Heralds of Empire Page 8

  CHAPTER VI

  THE ROARING FORTIES

  Keen as an arrow from twanging bowstring, Pierre Radisson set sail overthe roaring seas for the northern bay.

  'Twas midsummer before his busy flittings between Acadia and Quebecbrought us to Isle Percee, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. HereChouart Groseillers (his brother-in-law) lay with two of the craziestcraft that ever rocked anchor. I scarce had time to note the bulginghulls, stout at stem and stern with deep sinking of the waist, beforeM. Radisson had climbed the ship's ladder and scattered quick commandsthat sent sailors shinning up masts, for all the world like so manymonkeys. The St. Pierre, our ship was called, in honour of PierreRadisson; for admiral and captain and trader, all in one, was SieurRadisson, himself. Indeed, he could reef a sail as handily as any oldtar. I have seen him take the wheel and hurl Allemand head-foremostfrom the pilot-house when that sponge-soaked rascal had imbibed moregin than was safe for the weathering of rocky coasts.

  Call him gamester, liar, cheat--what you will! He had his faults,which dogged him down to poverty and ruin; but deeds are proof of theinner man. And look you that judge Pierre Radisson whether your owndeeds ring as mettle and true.

  The ironwood capstan bars clanked to that seaman's music of runningsailors. A clattering of the pawls--the anchor came away. The St.Pierre shook out her bellying sails and the white sheets drew to a fullbeam wind. Long foam lines crisped away from the prow. Green shoresslipped to haze of distance. With her larboard lipping low and thatlong break of swishing waters against her ports which is as a croon tothe seaman's ear, the St. Pierre dipped and rose and sank again to theswell of the billowing sea. Behind, crowding every stitch of canvasand staggering not a little as she got under weigh, ploughed the Ste.Anne. And all about, heaving and falling like the deep breathings of aslumbering monster, were the wide wastes of the sea.

  And how I wish that I could take you back with me and show you the twomiserable old gallipots which M. de Radisson rode into the roaringforties! 'Twas as if those gods of chance that had held riotous swayover all that watery desolation now first discovered one greater thanthemselves--a rebel 'mid their warring elements whose will they mightharry but could not crush--Man, the king undaunted, coming to his own!Children oft get closer to the essences of truth than older folk grownfoolish with too much learning. As a child I used to think what awonderful moment that was when Man, the master, first appeared on faceof earth. How did the beasts and the seas and the winds feel about it,I asked. Did they laugh at this fellow, the most helpless of allthings, setting out to conquer all things? Did the beasts pursue himtill he made bow and arrow and the seas defy him till he rafted theirwaters and the winds blow his house down till he dovetailed histimbers? That was the child's way of asking a very old question--WasMan the sport of the elements, the plaything of all the cruel, blindgods of chance?

  Now, the position was reversed.

  Now, I learned how the Man must have felt when he set about conqueringthe elements, subduing land and sea and savagery. And in that lies theHomeric greatness of this vast, fresh, New World of ours. Your OldWorld victor takes up the unfinished work left by generations of men.Your New World hero begins at the pristine task. I pray you, who areborn to the nobility of the New World, forget not the glory of yourheritage; for the place which God hath given you in the history of therace is one which men must hold in envy when Roman patrician and Normanconqueror and robber baron are as forgotten as the kingly lines of oldEgypt.

  Fifty ton was our craft, with a crazy pitch to her prow like to take aman's stomach out and the groaning of infernal fiends in her timbers.Twelve men, our crew all told, half of them young gentlemen of fortunefrom Quebec, with titles as long as a tilting lance and the fightingblood of a Spanish don and the airs of a king's grand chamberlain.Their seamanship you may guess. All of them spent the better part ofthe first weeks at sea full length below deck. Of a calm day theylolled disconsolate over the taffrail, with one eye alert for flightdown the companionway when the ship began to heave.

  "What are you doing back there, La Chesnaye?" asks M. de Radisson, witha quiet wink, not speaking loud enough for fo'castle hands to hear.

  "Cursing myself for ever coming," growls that young gentleman, scarceturning his head.

  "In that case," smiles Sieur Radisson, "you might be better occupiedlearning to take a hand at the helm."

  "Sir," pleads La Chesnaye meekly, "'tis all I can do to ballast theship below stairs."

  "'Tis laziness, La Chesnaye," vows Radisson. "Men are thrown overboardfor less!"

  "A quick death were kindness, sir," groans La Chesnaye, scalloping inblind zigzags for the stair. "May I be shot from that cannon, sir, ifI ever set foot on ship again!"

  M. de Radisson laughs, and the place of the merchant prince is taken bythe marquis with a face the gray shade of old Tibbie's linena-bleaching on the green.

  The Ste. Anne, under Groseillers--whom we called Mr. Gooseberry when hewore his airs too mightily--was better manned, having able-bodiedseamen, who distinguished themselves by a mutiny.

  Of which you shall hear anon.

  But the spirits of our young gentlemen took a prodigious leap upward astheir bodies became used to the crazy pace of our ship, whose gait Ican compare only to the bouncings of loose timber in a heavy sea.North of Newfoundland we were blanketed in a dirty fog. That gave ourfine gentlemen a chance to right end up.

  "Every man of them a good seaman in calm weather," Sieur Radissonobserved; and he put them through marine drill all that week. LaChesnaye so far recovered that he sometimes kept me company at thebowsprit, where we watched the clumsy gambols of the porpoise, racingand leaping and turning somersets in mid-air about the ship. Once, Imind the St. Pierre gave a tremor as if her keel had grated a reef; anda monster silver-stripe heaved up on our lee. 'Twas a finback whale,M. Radisson explained; and he protested against the impudence ofscratching its back on our keel. As we sailed farther north many aschool of rolling finbacks glistened silver in the sun or rose higherthan our masthead, when one took the death-leap to escape its leaguedfoes--swordfish and thrasher and shark. And to give you an idea of thefearful tide breaking through the narrow fiords of that rock-boundcoast, I may tell you that La Chesnaye and I have often seen thoseleviathans of the deep swept tail foremost by the driving tide intosome land-locked lagoon and there beached high on naked rock. That wasthe sea M. Radisson was navigating with cockle-shell boats unstable ofpace as a vagrant with rickets.

  Even Foret, the marquis, forgot his dainty-fingered dignity and took ahand at the fishing of a shark one day. The cook had put out a bait atthe end of a chain fastened to the capstan, when comes a mighty tug;and the cook shouts out that he has caught a shark. All hands arehailed to the capstan, and every one of my fine gentlemen grasps anironwood bar to hoist the monster home. I wish you had seen theirfaces when the shark's great head with six rows of teeth in its gapingupper jaw came abreast the deck! Half the fellows were for throwingdown the bars and running, but the other half would not show whitefeather before the common sailors; and two or three clanking roundsbrought the great shark lashing to deck in a way that sent us scuttlingup the ratlines. But Foret would not be beaten. He thrust an ironwoodbar across the gaping jaws. The shark tore the wood to splinters.There was a rip that snapped the cable with the report of a pistol, andthe great fish was over deck and away in the sea.

  By this, you may know, we had all left our landsmen's fears far southof Belle Isle and were filled with the spirit of that wild, tempestuousworld where the storm never sleeps and the cordage pipes on calmest dayand the beam seas break in the long, low, growling wash that warns thecoming hurricane.

  But if you think we were a Noah's ark of solemn faces 'mid all thatwarring desolation, you are much mistaken. I doubt if lamentationsever did as much to lift mankind to victory as the naughty glee of theshrieking fife. And of glee, we had a-plenty on all that voyage north.

  La Chesnaye, son of the merchant prin
ce who owned our ships, playedcock-o'-the-walk, took rank next to M. Radisson, and called himselfdeputy-governor. Foret, whose father had a stretch of barren shingleon The Labrador, and who had himself received letters patent from HisMost Christian Majesty for a marquisate, swore he would be cursed if hegave the _pas_ to La Chesnaye, or any other commoner. And M. deRadisson was as great a stickler for fine points as any of thenew-fledged colonials. When he called a conference, he must needsmuster to the quarter-deck by beat of drum, with a tipstaff, having asilver bauble of a stick, leading the way. This office fell toGodefroy, the trader, a fellow with the figure of a slat and a scalptonsured bare as a billiard-ball by Indian hunting-knife. Spite ofmany a thwack from the flat of M. de Radisson's sword, Godefroy wouldcarry the silver mace to the chant of a "diddle-dee-dee," which he wasalways humming in a sand-papered voice wherever he went. At beat ofdrum for conference we all came scrambling down the ratlines liketumbling acrobats of a country fair, Godefroy grasps his silver stick.

  "Fall in line, there, deputy-governor, diddle-dee-dee!"

  La Chesnaye cuffs the fellow's ears.

  "Diddle-dee-dee! Come on, marquis. Does Your High Mightiness giveplace to a merchant's son? Heaven help you, gentlemen! Come on! Comeon! Diddle-dee-dee!"

  And we all march to M. de Radisson's cabin and sit down gravely at along table.

  "Pot o' beer, tipstaff," orders Radisson; and Godefroy goes offslapping his buckskins with glee.

  M. Radisson no more takes off his hat than a king's ambassador, but hewaits for La Chesnaye and Foret to uncover. The merchant strums on thetable and glares at the marquis, and the marquis looks at the skylight,waiting for the merchant; and the end of it is M. Radisson must giveGodefroy the wink, who knocks both their hats off at once, explainingthat a landsman can ill keep his legs on the sea, and the sea is norespecter of persons. Once, at the end of his byplay between the twoyoung fire-eaters, the sea lurched in earnest, a mighty pitch thatthrew tipstaff sprawling across the table. And the beer went full inthe face of the marquis.

  "There's a health to you, Foret!" roared the merchant in whirlwinds oflaughter.

  But the marquis had gone heels over head. He gained his feet as theship righted, whipped out his rapier, vowed he would dust somebody'sjacket, and caught up Godefroy on the tip of his sword by the rascal'sbelt.

  "Foret, I protest," cried M. Radisson, scarce speaking for laughter, "Iprotest there's nothing spilt but the beer and the dignity! The beercan be mopped. There's plenty o' dignity in the same barrel. SaveGodefroy! We can ill spare a man!"

  With a quick rip of his own rapier, Radisson had cut Godefroy's beltand the wretch scuttled up-stairs out of reach. Sailors wiped up thebeer, and all hands braced chairs 'twixt table and wall to await M.Radisson's pleasure.

  He had dressed with unusual care. Gold braid edged his black doublet,and fine old Mechlin came back over his sleeves in deep ruffs. And inhis eyes the glancing light of steel striking fire.

  Bidding the sailors take themselves off, M. Radisson drew his bladefrom the scabbard and called attention by a sharp rap.

  Quick silence fell, and he laid the naked sword across the table. Hisright hand played with the jewelled hilt. Across his breast weremedals and stars of honour given him by many monarchs. I think as welooked at our leader every man of us would have esteemed it honour tosail the seas in a tub if Pierre Radisson captained the craft.

  But his left hand was twitching uneasily at his chin, and in his eyeswere the restless lights.

  "Gentlemen," says he, as unconcerned as if he were forecasting weather,"gentlemen, I seem to have heard that the crew of my kinsman's shiphave mutinied."

  We were nigh a thousand leagues from rescue or help that day!

  "Mutinied!" shrieks La Chesnaye, with his voice all athrill."Mutinied? What will my father have to say?"

  And he clapped his tilted chair to floor with a thwack that might haveechoed to the fo'castle.

  "Shall I lend you a trumpet, La Chesnaye, or--or a fife?" asks M.Radisson, very quiet.

  And I assure you there was no more loud talk in the cabin that day;only the long, low wash and pound and break of the seas abeam, with thesurly wail that portends storm. I do not believe any of us everrealized what a frail chip was between life and eternity till we heardthe wrenching and groaning of the timbers in the silence that followedM. Radisson's words.

  "Gentlemen," continues M. Radisson, softer-spoken than before, "if anyone here is for turning back, I desire him to stand up and say so."

  The St. Pierre shipped a sea with a strain like to tear her asunder,and waters went sizzling through lee scuppers above with the hiss of acataract. M. Radisson inverts a sand-glass and watches the sandtrickle through till the last grain drops. Then he turns to us.

  Two or three faces had gone white as the driving spray, but never a manopened his lips to counsel return.

  "Gentlemen," says M. Radisson, with the fires agleam in his deep-seteyes, "am I to understand that every one here is for going forward atany risk?"

  "Aye--aye, sir!" burst like a clarion from our circle.

  Pierre Radisson smiled quietly.

  "'Tis as well," says he, "for I bade the coward stand up so that Icould run him through to the hilt," and he clanked the sword back toits scabbard.

  "As I said before," he went on, "the crew on my kinsman's ship havemutinied. There's another trifle to keep under your caps,gentlemen--the mutineers have been running up pirate signals to thecrew of this ship----"

  "Pirate signals!" interrupts La Chesnaye, whose temper was evercrackling off like grains of gunpowder. "May I ask, sir, how you knowthe pirate signals?"

  M. de Radisson's face was a study in masks.

  "You may ask, La Chesnaye," says he, rubbing his chin with a wrinklingsmile, "you may ask, but I'm hanged if I answer!"

  And from lips that had whitened with fear but a moment before camelaughter that set the timbers ringing.

  Then Foret found his tongue.

  "Hang a baker's dozen of the mutineers from the yard-arm!"

  "A baker's dozen is thirteen, Foret," retorted Radisson, "and the Ste.Anne's crew numbers fifteen."

  "Hang 'em in effigy as they do in Quebec," persists Foret.

  Pierre Radisson only pointed over his shoulder to the port astern.Crowding to the glazed window we saw a dozen scarecrows tossing fromthe crosstrees of Groseillers's ship.

  "What does Captain Radisson advise?" asks La Chesnaye.

  "La Chesnaye," says Radisson, "I never advise. I act!"