Chapter 16

When they arose from their knees the darkness had suddenly become transparent. A mysterious rustle and whisper of awakening life was on all sides, the dawn was on the point of breaking. Scotty's fire, like his worldly hopes, had died down to pale ashes, but far out on the faintly grey bosom of Lake Simcoe, and away beyond its dark forest-ring, soon to put all lesser lights to shame in their triumphant blaze, were kindling the fires of Heaven.

XIV

THE VOYAGEURS

Oh, the East is but the West, with the sun a little hotter; And the pine becomes a palm by the dark Egyptian water; And the Nile's like many a stream we know that fills its brimming cup; We'll think it is the Ottawa as we track the batteaux up! Pull, pull, pull! as we track the batteaux up! It's easy shooting homeward when we're at the top. --WILLIAM WYE SMITH.

The Imperial transport, _Ocean King_, had loosed from her moorings at Montreal and was swinging down with the tide of the mighty St. Lawrence, and on her deck, many leaning eagerly over the railing to get a last glimpse of home, stood some four hundred stalwart sons of the Maple Land. Great, strong fellows they were, all with the iron muscles and steady, clear eyes of the expert riverman. For these were the famous voyageurs, trained from childhood on the rapids and cataracts of Canadian streams and summoned now to the help of the mother country on the ancient river of Egypt.

When Lord Wolseley found himself face to face with the tremendous task of reaching Gordon far up the hostile Nile, he remembered the assistance he had received in an earlier expedition in a western land from the daring, untiring, cool-headed, warm-hearted Canadian boatmen. And he asked that once more they might give him aid. And here they were, the best the country could produce, a rollicking, light-hearted crew, ready for anything--adventure, hard work, danger, death.

Among those who stood longest gazing at the receding land were two who had begun their years of apprenticeship for this great day on the little, noisy, foaming stream that scolded its way into the Oro river. And one of them, looking at the fast-fading outline of Mount Royal, saw instead an old log house among the enfolding Ontario hills, with a Silver Maple spreading its protecting branches above the roof. His home!--and the dear home faces, how they rose up from the misty shore; and another face, the most beautiful in the world, as he had seen it that winter night in the sunset glow!

And he had left all, had turned his back upon friends and home, and love itself, for what? A mere sentiment? A mad notion born of that night in the wilderness the spring before? The man who had been his guide and instructor, his staunchest friend and truest adviser from boyhood, had called his new impulse by just such a name, and the loss of his esteem had been one of the bitterest drops in Scotty's cup of renunciation. Apparently he had done injury to himself in every quarter, by giving up his connection with Raye & Hemming. Captain Herbert had been disgusted and had declared he washed his hands of him, Monteith had been filled with righteous indignation over such blind folly, and his grandparents had been keenly disappointed. And Isabel? That was the hardest part. What would Isabel think? Perhaps she, too, was offended, and he had had no opportunity to vindicate himself. And yet, through disappointments, estrangements and doubts, he clung tenaciously to his purpose. He was done forever with Raye & Hemming, and no power on earth could drive him back. Before he left Barbay, Monteith had come down upon him to bring him to a more reasonable state of mind. The schoolmaster had scolded, entreated, and had even brought up arguments which Scotty was powerless to combat. In his perplexity and bewilderment he could answer nothing; only there had come vividly to his mind the reply of another young man in somewhat similar circumstances; a young man, who, when clever people argued that the Man who had opened his eyes was at fault, could only say, "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see."

For that night in the wilderness had given this young man a clearer vision of right and wrong, the keen perception granted to those only who have passed by Calvary and seen the One who suffered there and conquered. And in that uplifting moment he had heard the voice of the Eternal say, "This is the way, walk ye in it"; and he could not but obey.

So Scotty had turned his back upon all his worldly prospects, because they had led from the way of integrity; and early in the summer had gone to seek employment amongst the lumbering centres of the Ottawa. And away back there he had been tracked and joined by his faithful henchman, Dan Murphy. This strange freak on Scotty's part had no effect on Danny's warm heart. What cared he that his chum preferred working in the bush to a college education? That mattered little, so long as they were together. For had Scotty turned Mohammedan and gone forth to convert the world to his beliefs, not one inch would his friend's loyalty have swerved.

And, while they worked on the upper Ottawa, the call for the Nile voyageurs had come. Here was an opportunity to see the world and serve the Empire, and the boys had gladly embraced it. And so Scotty was going down into Egypt, because the great Controller of Destiny had need of him there, as He had long before needed another young man in that same land to perfect His divine plans.

The Canadians commenced active work at a station on the Nile a few miles from Wady Halfa. The busy little trains, that came puffing up from Cairo, landed this latest addition to Britain's forces amid all the bustle and stir of the departing army. Here the naval detachment of the River Column was preparing to embark. The steel-keeled whaleboats, the especial care of the voyageurs, were being fitted up with masts and oars. As soon as ready they were filled with soldiers or Dongolese boatmen, the Canadian bowman and helmsman took their places, and out they shot up the swift, brown current.

Scotty and his chum found that their turn to embark was not likely to come for some time, and they employed their first day of leisure in looking about them. To their unaccustomed Western eyes the place presented endless interest. It was full of the noise and display of a military camp, and alive with potent signs of war. Trains loaded with ammunition went puffing out; bands of baggage-mules, driven by scantily-dressed natives, came down to the water's edge to drink; and stately camels swayed past.

Now and then a detachment of a regiment swung out desertward, whether on hostile acts intent or for exercise, only the initiated could tell. The boys stood watching them with absorbed interest. First came the Coldstream Guards, then the Grenadiers, and finally the Black Watch stepping out splendidly to the rousing scream of the pipers. Scotty had been taking in all the sights calmly, but this last was too much for his Highland blood; and, in spite of Dan's jeers, he leaped to his feet with a cheer, as they whirled past.

But even such spectacles as these began to pall. The Canadians soon discovered that an army is an unwieldy monster, and that even a flying column moves slowly. When the third day came and they still awaited their call to the boats, Dan became restless. This period of enforced idleness acted upon him like firewater upon a wild Indian, and his friend soon had his hands full keeping him from disaster.

On the last afternoon of their waiting Scotty composed himself under a gum acacia tree near the river to write home. They expected to go at any moment and he must leave a last message for Granny. With the aid of an old box for a writing desk and the battered lid of a tin can for an inkbottle he managed his task fairly well. The sun was blazing down on rock and sand and river, but the breeze from the north blew up cool and grateful, reminding him of the June zephyrs that came up from Lake Oro to stir the boughs of the Silver Maple.

Near him, stretched full length upon the ground, lay Dan, striving to be as cross as his light-hearted Irish spirits would permit. Scotty had just a moment before forcibly rescued him from a row with some idle, poker-playing Tommies, and the wild Irishman felt small gratitude towards his preserver. He rolled about restlessly, pronouncing serio-comic denunciations upon everything in Egypt from Lord Wolseley to the baggage-mules, and informing his inexorable keeper at short intervals, that if something didn't hurry up and happen, glory be, but he'd commit high treason--a crime of which Dan had only the vaguest notion, but one which he imagined immeasureably transcended all other forms of iniquity.

Scotty paid no attention to these threats; he finished his letter, packed his writing materials into his kit bag, and stood up to stretch his limbs. Over near the officers' quarters a couple of Tommies were making strenuous efforts to hold down a reluctant and evil-minded camel long enough to permit a fat and pompous Colonel to mount.

"That brute must be some relation to you, Dan," said Scotty laughingly, "he seems to have got up a mighty objection to everything in the way of common sense."

Dan did not reply; he had raised himself upon his elbow and was listening eagerly to something else. His attention had been caught by the conversation of a couple of officers who were coming up from the water-side. One was a young army subaltern, fresh from home, very innocent and well-meaning, but belonging to that class of youth who, because of a serene consciousness of vast inward resources, is certain to fall a prey to circumstances. His companion was slightly older, a young officer of the Naval Brigade under Lord Beresford. He was squarely-set, with a frank, good-humoured face.

The subaltern was evidently showing his newly-arrived friend the sights. "Those are the American Indians we've brought out to pilot the boats," he explained, with a nod in the direction of a group of French Canadians standing at the boat-slip; "rather a fine looking lot o' beggars, aren't they?"

His companion laughed. "Indians be hanged!" he exclaimed merrily. "More than half those fellows are no more Indians than you are. Jove, it does a fellow's eyes good to see something from home. I'm going to have a chat with them."

"Pshaw, you don't expect to find friends there, I hope. 'Pon honour, they're red Indians, every one of them. Wolseley got 'em. And Harcourt says they're the aboriginal thing."

"Your Colonel's an insular baa-lamb, Bobby; you can bet Wolseley never said it. Surely, as I was born and brought up in Canada I'm likely to know a red Indian from myself now, am I not?"

The subaltern looked annoyed. "I think you're mistaken this time," he said with some dignity; "perhaps an odd one or so may be white, but the majority are the real thing. Look at that big fellow there, now. I'll bet two to one he's a full blood, anyway."

The other glanced at the man indicated. Scotty's face and arms, always brown, had become almost copper-coloured in even his short exposure to the Egyptian sun, and his lithe, muscular figure, leaning easily against the tree, was not unlike that of the stalwart Caughnawagas from the St. Lawrence, but as the young naval officer looked at him he laughed derisively.

"Done with you," he cried gaily. "Go and ask him."

The subaltern marched up promptly to the voyageur. "I say, Canadian," he said somewhat stiffly, "here's a gentleman who says you're not an Indian. Just tell him politely that he's mistaken, please."

Scotty turned from his contemplation of the camel to find, to his surprise, that he was being addressed. But before he could reply, Dan had forestalled him. That young man, whose red hair and Hibernian features could have left no doubt even in the subaltern's mind as to his nationality, had been listening, with huge enjoyment, to the conversation. He had risen to his feet and was saluting with grave respect.

"Sure it's yourself that's right, sir," he said with an apologetic air. "Anybody can see he's an Indian. He belongs to one of our worst tribes--the Blood-drinkers, they call themselves. His name's Big Scalper. And sure," he added, lowering his voice fearfully, "it's the bloodthirsty brute he is, an' no mistake!"

The young naval officer came forward and gazed fixedly into the speaker's meek and innocent countenance, but could detect there no smallest sign of deceit. The subaltern looked solemn.

"Is that all true he's telling us, Big Scalper?" he asked dubiously.

"Sure, there's no use talkin' to him, sir," broke in Dan, with patient surprise; "he can't spake a word but his own outlandish jabber. The cratur was jist runnin' wild in the bush when Colonel Denison caught him an' brought him out here." The young man's air of kindly anxiety, mingled with innocent seriousness, was too much for mortal gravity. Big Scalper turned his back with strange suddenness and stared fixedly out upon the hot, grey glint of the river.

A little group of idle Canadians had begun to gravitate towards them. Dan Murphy had already earned a reputation among them as a source of entertainment, and was particularly interesting whenever anyone evinced a desire to learn anything of his native land. The officers were wont to question the voyageurs, and Dan played upon their ignorance of the western half of their Empire, which was deep enough to begin with, and made it abysmal.

"I told you," cried the subaltern triumphantly. "I've won my bet, old fellow!"

"Strange how he's going to pilot a boat-load of men up the river without the use of the English language," suggested the young naval officer, with a slightly sarcastic drawl.

"Aw, ye don't know him," cried Mr. Murphy in a tone expressive of fear, "he'll find a way to make them mind or he'll bash all their heads in. Sure, he's the Divil himself, sir. Jist look at the wicked eye o' him now, will ye?"

This was going too far for safety, and Big Scalper turned upon his loquacious showman. He was too much an artist to spoil the play by proclaiming it a sham, so he spoke a few rapid words in Gaelic. The Murphy's knowledge of that language was naturally limited, but there was never a boy in Glenoro school, be his nationality what it might, who did not pick up much of the war-vocabulary of the Fighting MacDonalds, and Dan had no difficulty in gathering from Scotty's remark that he was being strongly advised to immediately shut his mouth.

"What's he sayin'?" inquired the subaltern interestedly.

Dan's face was a study in pained and polite anxiety.

"I'm askin' yer pardon, sir," he said nervously, "but I think it would be safer if ye wouldn't be lookin' at him anny longer. He's askin' me which o' yer scalps I think would look best danglin' from his belt!"

There was a shout of long-suppressed laughter from the on-looking Canadians, and the young officer's face flamed up angrily.

"I shall report you for this insolence!" he cried, suddenly awakening to his ignominious position.

But his friend caught his arm and drew him away.

"Come out of this, Bob!" he cried in a choking voice. "You'll report nothing! You'd better not monkey with those fellows. That young Irish ruffian was improvising as he went along. And I'm awfully sorry, Bobby dear, but I'm afraid I've won my bet," he added, allowing his laughter to overcome him, "because--because--oh, Holy Maria, hold me up, I'm going to die!--because Big Scalper speaks a language that's amazingly like the stuff the pipers of the Black Watch jabber to one another!"

As Scotty moved down to the landing he gave his tormentor a good-humoured shaking. "It's lots of fun, I know, Dan; but you'd better keep that long, Irish tongue of yours still before the officers, or you'll get into trouble. I don't know what that fellow's going to do."

"Be jabers, it would be worth pickin' oakum for a year jist to take down his blamed consate. Did ye iver see such a banty rooster as the young wasp was? The little sailor chap wasn't half bad. And, say, Scot, did ye hear him say he was a Canadian or from Canady, or somethin' like that? It accounts for his good manners."

"Who, the bluejacket?" Scotty looked with interest after the young man's retreating form. There was something in his trim, straight figure that somehow seemed familiar.

"What's his name, I wonder?" he began, when a peremptory order interrupted. "Stanwell, into number 150!" cried the sharp voice of the overseer, and Scotty sprang into the stern of the boat and was off for his first battle with the cataracts of the Nile.

XV

THE SECRET OF THE NILE

O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields Before us; thy most ancient dreams Are mixed with far Canadian fields And murmur of Canadian streams. --C. D. G. ROBERTS.

The awe-inspiring designation which Dan had bestowed upon his friend was not readily dropped. The Canadians seized and used it joyfully. Others who heard the name and were not aware of the joke in which it originated supposed that the bearer of it was really an Indian chief, about whose bloody prowess they were ready to believe any tales which the ingenious Mr. Murphy might invent. And so, for the remainder of the voyage, Scotty was known throughout the column as Big Scalper, the fiercest Indian from the Canadian wilds.

But in the days that followed Dan found few opportunities for indulging his reckless humour, for soon the army was moving forward rapidly and the boatmen were in the midst of stupendous toil. The River Column had been bidden to make haste. Gordon was shut up in Khartoum waiting his rescuers, and no one must rest. On they went, day after day, past dreary stretches of sand, broken only by an occasional and equally dreary dom palm; past barren ledges of rock, deserted mud villages and ruined temples; battling madly with a rapid, only to find when it was overcome that another lay ahead; toiling strenuously to catch up with the enemy, only to see at nightfall their spearheads disappearing over the last brown ridge of sand hills. Scotty felt himself becoming a machine, something that did the day's work mechanically. To toil all day in the bow or stern of a boat in the scorching heat of the pitiless sun, or walk over blistering rock and dazzling sand; to sleep at night inside a square of good British bayonets, chilled by the numbing wind from the north; to rise at the bugle-call and go at it again--that was the unvarying programme. Cataract and sand plain succeeded cataract and sand plain with such deadly monotony, that all sense of time, place, and progress was blotted out. They seemed stationary in an endless desert, toiling against an endless river, always moving but never advancing.

He often wondered, as he watched the brown, turbid water racing down to meet him, what secret the mysterious Nile held for him. What would be its bearing upon his life? But he always ended his questionings with the assurance that whatever the outcome might be, even though he should never see it, it was controlled by a higher Power, and he was content.

And through all the hardships and stress of the work, the struggle with the rapids, the hunger and privations, the new life which had been implanted in Scotty's heart was his greatest stay. Many a time in the face of temptation he blessed the saintly old woman far away in the Canadian backwoods for the godly training he had received beneath the Silver Maple. He found he needed all his strength in this new, wild life; for a more gaily-gallant, reckless, devil-may-care crew than the Canadian voyageurs, who fought and overcame the ancient Nile, surely never wielded paddles. His chief trial was his own faithful follower, for Dan Murphy strove to out-Canadian the wildest river-driver of the Ottawa valley. And had Scotty's strong hand not been often placed upon the unsteady tiller of his friend's life, there might have been a sadder wreck among the Nile voyageurs than has been set down in history. His vigilant oversight of Dan's conduct did not prevent him distinguishing himself in quite a unique way.

Ever since he had left Cairo that young man's one hope in life had been to participate in a battle. There came a day, later, when he and Scotty worked side by side on the blood-stained rocks of the desert, helping to remove the dead and wounded; when they saw their General's body lowered into its lonely grave, and witnessed the hundred harrowing sights of a battlefield; and then and there, much of the boyish glamour of battle faded before the horrible reality. But that time had not yet come; and, like Napoleon, Dan was convinced that war was a grand game.

So when the reluctant enemy at last massed itself upon the rocky ledges of Kirbekan to delay the column, and the joyful news spread through the impatient army that at last they were to meet the foe, none was so eager for the fray as Dan. In spite of Scotty's admonitions, he went to one of his officers to beg permission to join the advance the next morning. The request was promptly refused, and the volunteer bidden with scant ceremony to go back to his boat and mind his own business. But Mr. Murphy was convinced that his business lay with the front rank of the advancing column. He had not been trained to army discipline and was not minded to lose the glorious chance of participating in a real battle for such a trifling consideration as one man's opinion.

So in the grey dawn of the morning, when the troops marched out over sand and barren rock, there went with them a man who had neither the uniform nor the dogged stride of the rank and file. But he made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in military precision; for, having appropriated the arms and accoutrements of the first man who fell, he rushed to the front, and was right in the van of the victorious charge that swept the enemy from their rocky stronghold.

Dan Murphy was the hero of the Canadian voyageurs for the remainder of the journey. When the six months' term for which they had signed had expired, and he and Scotty resolved to go on to the end, there were many who remained with the column because the former chose to act as an independent recruiting officer. If he was going to Khartoum, then they would follow, for where Murphy was there must surely be some fun.

But the end of the journey came sooner than was expected. A little above Kirbekan General Brackenbury received the tragic news of the fall of Khartoum and the martyred Gordon's death. Just a few days earlier, just a little more haste, and the gallant heart that had looked bravely into the face of despair for so many weary weeks, still patient, still hoping, might have seen the answer to his prayers! But the succors were too late by less than a week. Gordon was murdered, Khartoum was fallen, and at Huella the baffled column received orders to return.

If the toil of descending the Nile was not equal to that experienced in the ascent, the skill and vigilance required of the pilots was even greater. Only a few days' journey had been completed when the column halted at the head of a long series of cataracts. Here the Dongolese boatmen had been put to their utmost strength to haul up the boats through the boiling, writhing channel, and the question was, could any boat go down it and live? General Brackenbury gave orders that none but the Canadians should be entrusted with the descent; so, early in the morning, the voyageurs walked down the stream to survey it. They pronounced the channel bad, but not impossible, while one old St. Lawrence pilot sniffed contemptuously and declared that the Lachine would make this puddle look "seek."