The Trail of the Sword, Complete

Montreal and Quebec, dear to the fortunes of such men as Iberville, were as cheerful in the still iron winter as any city under any more cordial sky then or now: men loved, hate...

Two men stood leaning against a great gun aloft on the heights of Quebec. The air of an October morning fluttered the lace at their breasts and lifted the long brown hair of the...

The Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow made the voyage down with no set-backs, having fair weather and a sweet wind on their quarter all the way, to the wild corner of an islan...

Iberville was used to the society of women. Even as a young lad, his father’s notable place in the colony, and the freedom and gaiety of life in Quebec and Montreal, had drawn u...

The last two hundred miles of their journey had been made under trying conditions. Accidents had befallen the canoes which carried the food, and the country through which they p...

Three months afterwards George Gering was joyfully preparing to take two voyages. Perhaps, indeed, his keen taste for the one had much to do with his eagerness for the other--th...

From Land’s End to John O’ Groat’s is a long tramp, but that from Montreal to Hudson’s Bay is far longer, and yet many have made it; more, however, in the days of which we are w...

The rejoicing had reached its apogee, and was on the wane. The Puritan had stretched his austereness to the point of levity; the Dutchman had comfortably sweated his obedience a...

The room was large, scantily, though comfortably, furnished. For a moment after they took up their swords they eyed each other calmly. Iberville presently smiled: he was recalli...

The canoes and tender kept husking up and down among the Shallows, finding nothing. At last one morning they pushed out from the side of the Bridgwater Merchant, more limp than...

When King Louis and King James called for peace, they could not know that it was as little possible to their two colonies as between rival buccaneers. New France was full of bol...

One summer afternoon a tall, good-looking stripling stopped in the midst of the town of New York, and asked his way to the governor’s house. He attracted not a little attention,...

At the governor’s table that night certain ladies and gentlemen assembled to do the envoy honour. There came, too, a young gentleman, son of a distinguished New Englander, his n...

After this came varying days of hardship by land and water, and then another danger. One day they were, crossing a great northern lake. The land was moist with the sweat of quic...

A few days after this, Jessica, at her home in Boston,--in the room where she had promised her father to be George Gering’s wife,--sat watching the sea. Its slow swinging music...

Iberville and Gering sat on with the tobacco and the wine. The older men had joined the ladies, the governor having politely asked them to do so when they chose. The other occup...

Bucklaw having convinced the governor and his friends that down in the Spaniards’ country there was treasure for the finding, was told that he might come again next morning. He...

It was late mid-summer, and just such an evening as had seen the attempted capture of Jessica Leveret years before. She sat at a window, looking out upon the garden and the rive...

Iberville had a good ship. The Maid of Provence carried a handful of guns and a small but carefully chosen crew, together with Sainte-Helene, Perrot, and the lad Maurice Joval,...

Fortune had not been kind to Iberville, but still he kept a stoical cheerfulness. With the pride of a man who feels that he has impressed a woman, and knowing the strength of hi...

The English colonies never had a race of woodsmen like the coureurs du bois of New France. These were a strange mixture: French peasants, half-breeds, Canadian-born Frenchmen, g...

Gering was tried before Governor Frontenac and the full council. It was certain that he, while a prisoner at Quebec, had sent to Boston plans of the town, the condition of the d...

Meanwhile the abbe and Jessica were making their way swiftly towards the manor-house. They scarcely spoke as they went, but in Jessica’s mind was a vague horror. Lights sparkled...

Every nation has its traitors, and there was an English renegade soldier at Quebec. At Iberville’s suggestion he was made one of the guards of the prison. It was he that, preten...