Cameron of Lochiel
"The tall devil with the sauce-pan struck three blows; and a silence
most profound succeeded the hellish hubbub. He stretched out his arm
toward my late father, and cried with a voice of thunder: 'Will you
make haste, you lazy dog? will you make haste, you cur of a Christian,
and ferry our friend across? We have only fourteen thousand four
hundred times more to prance around the island before cock-crow. Are
you going to make her lose the best of the fun?'
"'Go to the devil, where you all belong,' answered my late father,
losing all patience.
"'Come, my dear Francis,' said La Corriveau, 'be a little more
obliging. You are acting like a child about a mere trifle. Moreover,
see how the time is flying. Come, now, one little effort!'
"'No, no, my wench of Satan,' said my late father. 'Would to Heaven you
still had on the fine collar which the hangman put around your neck two
years ago. You wouldn't have so clear a wind-pipe.'
"During this dialogue the goblins on the island resumed their chorus:
"'Here we go all round,
Hands all round,
Here we go all round.'
"'My dear Francis,' said the witch, 'if your body and bones won't carry
me over, I'm going to strangle you. I will straddle your soul and ride
over to the festival.' With these words, she seized him by the throat
and strangled him."
"What," exclaimed the young men, "she strangled your poor, late father,
now dead?"
"When I said strangled, it was very little better than that," answered
José, "for the dear man lost his consciousness."
"When he came to himself he heard a little bird, which cried _Qué-tu_?
(Who art thou?)
"'Oh, ho!' said my late father, 'it's plain I'm not in hell, since I
hear the dear Lord's birds!' He opened first one eye, then the other,
and saw that it was broad daylight. The sun was shining right in his
face; the little bird, perched on a neighboring branch, kept crying
_qué-tu_?'
"'My dear child,' said my late father, 'it is not very easy to answer
your question, for I'm not very certain this morning just who I am.
Only yesterday I believed myself to be a brave, honest, and God-fearing
man; but I have had such an experience this night that I can hardly be
sure that it is I, Francis Dubé, here present in body and soul. Then
the dear man began to sing:
'Here we go all round,
Hands all round,
Here we go all round.'
"In fact, he was half bewitched. At last, however, he perceived that
he was lying full length in a ditch where, happily, there was more mud
than water; but for that my poor, late father, who now sleeps with the
saints, surrounded by all his relations and friends, and fortified by
all the holy sacraments, would have died without absolution, like a
monkey in his old tree, begging your pardon for the comparison, young
gentlemen. When he had got his face clear from the mud of the ditch,
in which he was stuck fast as in a vise, the first thing he saw was
his flask on the bank above him. At this he plucked up his courage and
stretched out his hand to take a drink. But no such luck! The flask was
empty! The witch had drained every drop."
"My dear José," said Lochiel, "I think I am about as brave as the next
one. Nevertheless, if such an adventure had happened to me, never again
would I have traveled alone at night."
"Nor I either," said D'Haberville.
"To tell you the truth, gentlemen," said José, "since you are so
discriminating, I will confess that my late father, who before this
adventure would not have turned a hair in the graveyard at midnight,
was never afterward so bold; he dared not even go alone after sunset to
do his chores in the stable."
"And very sensible he was; but finish your story," said Jules.
"It is finished," said José. "My late father harnessed his horse, who
appeared, poor brute, to have noticed nothing unusual, and made his way
home fast as possible. It was not till a fortnight later that he told
us his adventure."
"What do you say to all that, my self-satisfied skeptic who would
refuse to Canada the luxury of witches and wizards?" inquired
D'Haberville.
"I say," answered Archie, "that our Highland witches are mere infants
compared with those of New France, and, what's more, if ever I get
back to my Scottish hills, I'm going to imprison all our hobgoblins in
bottles, as Le Sage did with his wooden-legged devil, Asmodeus."
"Hum-m-m!" said José. "It would serve them just right, accursed
blackguards; but where would you get bottles big enough? There'd be the
difficulty."
CHAPTER IV.
THE BREAKING UP OF THE ICE.
On entendit du côté de la mer un bruit epouvantable, comme si des torrents
d'eau, mêlés à des tonnerres, eussent roulé du haut des montagnes;
tout le monde s'écria: voilà l'ouragan.
+Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.+
Though aged, he was so iron of limb
Few of your youths could cope with him.
+Byron.+
Que j'aille à son secours, s'écria-t-il, ou que je meure.
+Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.+
Les vents et les vagues sont toujours du côté du plus habile nageur.
+Gibbon.+
The travelers merrily continued their journey. The day drew to a close,
and they kept on for a time by starlight. At length the moon rose and
shone far over the still bosom of the Saint Lawrence. At the sight of
her, Jules broke out into rhapsodies, and cried:
"I feel myself inspired, not by the waters of Hippocrene, which I
have never tasted and which, I trust, I never shall taste, but by the
kindly juice of Bacchus, dearer than all the fountains in the world,
not even excepting the limpid wave of Parnassus. Hail to thee, fair
moon! Hail to thee, thou silvern lamp, that lightest the steps of two
men free as the children of our mighty forests, two men but now escaped
from the shackles of college! How many times, O moon, as thy pale rays
pierced to my lonely couch, how many times have I longed to break my
bonds and mingle with the joyous throngs at balls and routs, while a
harsh and inexorable decree condemned me to a sleep which I abhorred!
Ah, how many times, O moon, have I sighed to traverse, mounted upon
thy crescent at the risk of breaking my neck, the regions thou wast
illuminating in thy stately course, even though it should take me to
another hemisphere! Ah, how many times--"
"Ah, how many times in thy life hast thou talked nonsense!" exclaimed
Archie. "But, since frenzy is infectious, listen now to a true poet,
and abase thyself, proud spirit. O moon, thou of the threefold essence,
thou whom the poets of old invoked as Artemis the Huntress, how sweet
it must be to thee to forsake the dark realms of Pluto, and not less
the forests wherein, with thy baying pack, thou raisest a din enough
to deafen all the demons of Canada! How sweet it must be to thee, O
moon, to journey now in tranquil dominance, in stupendous silence, the
ethereal spaces of heaven! Repent of thy work, I beseech thee! Restore
the light of reason to this poor afflicted one, my dearest friend,
who--"
"O Phoebe, patron of fools," interrupted Jules, "not for my friend have
I any prayer to make thee. Thou art all guiltless of his infirmity, for
the mischief was done--"
"I say, gentlemen," exclaimed José, "when you are done your
conversation with my lady moon--I don't know how you find so much to
say to her--would it please you to notice what a noise they are making
in St. Thomas yonder?"
All listened intently. It was the church bell pealing wildly.
"It is the Angelus," exclaimed Jules D'Haberville.
"Oh, yes," exclaimed José, "the Angelus at eight o'clock in the
evening."
"Then it's a fire," said Archie.
"But we don't see any flames," answered José. "Whatever it is let's
make haste. There is something unusual going on yonder."
Driving as fast as they could, half an hour later they entered the
village of St. Thomas. All was silence. The village appeared deserted.
Only the dogs, shut up in some of the houses, were barking madly.
But for the noise of the curs they might have thought themselves
transported into that city which we read of in the Arabian Nights whose
inhabitants had all been turned into marble.
Our travelers were on the point of entering the church, the bell of
which was still ringing, when they noticed a light and heard shouts
from the bank by the rapids near the manor house. Thither they made
their way at full speed.
It would take the pen of a Cooper or a Chateaubriand to paint the scene
that met their eyes on the bank of South River.
Captain Marcheterre, an old sailor of powerful frame, was returning to
the village toward dusk at a brisk pace, when he heard out on the river
a noise like some heavy body falling into the water, and immediately
afterward the groans and cries of some one appealing for help. It was
a rash _habitant_ named Dumais, who, thinking the ice yet sufficiently
firm, had ventured upon it with his team, about a dozen rods southwest
of the town. The ice had split up so suddenly that his team vanished
in the current. The unhappy Dumais, a man of great activity, had just
succeeded in springing from the sled to a stronger piece of ice, but
the violence of the effort had proved disastrous; catching his foot in
a crevice, he had snapped his leg at the ankle like a bit of glass.
Marcheterre, who knew the dangerous condition of the ice, which was
split in many places, shouted to him not to stir, and that he was going
to bring him help. He ran at once to the sexton, telling him to ring
the alarm while he was routing out the nearest neighbors. In a moment,
all was bustle and confusion. Men ran hither and thither without
accomplishing anything. Women and children began to cry. Dogs began to
howl, sounding every note of the canine gamut; so that the captain,
whose experience pointed him out as the one to direct the rescue, had
great difficulty in making himself heard.
However, under the directions of Marcheterre, some ran for ropes and
boards while others stripped the fences and wood-piles of their cedar
and birch bark to make torches. The scene grew more and more animated,
and by the light of fifty torches shedding abroad their fitful glare
the crowd spread along the river bank to the spot pointed out by the
old sailor.
Dumais waited patiently enough for the coming of help. As soon as
he could make himself heard he implored them to hurry, for he was
beginning to hear under the ice low grumbling sounds which seemed to
come from far off toward the river's mouth.
"There's not a moment to lose, my friends," exclaimed the old captain,
"for that is a sign the ice is going to break up."
Men less experienced than he wished immediately to thrust out upon the
ice their planks and boards without waiting to tie them together; but
this he forbade, for the ice was already full of cracks, and moreover
the ice cake which supported Dumais was isolated, having on the one
side the shattered surface where the horse had been engulfed, and on
the other a large air-hole which cut off all approach. Marcheterre, who
knew that the breaking up was not only inevitable, but to be expected
at any moment, was unwilling to risk the life of so many people
without taking every precaution that his experience could dictate.
Some thereupon with hatchets began to notch the planks and boards; some
tied them together end to end; some, with the captain at their head,
dragged them out on the ice, while others were pushing from the bank.
This improvised bridge was not more than fifty feet from the bank when
the old sailor cried: "Now, boys, let some strong active fellows follow
me at a distance of ten feet from one another, and let the rest keep
pushing as before!"
Marcheterre was closely followed by his son, a young man in the prime
of life, who, knowing his father's boldness, kept within reach in