CHAPTER VI

PRISONERS OF WAR

"You've fought like Britons, lads! You've done all that brave men could do! It remains for us but to die like heroes," cried Mr. Rogers, the first mate, who, though seriously wounded himself, had led the fight since the captain fell.

The remnant of the crew cheered these words of the mate, who was already leaning on a dismantled gun for support.

And what a remnant it was! Out of a crew of fifty, only nineteen men remained alive, and most of these were wounded. The condition of the ship, which had sustained this unequal contest, was pitiable in the extreme. Both the fore-mast and the main-topmast were over the side, giving the Duncan a heavy list to starboard. In several places her hull was almost rent asunder, while her decks forward were partly awash. Each instant she threatened to founder.

The merchantman had fought for three hours with one of the best French frigates afloat, and several times she had repelled boarders. The enemy's broadsides had ripped open some of her seams, and there were already eight feet of water in the hold. The last gun was put out of action, owing to the angle of the decks.

"There's one more shot in the locker, lads, and by Davy Jones, if the Frenchmen attempt to board us again I'll send them aloft!" exclaimed Mr. Rogers, half raising himself from the gun to look at the frigate, whose fire had now considerably slackened.

Suddenly the "Cease fire!" was sounded aboard the French ship, and Jack, leaving Jamie to the care of a seaman for a moment, clambered up the steep deck to see what had happened.

"They're sending a boat, Mr. Rogers!" he cried. "She'll be alongside in a minute, sir. Shall I hail them?"

"Tell them that if they set a foot aboard my ship I'll fire the powder-magazine and blow the vessel up," cried the first officer fiercely.

The boat came quickly alongside, and an officer hailed them. "Do you strike, messieurs? Do you strike?" he called, in a queer accent, half French, half English. "If so, haul down that ensign, messieurs, if you pleeze!"

Jack leapt into the mizzen shrouds. "Stand off, messieurs!" he shouted. "Come aboard at your peril, and we will blow up the ship!" At these words a panic seized the boarders. Those who were climbing up the side hastily dropped back again into the boat, which quickly pulled off, lest the terrible threat should be carried out.

Then Captain Alexandre, seeing that nothing was to be gained, and that the Duncan was on the point of foundering, sent his chief officer with a second boat offering the highest honours of war. His respect for a gallant enemy was such that he did not even ask them to lower that tattered ensign, which still floated proudly at the mizzen-top, where Jamie had made it fast. The carnage had already been dreadful, and he knew that unless he offered honourable terms, men like these would infinitely prefer to go down with a sinking ship than lower their colours.

The terms offered to the Englishmen were as follows: They were to remain prisoners of war aboard the frigate until she reached Quebec, when the captain would mention their honourable and brave conduct to the Governor, and if he were willing, they should then receive their liberty.

"And what is the alternative?" asked Mr. Rogers.

"The alternative," replied the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders and looking uneasily around the horizon, as though he half expected to see an English cruiser appear in the distance, "is, that you may take your luck aboard this derelict. But come, gentlemen, make up your minds quickly. The Sapphire must sail within half-an-hour."

The mate cast his eyes around and saw but a helpless wreck, with piles of dead and wounded upon her decks. At that instant the vessel gave a sudden lurch as though preparing to descend into the gulfs, and some one cried--

"Look out! She's going, lads!"

"M'sieur, for the sake of these brave men, who have wives and children, I accept your generous conditions, but, for myself, I will stay with the captain." And at these words a deathly pallor spread over the mate's face. He lifted his hands to his eyes, as though to shut out the sight of the dead. Then he reeled and fell. They picked him up, but he was dead. So they laid him beside his captain and carried the wounded aboard the frigate. Jamie and three others were still unconscious when they reached the frigate's deck. The rest stood by to see the last of their old ship. It was a sight never to be forgotten. They could distinctly see the body of Captain Forbes propped against the stump of the mast, with more than half of his crew lying dead beside him, as the derelict went down.

"Hist! She's going!" came a hollow cry, which was half a sob, as they clustered around the bulwarks of the foreigner.

"Stand by to fire a salute!" cried Captain Alexandre, who was a chivalrous Frenchman.

And as the Duncan took her final plunge, and the tattered ensign went under, the Sapphire paid her last tribute of respect to a valiant foe by a salute of seventeen guns.

Scarcely had the smoke rolled away and the last reverberation ceased, when the frigate turned her head towards the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and left that lonely, watery grave behind.

Jamie's wound was not very severe, although at times it was exceedingly painful, and after the ball had been extracted from his shoulder, he soon recovered much of his usual health.

Jack was his constant attendant. Day and night he scarcely left him, but nursed him most assiduously with all the solicitude of a mother; and no wonder, for Jamie was a hero now, and with all the ship's company too. His bravery in carrying the colours aloft on a sinking ship, with the bullets flying all around him, and his body a mark for all the enemy's sharpshooters, his persistence in completing the task, after a bullet had shattered his shoulder--this had made him a conspicuous hero, not only amongst his comrades, but also amongst the officers and crew of the Sapphire.

Jamie, however, like all true heroes, bore his triumphs modestly and his wound patiently, though, to tell the truth, he was just a little proud of the latter, and especially was he proud of Captain Forbes' words to him when he regained the deck--

"Well done!" He would never forget those words, spoken as the captain breathed his last.

Jack, however, was just a little envious of Jamie's first wound, for, strange to say, although Jack had been in the thick of the fight, and the men had fallen around him in heaps, yet he had not received a scratch during the whole engagement.

What exciting adventures had already fallen to the lot of these two lads since they left the old school and village so precipitately! Yet even these adventures were but a foretaste, compared with those that yet awaited them out there, in the west.

Every day Jamie grew stronger, and as he and Jack paced the deck they talked of all these strange events which had happened to them since they left Burnside. What was the old Squire thinking of now, when his last and youngest son had left him to fight for the Empire? What did Old Click and Mr. Beagle say when they found the village lock-up empty and the birds flown? And old Dr. Birch, what did he think of the truants?

And they laughed over it all, with all the sang-froid and carelessness of youth, and yet they grieved when they remembered their friend, Captain Forbes, in his ocean grave. They could ill-spare him, yet the memory of him would always be with them, to spur them on to brave and manly deeds, for he had died like an English gentleman, and a brave son of Empire, fighting to the last for the flag that he loved, as many a man still would do, before that great land out there, beyond the ship's bow--the Canadas--would pass from the hands of the French, to become, as the ages unfolded, the greatest jewel in the British Crown.

But what did the future contain for them? They often asked each other this question, as at evening they watched that great ball of fire descend into the azure main. And when they had watched that shaft of crimson fade into a duller glow, they retired to the cabin that had been allotted to them, and pledged each other that, come good or ill, they would be friends and comrades--to the Gates. And if God willed it--for at this time they were specially drawn to think of His mercies and His watchfulness over them--they would yield their lives a willing sacrifice, like Captain Forbes, at the shrine of duty. For while their country needed men to fight her battles, whether by land or sea, even at the farthest bounds of Empire they would faithfully serve and as willingly die.

That pledge was never forgotten, and through all the dangers and misadventures that befell them, amid the virgin, trackless forests and the rivers and great lakes of North America, it was never broken.

Thus the voyage continued, with calm seas and fair winds, for more than a week, but the journey to the Gulf was not destined to be entirely without excitement, for one afternoon, when the wind had freshened a bit from the south-east, they were all startled by a sudden cry from the watch aloft of--

"Sail ho!"

"Where away?" called the officer of the watch.

"To the south-west, low down, sir!"

After a careful examination the sail was made out to be nothing less than an English cruiser, on the watch-out for the enemy's ships, and Captain Alexandre, feeling that after his recent fight he was in no fit condition to meet such a foe, crowded on all sail and stood away N.N.W. with the cruiser in full chase.

All the afternoon the chase continued, and the cruiser was slowly but surely gaining, and had it not been that towards evening the frigate ran into a fog off the Banks of Newfoundland, there is little doubt but that she would soon have been overhauled and compelled to fight, and would in all probability have been captured.

All night the Frenchman kept on, changing his course several times to dodge his pursuer, and next morning, although the fog had lifted, the English cruiser was nowhere to be seen.

Two days afterwards they entered the Gulf; leaving Louisburg and the Ile Royale on their left they stretched across that vast inland sea, and in another four days entered the St. Lawrence River.

The lads were charmed by the wonderful scenery which bordered the river. The bold cliffs and headlands, and the forest-lined banks, the same which Jacques Cartier and his brave little band of voyagers beheld for the first time in 1535, when through every inlet in this great continent they sought a way to the spicy groves of the East Indies, and the far-famed and wondrous, but distant, Cathay, which they fondly imagined lay beyond this new continent, as in truth it really did.

While the frigate was working her way up the St. Lawrence, an incident occurred that was destined to have important consequences on the after-life of our two heroes.

When the ship was anchored for the night off one of the small French settlements below Quebec, a fierce Iroquois chief was brought aboard as a prisoner. A great price had been set upon his scalp by the French Governor, for he was the greatest chief in all the "Five Nations," and his people had been the bitterest enemies of the Canadas, since the days of Champlain.

"What a fine warrior he is!" said Jack. "What a pity he is to be put to death when he reaches Quebec!"

"Fine, indeed!" said one of the soldiers who had brought him aboard. "He has taken more paleface scalps than any man of his race!"

He was a man of powerful stature, with a defiant look, and an eye as proud and piercing as that of the eagle had once been, whose long white feathers now adorned his hair. Erect and brave, with a sullen ferocity of demeanour, he looked scornfully upon his captors, whose petty tyrannies and insults could not drag from him an exclamation of anger or pain, for he seemed possessed of all the stoicism for which his race was famous.

The fierce and implacable Iroquois, who formed that wonderful confederation called the Five Nations, consisting of the Mohawks, Senecas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and the Cayugas, and later the Tuscaroras, were the most powerful of all the Indian tribes. They were the deadly enemies of the Canadas, and during the whole period of the French wars were the irreconcilable foes of the latter, and more or less the faithful allies of the English, though their paleface friends did not always show them that consideration which was their due.

They jealously guarded the passes and rapids that lay between Quebec and Mont Royale (Montreal) and right away to the "Thousand Islands" and the lakes, they took every occasion to harass the French, who had come to steal their lands, to rob them of their hunting-grounds, and drive them towards the setting sun.

They scalped all the outlying bands of soldiers who had the misfortune to fall into their hands; they waylaid the fur-traders and the voyageurs, destroyed the harvests and burned the villages of the settlers beyond the forts.

So tiresome did they become that at length a price was paid for every Iroquois scalp that was brought into Quebec. It was, therefore, considered a matter of no small importance when the renowned "White Eagle," the most powerful chief of the Iroquois, had been captured.

Parties of soldiers from the various forts had been repeatedly dispatched to trap him and to bring him in dead or alive, but this wily foe, retreating before his enemies, generally drew them into the forest and harassed them in the rear and the van, then cut off their supplies, and scalped the stragglers, eluding their vigilance at every turn.

This desperate chief was now chained to one of the guns on board the Sapphire, and for two days he was the object of cruelty and ill-treatment, chiefly from those who had brought him aboard. He was kept without food or water. He was taunted with the fact that a heavy price was set upon his head, and that he would soon be tortured or roasted alive.

Though hungry and parched with thirst, he was too proud to ask his captors for a drink of water. He remained sullen and obdurate, and refused to speak. Once a tormentor offered him a pannikin of salt water to drink, and then, because he refused it, threw it over him. But he remained as immovable as a statue. Once a marlin-spike was hurled at him. A white man would have dodged to avoid such an unwelcome missile, but this mighty chief was too proud. He never winced or moved a muscle, though the spike went perilously near his face.

Jack and Jamie both remonstrated, but were told to mind their own business, and as the Iroquois had been allied with the English, and spoke a smattering of their tongue, they were forbidden to converse with or even to approach him. To speak to him was what they both very much longed to do, for he was the first real Indian they had seen, and very different from the wretched specimens who hung about the settlements of the white men. They admired the haughty pride and fearlessness of this child of the forest.

"He must be parched with thirst," said Jamie, on the afternoon of the second day. "I will give him a drink of water, whatever the Frenchies say."

And he immediately took a pannikin of fresh water and held it to the chief's mouth, for his hands were bound. Before the water could touch his lips the pannikin was dashed to the ground, and the boys were ordered away, but the look of gratitude that came into the chief's eyes showed that he had understood that a kindness was intended.

Soon after this the chief was removed to a cabin for greater security, but next morning, when the officer in charge of him unlocked the door, the prisoner was gone and there was no trace of him. He had in some mysterious way slipped his bonds during the night, dropped through the open porthole into the river, and made his way to the shore without being observed.

Great was the consternation on board when it was found that White Eagle, the terror of the settlements, had escaped, but though a search was made for him in every part of the ship, it was only too evident that he had obtained his freedom, and was at liberty to harass his enemies once more.

They had now reached the Ile d'Orleans, a huge island that lay in mid-stream, just below the great Falls of the Montmorency. Now piles of lofty cliffs fringed the northern bank of the river, rising sheer out of the water at high tide. Then they reached the mouth of the St. Charles River, while before them, crowning a lofty summit, with its churches and houses, ramparts and bastions, stood the city of Quebec.

The Sapphire fired a salute, which was replied to by one of the forts, and the next moment she anchored beneath the frowning guns of the citadel--the Gibraltar of North America.