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In Search of Mademoiselle

<h2>CHAPTER XVII. IN WHICH WE JOURNEY TO PARIS.</h2> If I have dwelt upon these events hitherto with great particularity, it is that there might be a record of all that passed and that the devotion of this seaman Goddard, a yeoman of England, should be known to all men. Of the Chevalier de Brésac, I need say nothing further at this time, since his public service is well known alike in England and France. Upon the morning following my discovery of the ring with the ancient setting, we entered one of the great war canoes in company with the Paracousi Emola and eight warriors, and set forth upon our journey to the sea. There was nothing to fear from the Spaniards, for the camp of Emola was in the country of Satouriona, and until we came again within sight of the battlements of Fort San Mateo, there was little danger of discovery; and even had we been attacked we should have been able to give a good account of ourselves. The River of May for[220] a long distance was shallow, but of a great width and seemed like a vast morass. At noon on the following day we set into a current which speedily took us into a deeper channel, where the sand grasses no longer waved beside us. The paddles dipped deep and, as they sent the water gurgling musically astern, put us along down-stream at a fair brave rate. By and by the Indians told us that Fort San Mateo was but four leagues below; and, as it lacked an hour to sunset, we hauled in our canoe to the bank to await the friendly cover of night before resuming our journey to the sea. But there was little need for precaution, for we saw no sign of human life. We stole along the shadow of the western shore, drifting down with the tide, which was ebbing strongly. At some time after midnight the sound of men’s voices singing a rough chorus came up to us on the wind; and in a while we crept out from behind a point of land to see the lights of Fort San Mateo, lurid and garish, come dancing down to us across the face of the star-sprinkled waters. The Spaniards were making merry, and the hoarse sound of their laughter blasphemed the sweetness of the night, and shivered the silence again and again with its echoes. They had no fear of attack. Had they not swept out of existence a whole nation from these new shores? We saw no sentries upon the bastions even,[221] and passed fairly under the cannon, arousing no challenge or inquiry. When we had passed below the Fort, a desperate sadness fell upon me again at the sight of the familiar shore and hills at which she and I had looked together. I turned my head and looked back as I had on that morning when we went down to the sea to give battle to the Spaniards. I seemed to see her standing there again upon the battlements tall and lithe, looking fearlessly up at me as I told her my fears. The farewell, the tender tears in her eyes, the touch of her fingers, all—all were as real as though it had been but yesterday instead of two long months ago,—months of suffering which had made days into weeks and weeks into years. The pain came again fiercely to my breast and I caught my breath to ease it. The firm fingers of De Brésac closed upon my own as he whispered. “Courage, mon brave! Courage!” Ah me! The meaning of the travails through which we are brought to our better understanding are little known of men—nor will be through many generations of time. In a moment or so the pang was past, and in a sudden flash of unreason—Nature’s compensation for her sorrows—I felt again as I had felt before, that Mademoiselle was at that moment somewhere near—not cold in death—but breathing and living. All this in spite of the ring, the[222] silent evidence of the truth of what had been spoken, which I felt at every breath, against my heart. We had passed a little below the Fort and had drifted toward a bluff of dunes which jutted out into the stream almost athwart our course—for here the channel runs close to the shore. Upon this point grew a thatch of palmetto scrub and knot of stunted firs and pines, whose gnarled branches stretched this way and that, an impenetrable black tangle against the starlit sky. As we came nearer, the dark blur of the branches took a definite form, and we could mark their gentle sway in the breeze. We were bearing toward a sand bar which jutted well out toward the other shore and I would have spoken of it; but as I turned, Emola seized me by the arm, placing his hand upon his mouth in token of silence. He and the warriors were craning their heads toward the out-spreading branches. They sat mute as statues, saying no word. I could not make it out. Long as I stared I saw no sign or heard no movement save the rhythm of the swaying branches. The silence was broken by one of the Indians beside me who uttered a hoarse sound in his throat, and lifting his head he passed his index finger grimly around his neck. We drifted in again with the current, and in a moment we understood. There, a horrid plaything for the wind of the sea, its clothing[223] limp and loose, we saw a human body, swinging by the neck! De Brésac started up. “Par la Mort!” he cried. “The infamous ones! Honest braves, fighting for their King, to be given this dog’s death! Come, Emola, land us here. It is too much, mon ami! He shall not hang so!” He was almost sobbing with the stress of his emotion. The paddles swept us in to the beach and we climbed the dunes to where the body was hung. Over its head that villain had nailed a piece of white bark upon which had been burned the dreadful confession, “Not As To Frenchmen But As To Lutherans!” Tenderly, as though he had been one of those we three most deeply mourned, we cut him down and tried to straighten his poor stiffened limbs. Then we carried him where the sand was soft and with the canoe paddles buried him out of sight. There were others, we knew, for the placard had said it, and three more we saw hung in the same way and bearing the same inscription. These we cut down and buried as we had buried the first, while Emola and his warriors stood by and gravely watched. Then silently as though the hand of death were upon our own hearts, we entered the canoe again and pushed onward. [224] The tide had turned; but before dawn we had come well within the sound of the surf and pulled into a secluded river or creek on the north bank, before the sun had come out of the sea. We ate a portion of dried venison apiece, and concealing the canoe among the branches, cut into the thicket, Goddard carrying a large packet of tobacco which the Paracousi had given him. By marching steadily all the morning along the line of this river, we came by noon to another body of water as large as the River of May. Here we halted again, and to our surprise and great joy discovered a small vessel riding securely at anchor, and flying the flag of France! There is no need to dwell at length upon the events which followed. The vessel was the Epervier, Captain Gillonne, of the fleet of poor Ribault. After much signaling a boat was lowered from her side and many men armed with arquebus and pike dropped down into her. They approached within thirty yards of the shore, when we proved to them by word of mouth that we were no Spaniards but men of their own company. Then they brought their boat in upon the beach and welcomed us with great rejoicing. The Epervier had been upon the sea for many weeks, and blown to the southward, had ridden through the fury of the storm which had sent the other vessels upon the coast. The Frenchmen[225] had seen the wrecks upon the beach, but no man save a few soldiers in armor carrying a standard of Spain. They had come to the River of May only to find our Fort in the hands of the enemy and had much to do to escape to the open sea again, out of range of the Spanish ordnance. This gallant Gillonne, watchful against the Spaniards, remained warily at anchor, hoping by this delay to save any Frenchman who might have escaped, although he thus placed himself in direst jeopardy of capture by the Spanish fleet. It seemed, then, that most of our physical sufferings were to end. We went aboard the “great canoe” as the Paracousi called it, Captain Gillonne setting red wine before these Indians, which indeed they drank with as much avidity as Job Goddard himself. They walked about the vessel looking up at the rigging, speaking among themselves, though they made no outward sign of curiosity, surprise or any other emotion. They are a strange people, these Caribs; haughty, and solitary as the great pines which tower in their wild forests. The good Paracousi was given many gifts to carry back to his people. He bore messages of good will from the French to the great Satouriona, and we three who had been his guests shook him by the hand and smoked a pipe of peace, which Goddard brought forth from beneath his doublet. The chief and his warriors departed to the shore as gravely and silently as they had come. [226] The people of the Epervier all sickened for the sight of France; and the provisions being low, it was at last decided to set sail. There was small chance of finding other refugees and the danger of capture was imminent, depending only upon discovery. And so we hoisted our anchor in the morning and with a brisk wind sailed forth from that harbor into the open sea, seeing no Spanish ships and making a clear run to the eastward out of land-sight by evening. Of the trials of that voyage I will not speak, since the matter is one having no importance in the description of these events. It is enough that after many weeks of storm and stress, privation and suffering, we had a fight with a Spanish vessel, but being weak-handed were glad enough to get secure away. A sickness broke out among our men, but we landed at last, worn by adversity, at Rochelle in France. As before written, I make no attempt to justify my actions in the happenings which followed. Thrust by ill-fortune out of employment, I had made this quarrel my own. And the love which had changed me for the nonce from man to god had now turned me devil. A new glory had shone into my life for a short hour and made me all resplendent with its gold—but the light had gone out and the darkness hung like a pall about my soul. I could not reason but with relation to the dark thoughts[227] which filled my mind. I thirsted for vengeance upon Menendez and Diego de Baçan, and there was no slaking. Nor could I understand that I, a quiet-tempered English lad, had turned adventurer like a Moor or a Spaniard. It was the tame stable-dog made wolfish by the sight of blood. I have said much of the cruelty of the Spaniards, but as I look back upon those dreadful times and the more dreadful ones which followed, I know that I was as mad as the others and that we were no instruments of God—as, to ease our consciences, we said we were,—but only the willing tools of our own passions. Truly the Chevalier de Brésac was animated by much the same spirit as myself. For upon French soil he proved himself a man of resource. The roads were blocked with snow, but friends in Rochelle made our journey to Paris possible; and in the middle of the month of December we rode into that city by the Porte St. Marcel. De Brésac was a fine horseman and I had been bred to ride long before I took to a sailor’s life, but it was no tranquil riding for Job Goddard. The beasts were of the quietest, but even so he found it no easy matter to keep upright in the saddle, and was three times tossed into the snow drifts, from which he emerged swearing and vowing that he would ride no more. “’Tis worse than the weather top-gallant yardarm in a cross-chop, Master Sydney,” he would say, “an’[228] never a lift or handful o’ sail to hang on by. For d’ye see, sir, this craft will mind no helm but the fore sheets, and ’tis mighty poor sailin’ in a squall.” He bore so rueful a countenance that we laughed at him in spite of ourselves, and by dint of much persuading and lifting he was got each time again in the saddle. Once within the gates of Paris we rode straightway to the house of M. Henri de Teligny, the uncle of my good friend. He was a fine, bristly, red-visaged, gallant figure of a man; an old soldier, a man of much power and, as we soon learned, with a leaning to the cause of the Huguenots. He welcomed the Chevalier with every mark of affection, and after bidding us to the hospitality of his house, caused refreshments to be brought and plied his nephew with questions as to his adventures in New France. It had been the intention of De Brésac to approach him with some care and niceness upon matters of religion and to bring out an expression upon the tale before enlisting his sympathies in our cause. Therefore, he at first was guarded in his replies, using a very skilful diplomacy. But when he had at last fairly begun, the old man listened to the story of the massacres of Fort Caroline and San Augustin with undisguised horror. He had heard rumors from Spain that the French colony was destroyed. He had not entirely believed it; but, were[229] it true, victory had been gained by honorable war and not by criminal deceit. He could not remain quiet through the telling of the real tale and strode up and down the chamber pulling at his gray mustaches and venting himself in the loudest expressions of wrath and sorrow. When the Chevalier had come to the voyage in the canoe and the discovery of the swinging bodies over which the legends had been placed, he could contain himself no longer. “Jarnichien!” he shouted. “Hung like a pirate or a Marane! Par la Pâque Dieu! It is a stain upon the honor—not of Coligny—but of France! These Spaniards think that this New World was made only for themselves and that no other living man has a right to move or breathe there!” “Would even that justify the murder of French women and children, my General?” returned the Chevalier keenly. “La Dogue! I should say, no! You were gentlemen of France with a patent from your King to settle in this Terre aux Bretons, which is as much the property of France as of Spain.” “Since this Colomb first set foot upon the land the Spanish claim it all. Menendez has said it.” “And that all others are Moors or piratos, to have their throats slit like hogs or be hung like thieves? Ah! perhaps even in Spain there is justice for such Generals as Menendez de Avilés! This is the[230] King’s quarrel, mes garçons, not yours. Forquevaulx is our Ambassador to Madrid. I know him well. We have fought side by side in siege and field. He too is a soldier and knows what a soldier’s death, as well as his life, should be. This is murder—assassination, I tell you—of the foulest kind! Done openly, and not even Philip of Spain could countenance it. Forquevaulx shall demand the degradation of this man.” He paused, out of breath and countenance from rapid speaking. Here truly was a friend indeed; we had not counted upon such a valiant partisan. “The Admiral shall know of these facts at once. I will go to him—or better—he shall come to me. The Hôtel de Châtillon and the Louvre have ears and my house is my fortress, mes garçons, where all obey me. There are no spies here.” When he had composed himself, he sat and addressed a letter to Coligny, acquainting him with our arrival and asking him to come secretly under the cover of night. The publicity of an audience at the Hôtel de Châtillon could thus be avoided and M. de Teligny did not doubt that, in view of the importance of the matter, the Admiral would come with all haste. The Chevalier de Brésac was tireless. He worked with a nervous energy which was most astonishing in one of his slender frame. For my part I was[231] glad enough to seek some rest; for my ride of many miles upon the back of a horse, my first journey of the kind for years, had made me more stiff and sore than when I had fought Don Diego de Baçan. Goddard had long since been put to bed below stairs. While I lay upon a couch, De Brésac wrote steadily; seeking to place on record, in some sort of order, the argument and statement of the case for the Admiral. As he had aroused Henri de Teligny, so he hoped to arouse Coligny; though from what I knew of the man I had little thought that this would be hard to do. That night the Chevalier de Brésac repeated our story to Gaspard de Coligny. The great Admiral had thrown off his mask and cloak and sat in a straight high-backed chair before the fire. He was dressed solemnly enough in a suit of black, with boots and slashed trunks. He wore a rolling collar or kind of ruff; and a gold chain of fine workmanship, the symbol of his rank, hung about his neck and down his doublet. In stature he was tall, though he seemed less so by reason of his head being somewhat bowed in thought. His forehead was lofty and wrinkled, but marked rather by the weather than by the ravages of time. His hair was plentiful but was cut short, standing straight upon his head. A pointed white beard fell down upon his breast. His hands grasped the straight arms of[232] the chair as he looked forward into the fire. His eyes, though clear and alert like those of a hawk and seeming to look not at but through, had yet an expression of sadness rather than severity. The light of the fire, which was thrown up from below, shone upon the cheek-bones and marked the deeper the hollows below. At one corner of the mouth was a great scar half-hidden by the mustache—a relic of Montcontour—which made him to appear still more gaunt and hollow-eyed. It was the face of a keen, daring man, but not that of a cruel or even a vengeful one. The Chevalier stood a little to one side opposite him, leaning lightly against the chimney-piece. As he proceeded with the story the Admiral’s hands gripped the chair-arms the harder and he chewed nervously upon a toothpick, which he had put into his mouth. For the most part he sat quiet, saying no word; but when he heard of the promise of Menendez for safe conduct as prisoners of war, he could contain himself no longer. He got upon his feet, walking up and down, asking short questions the while to complete his view. De Brésac told all that had happened much as I have related it here, save only the parts which are intimate and personal to me. When he described the patience and martyrdom of Ribault and the others and the manner in which they had met their doom, Coligny[233] raised his hands to his brow, saying as though to himself, “It is not possible—not possible! I cannot believe it!” asking questions until all doubt of the barbarity had been removed from his mind. “It is horrible!” he said. “Horrible, even now when assassination is so much the fashion that it is the argument of the fool and the wise alike.” When De Brésac had finished, having spoken of the good conduct of those who were lost and the probable position of the survivors—were there any—the Admiral remained silent awhile looking into the fire, his hands clinched and his brows knit in a tangled frown. He had quite forgotten us; for his mind was fixed upon the bearing of this news upon matters of State. No word was spoken and the only sound in that great chamber was the crackling of the logs upon the hearth. We saw by the look upon his face how deep was his interest in the fate of his poor colony, and we saw how the melancholy was driven from his eyes by the expression of stern resolve which suddenly fixed his features. It was like watching a hericano drive up over a windy sea. After a while he put again in rapid succession a number of questions upon facts unconsidered by De Brésac, which would have a certain diplomatic value at the Court of Madrid. It was far into the night when he had done, and he made no further statement[234] and gave no opinion of any kind save at the end, when his men had been called and he was about to draw on his cloak. “A great crime has been committed against duly-constituted officers of France, my friends,” he said gravely. “It is a matter in which the honor of the King is concerned. It may not be overlooked, and God alone knows what may come. You are to speak no word of this affair, but must wait in readiness to be called to audience with the King. You have done well, Monsieur de Brésac. Good night, messieurs! Monsieur de Teligny, good night.” And so saying he disappeared down the stairway and out a street door, muffling himself as he went. De Brésac turned to me, his eyes glittering and his lips set in a grim smile of triumph. “We shall have vengeance upon them,—yes, we shall have vengeance!” <hr class="chap" /> [235] </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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