CHAPTER XI

MORE OF M. RADISSON'S RIVALS

So Ben Gillam must take M. Radisson aboard the Susan, or Garden, as she was called when she sailed different colours, the young fellow with a wry face, the Frenchman, all gaiety. As the two leaders mounted the companion-ladder, hostages came towards the beach to join us. I had scarce noticed them when one tugged at my sleeve, and I turned to look full in the faithful shy face of little Jack Battle.

"Jack!" I shouted, but he only wrung and wrung and wrung at my hand, emitting little gurgling laughs.

Then we linked arms and walked along the beach, where others could not hear.

"Where did you come from?" I demanded.

"Master Ben fished me up on the Grand Banks. I was with the fleet. It was after he met you off the straits; and here I be, Ramsay."

"After he met us off the straits." I was trying to piece some connection between Gillam's ship and the inland assailants. "Jack, tell me! How many days have you been here?"

"Three," says Jack. "Split me fore and aft if we've been a day more!"

It was four since that night in the bush.

"You could not build a fort in three days!"

"'Twas half-built when we came."

"Who did that? Is Captain Gillam stealing the Company's furs for Ben?"

"No-o-o," drawled Jack thoughtfully, "it aren't that. It are something else, I can't make out. Master Ben keeps firing and firing and firing his guns expecting some one to answer."

"The Indians with the pelts," I suggested.

"No-o-o," answered Jack. "Split me fore and aft if it's Indians he wants! He could send up river for them. It's some one as came from his father's ship outside Boston when Master Ben sailed for the north and Captain Gillam was agoing home to England with Mistress Hortense in his ship. When no answer comes to our firing, Master Ben takes to climbing the masthead and yelling like a fog-horn and dropping curses like hail and swearing he'll shoot him as fails to keep appointment as he'd shoot a dog, if he has to track him inland a thousand leagues. Split me fore and aft if he don't!"

"Who shoot what?" I demanded, trying to extract some meaning from the jumbled narrative.

"That's what I don't know," says Jack.

I fetched a sigh of despair.

"What's the matter with your hand? Does it hurt?" he asked quickly.

Poor Jack! I looked into his faithful blue eyes. There was not a shadow of deception there--only the affection that gives without wishing to comprehend. Should I tell him of the adventure? But a loud halloo from Godefroy notified me that M. de Radisson was on the beach ready to launch.

"Almost waste work to go on fortifying," he was warning Ben.

"You forget the danger from your own crews," pleaded young Gillam.

"Pardieu! We can easily arrange that. I promise you never to approach with more than thirty of a guard." (We were twenty-nine all told.) "But remember, don't hoist a flag, don't fire, don't let your people leave the island."

Then we launched out, and I heard Ben muttering under his breath that he was cursed if he had ever known such impudence. In mid-current our leader laid his pole crosswise and laughed long.

"'Tis a pretty prize. 'Twill fetch the price of a thousand beaver-skins! Captain Gillam reckoned short when he furnished young Ben to defraud the Company. He would give a thousand pounds for my head--would he? Pardieu! He shall give five thousand pounds and leave my head where it is! And egad, if he behaves too badly, he shall pay hush-money, or the governor shall know! When we've taken him, lads, who--think you--dare complain?" And he laughed again; but at a bend in the river he turned suddenly with his eyes snapping--"Who a' deuce could that have been playing pranks in the woods the other night? Mark my words, Stanhope, whoever 'twas will prove the brains and the mainspring and the driving-wheel and the rudder of this cub's venture!"

And he began to dip in quick vigorous strokes like the thoughts ferreting through his brain. We had made bare a dozen miles when paddles clapped athwart as if petrified.

Up the wide river, like a great white bird, came a stately ship. It was the Prince Rupert of the Hudson's Bay Company, which claimed sole right to trade in all that north land.

Young Gillam, with guns mounted, to the rear! A hostile ship, with fighting men and ordnance, to the fore! An unknown enemy inland! And for our leader a man on whose head England and New England set a price!

Do you wonder that our hearts stopped almost as suddenly as the paddles? But it was not fear that gave pause to M. Radisson.

"If those ships get together, the game is lost," says he hurriedly. "May the devil fly away with us, if we haven't wit to stop that ship!"

Act jumping with thought, he shot the canoe under cover of the wooded shore. In a twinkling we had such a fire roaring as the natives use for signals. Between the fire and the river he stationed our Indian, as hunters place a decoy.

The ruse succeeded.

Lowering sail, the Prince Rupert cast anchor opposite our fire; but darkness had gathered, and the English sent no boat ashore till morning.

Posting us against the woods, M. Radisson went forward alone to meet the company of soldiers rowing ashore. The man standing amidships, Godefroy said, was Captain Gillam, Ben's father; but the gentleman with gold-laced doublet and ruffled sleeves sitting back in the sheets was Governor Brigdar, of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, a courtier of Prince Rupert's choice.

The clumsy boat grounded in the shallows, and a soldier got both feet in the water to wade. Instantly M. Radisson roared out such a stentorian "Halt!" you would have thought that he had an army at his back. Indeed, that is what the party thought, for the fellow got his feet back in the boat monstrous quick. And there was a vast bandying of words, each asking other who they were, and bidding each other in no very polite terms to mind their own affairs.

Of a sudden M. Radisson wheeled to us standing guard.

"Officers," he shouted, "first brigade!--forward!"

From the manner of him we might have had an army under cover behind that bush.

All at once Governor Brigdar's lace handkerchief was aflutter at the end of a sword, and the representative of King Charles begged leave to land and salute the representative of His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France.

And land they did, pompously peaceful, though their swords clanked so oft every man must have had a hand ready at his baldrick, Pierre Radisson receiving them with the lofty air of a gracious monarch, the others bowing and unhatting and bending and crooking their spines supple as courtiers with a king.

Presently came the soldiers back to us as hostages, while Radisson stepped into the boat to go aboard the Prince Rupert with the captain and governor. Godefroy called out against such rashness, and Pierre Radisson shouted back that threat about the nippers pulling the end off the fellow's tongue.

Serving under the French flag, I was not supposed to know English; but when one soldier said he had seen "Mr. What-d'y-call-'im before," pointing at me, I recognised the mate from whom I had hired passage to England for M. Picot on Captain Gillam's ship.

"Like enough," says the other, "'tis a land where no man brings his back history."

"See here, fellow," said I, whipping out a crown, "here's for you to tell me of the New Amsterdam gentleman who sailed from Boston last spring!"

"No New Amsterdam gentleman sailed from Boston," answered both in one breath.

"I am not paying for lies," and I returned the crown to my pocket.

Then Radisson came back, urging Captain Gillam against proceeding up the river.

"The Prince Rupert might ground on the shallows," he warned.

"That will keep them apart till we trap one or both," he told us, as we set off in our canoe. But we had not gone out of range before we were ordered ashore. Picking our way back overland, we spied through the bush for two days, till we saw that Governor Brigdar was taking Radisson's advice, going no farther up-stream, but erecting a fort on the shore where he had anchored.

"And now," said Radisson, "we must act."

While we were spying through the woods, watching the English build their fort, I thought that I saw a figure flitting through the bush to the rear. I dared not fire. One shot would have betrayed us to the English. But I pointed my gun. The thing came gliding noiselessly nearer. I clicked the gun-butt without firing. The thing paused. Then I called M. Radisson, who said it was Le Borgne, the wall-eyed Indian. Godefroy vowed 'twas a spy from Ben Gillam's fort. The Indian mumbled some superstition of a manitou. To me it seemed like a caribou; for it faded to nothing the way those fleet creatures have of skimming into distance.