing a knee on the edge of thehatch reached out a hand to steady her. What mattered it if theydied now--together--he and she? "_Tu dois_"--she loved him; her lipshad betrayed her. "_Tu dois_"--the words sang through him,thrilling, bathing him in bliss.

  "O my love! O my love!"

  The blows beat upward against the hatch and ceased. He sprang erect,slid an arm around her and dragged her back--not a second too soon.A gun exploded against the hinges at their feet, blowing one loose.John saw the crevice gaping and the muzzle of a gun pushed through toprise it open. He leaped upon the hatch, pistol in hand.

  "Forty-sixth! Forty-sixth!"

  What was that? Through the open crevice a British cheer answeredhim. The man levering against his weight lost hold of the gun,leaving it jammed. John heard the slide and thud of his fall.

  "Hallo!" hailed a cheerful voice from the foot of the ladder."You there!--open the trap-way and show us some light!"

  John knelt, slipped back the bolt, and turned to Diane. She hadfallen on her knees--but what had happened to her? She was coweringbefore the joy in his face, shrinking away from him and yetbeseeching.

  "Le pistolet--donne-moi le pistolet!"--her voice hissed on the word,her eyes petitioned him desperately. "Ah, de grace! tu n'a pas ledroit--"

  He understood. With a passing bitter laugh he turned from herentreaties and hurled the pistol across the battlements into air.A hand flung open the hatch. A British officer--Etherington, Majorof the Forty-sixth--pushed his head and shoulders through he openingand stared across the leads, panting, with triumphant jolly face.