Part 10 (1/2)
PART II
Now comes that part of a life which deals with what you will say no one man could do, yet the things were done; with wonders stranger than witchcraft, yet were true. But because you have never lived a sword-length from city pavement, nor seen one man holding his own against a thousand enemies, I pray you deny not these things.
Each life is a shut-in valley, says the jongliere; but Manitou, who strides from peak to peak, knows there is more than one valley, which had been a maxim among the jonglieres long before one Danish gentleman a.s.sured another there were more things in heaven and earth than philosophy dreamed.
CHAPTER VI
THE ROARING FORTIES
Keen as an arrow from tw.a.n.ging bowstring, Pierre Radisson set sail over the roaring seas for the northern bay.
'Twas midsummer before his busy flittings between Acadia and Quebec brought us to Isle Percee, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Here Chouart Groseillers (his brother-in-law) lay with two of the craziest craft that ever rocked anchor. I scarce had time to note the bulging hulls, stout at stem and stern with deep sinking of the waist, before M. Radisson had climbed the s.h.i.+p's ladder and scattered quick commands that sent sailors s.h.i.+nning up masts, for all the world like so many monkeys. The St. Pierre, our s.h.i.+p was called, in honour of Pierre Radisson; for admiral and captain and trader, all in one, was Sieur Radisson, himself. Indeed, he could reef a sail as handily as any old tar. I have seen him take the wheel and hurl Allemand head-foremost from the pilot-house when that sponge-soaked rascal had imbibed more gin 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 the inner man. And look you that judge Pierre Radisson whether your own deeds ring as mettle and true.
The ironwood capstan bars clanked to that seaman's music of running sailors. A clattering of the pawls--the anchor came away. The St.
Pierre shook out her bellying sails and the white sheets drew to a full beam wind. Long foam lines crisped away from the prow. Green sh.o.r.es slipped to haze of distance. With her larboard lipping low and that long break of swis.h.i.+ng waters against her ports which is as a croon to the seaman's ear, the St. Pierre dipped and rose and sank again to the swell of the billowing sea. Behind, crowding every st.i.tch of canvas and staggering not a little as she got under weigh, ploughed the Ste.
Anne. And all about, heaving and falling like the deep breathings of a slumbering monster, were the wide wastes of the sea.
And how I wish that I could take you back with me and show you the two miserable old gallipots which M. de Radisson rode into the roaring forties! 'Twas as if those G.o.ds of chance that had held riotous sway over all that watery desolation now first discovered one greater than themselves--a rebel 'mid their warring elements whose will they might harry but could not crush--Man, the king undaunted, coming to his own!
Children oft get closer to the essences of truth than older folk grown foolish with too much learning. As a child I used to think what a wonderful moment that was when Man, the master, first appeared on face of 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 all things, setting out to conquer all things? Did the beasts pursue him till he made bow and arrow and the seas defy him till he rafted their waters and the winds blow his house down till he dovetailed his timbers? That was the child's way of asking a very old question--Was Man the sport of the elements, the plaything of all the cruel, blind G.o.ds of chance?
Now, the position was reversed.
Now, I learned how the Man must have felt when he set about conquering the elements, subduing land and sea and savagery. And in that lies the Homeric greatness of this vast, fresh, New World of ours. Your Old World victor takes up the unfinished work left by generations of men.
Your New World hero begins at the pristine task. I pray you, who are born to the n.o.bility of the New World, forget not the glory of your heritage; for the place which G.o.d hath given you in the history of the race is one which men must hold in envy when Roman patrician and Norman conqueror and robber baron are as forgotten as the kingly lines of old Egypt.
Fifty ton was our craft, with a crazy pitch to her prow like to take a man's stomach out and the groaning of infernal fiends in her timbers.
Twelve men, our crew all told, half of them young gentlemen of fortune from Quebec, with t.i.tles as long as a tilting lance and the fighting blood of a Spanish don and the airs of a king's grand chamberlain.
Their seamans.h.i.+p you may guess. All of them spent the better part of the first weeks at sea full length below deck. Of a calm day they lolled disconsolate over the taffrail, with one eye alert for flight down the companionway when the s.h.i.+p began to heave.
”What are you doing back there, La Chesnaye?” asks M. de Radisson, with a quiet wink, not speaking loud enough for fo'castle hands to hear.
”Cursing myself for ever coming,” growls that young gentleman, scarce turning his head.
”In that case,” smiles Sieur Radisson, ”you might be better occupied learning to take a hand at the helm.”
”Sir,” pleads La Chesnaye meekly, ”'tis all I can do to ballast the s.h.i.+p below stairs.”
”'Tis laziness, La Chesnaye,” vows Radisson. ”Men are thrown overboard for less!”
”A quick death were kindness, sir,” groans La Chesnaye, scalloping in blind zigzags for the stair. ”May I be shot from that cannon, sir, if I ever set foot on s.h.i.+p again!”
M. de Radisson laughs, and the place of the merchant prince is taken by the marquis with a face the gray shade of old Tibbie's linen a-bleaching on the green.