Cameron of Lochiel
order to help him in case of need, for lugubrious mutterings, the
ominous forerunners of a mighty cataclysm, were making themselves heard
beneath the ice. But every one was at his post and every one doing his
utmost; those who broke through, dragged themselves out by means of the
floating bridge, and, once more on the solid ice, resumed their efforts
with renewed zeal. Two or three minutes more and Dumais would be saved.
The two Marcheterres, the father ahead, were within about a hundred
feet of the wretched victim of his own imprudence, when a subterranean
thunder, such as precedes a strong shock of earthquake, seemed to
run the whole length of South River. This subterranean sound was at
once followed by an explosion like the discharge of a great piece of
artillery. Then rose a terrible cry. "The ice is going! the ice is
going! save yourselves!" screamed the crowd on shore.
Indeed the ice cakes were shivering on all sides under the pressure
of the flood, which was already invading the banks. Then followed
dreadful confusion. The ice cakes turned completely over, climbed
upon each other with a frightful grinding noise, piled themselves to
a great height, then sank suddenly and disappeared beneath the waves.
The planks and boards were tossed about like cockle-shells in an ocean
gale. The ropes and chains threatened every moment to give away.
The spectators, horror-stricken at the sight of their kinsfolk exposed
to almost certain destruction, kept crying: "Save yourselves! save
yourselves!" It would have been indeed tempting Providence to continue
any longer the rash and unequal struggle with the flood.
Marcheterre, however, who seemed rather inspired than daunted by the
appalling spectacle, ceased not to shout: "Forward boys! forward, for
God's sake!"
This old sea-lion, ever cool and unmoved when on the deck of his
reeling ship and directing a man[oe]uvre on whose success the lives of
all depended, was just as calm in the face of a peril which froze the
boldest hearts. Turning round, he perceived that, with the exception of
his son and Joncas, one of his sailors, the rest had all sought safety
in a headlong flight. "Oh, you cowards, you cowards!" he cried.
He was interrupted by his son, who, seeing him rushing to certain
death, seized him and threw him down on a plank, where he held him some
moments in spite of the old man's mighty struggles. Then followed a
terrible conflict between father and son. It was filial love against
that sublime self-abnegation, the love of humanity.
The old man, by a tremendous effort, succeeded in throwing himself off
the plank, and he and his son rolled on to the ice, where the struggle
was continued fiercely. At this crisis, Joncas, leaping from plank to
plank, from board to board, came to the young man's assistance.
The spectators, who from the shore lost nothing of the heart-rending
scene, in spite of the water already pursuing them, made haste to draw
in the ropes, and the united efforts of a hundred brawny arms were
successful in rescuing the three heroes. Scarcely, indeed, had they
reached a place of safety, when the great sheet of ice, which had
hitherto remained stationary in spite of the furious attacks of the
enemy assailing it on all sides, groaning, and with a slow majesty of
movement, began its descent toward the falls.
All eyes were straightway fixed upon Dumais. He was a brave man. Many a
time had he proved his courage upon the enemies of his country. He had
even faced the most hideous of deaths, when, bound to a post, he was on
the point of being burned alive by the Iroquois, which he would have
been but for the timely aid of his friends the Melicites. Now he was
sitting on his precarious refuge calm and unmoved as a statue of death.
He made some signs toward the shore, which the spectators understood as
a last farewell to his friends. Then, folding his arms, or occasionally
lifting them toward heaven, he appeared to forget all earthly ties and
to prepare himself for passing the dread limits which divide man from
the eternal.
Once safely ashore, the captain displayed no more of his anger.
Regaining his customary coolness he gave his orders calmly and
precisely.
"Let us take our floating bridge," said he, "and follow yonder sheet of
ice down river."
"What is the use?" cried some who appeared to have had experience. "The
poor fellow is beyond the reach of help."
"There's one chance yet, one little chance of saving him," said the
old sailor, giving ear to certain sounds which he heard far off to the
southward, "and we must be ready for it. The ice is on the point of
breaking up in the St. Nicholas, which, as you know, is very rapid.
The violence of the flood at that point is likely to crowd the ice of
South River over against our shore; and what's more, we shall have no
reason to reproach ourselves."
It fell out as Captain Marcheterre predicted. In a moment or two there
was a mighty report like a peal of thunder; and the St. Nicholas,
bursting madly from its fetters, hurled itself upon the flank of the
vast procession of ice floes which, having hitherto encountered no
obstacle, were pursuing their triumphant way to the St. Lawrence.
It seemed for a moment that the fierce and swift attack, the sudden
thrust, was going to pile the greater part of the ice cakes upon
the other shore as the captain hoped. The change it wrought was but
momentary, for the channel getting choked there was an abrupt halt,
and the ice cakes, piling one upon another, took the shape of a lofty
rampart. Checked by this obstacle, the waves spread far beyond both
shores and flooded the greater part of the village. This sudden deluge,
driving the spectators from the banks, destroyed the last hope of poor
Dumais.
The struggle was long and obstinate between the angry element and
the obstacle which barred its course; but at length the great lake,
ceaselessly fed by the main river and the tributaries, rose to the top
of the dam, whose foundations it was at the same time eating away from
beneath. The barrier, unable to resist the stupendous weight, burst
with a roar that shook both banks. As South River widens suddenly below
its junction with the St. Nicholas, the unchained mass darted down
stream like an arrow, and its course was unimpeded to the cataract.
Dumais had resigned himself to his fate. Calm amid the tumult, his
hands crossed upon his breast, his eyes lifted heavenward, he seemed
absorbed in contemplation.
The spectators crowded toward the cataract to see the end of the
tragedy. Numbers, roused by the alarm bell, had gathered on the other
shore and had supplied themselves with torches by stripping off the
bark from the cedar rails. The dreadful scene was lighted as if for a
festival.
One could see in the distance the long, imposing structure of the
manor house, to the southwest of the river. It was built on the top
of a knoll overlooking the basin and ran parallel to the falls. About
a hundred feet from the manor house rose the roof of a saw mill, the
sluice of which was connected with the fall itself. Two hundred feet
from the mill, upon the crest of the fall, were sharply outlined the
remnants of a little island upon which, for ages, the spring floods
had spent their fury. Shorn of its former size--for it had once been a
peninsula--the islet was not now more than twelve feet square.
Of all the trees that had once adorned the spot there remained but a
single cedar. This veteran, which for so many years had braved the fury
of the equinoxes and the ice floods of South River, had half given way
before the relentless assaults. Its crown hung sadly over the abyss in
which it threatened soon to disappear. Several hundred feet from this
islet stood a grist mill, to the northwest of the fall.
Owing to a curve in the shore, the tremendous mass of ice which,
drawn by the fall, was darting down the river with frightful speed,
crowded all into the channel between the islet and the flour mill, the
sluice of which was demolished in a moment. Then the ice cakes, piling
themselves against the timbers to the height of the roof, ended by
crushing the mill itself as if it had been a house of cards. The ice
having taken this direction, the channel between the saw mill and the
island was comparatively free.
The crowd kept running along the bank and watching with horrified
interest the man whom nothing short of a miracle could save from a
hideous death. Indeed, up to within about thirty feet of the island,
Dumais was being carried farther and farther from his only hope of
rescue, when an enormous ice cake, dashing down with furious speed,
struck one corner of the piece on which he was sitting, and diverted
it violently from its course. It wheeled upon the little island and
came in contact with the ancient cedar, the only barrier between Dumais
and the abyss. The tree groaned under the shock; its top broke off and
vanished in the foam. Relieved of this weight, the old tree recovered
itself suddenly, and made ready for one more struggle against the
enemies it had so often conquered.
Dumais, thrown forward by the unexpected shock, clasped the trunk
of the cedar convulsively with both arms. Supporting himself on one
leg, he clung there desperately while the ice swayed and cracked and
threatened every instant to drag him from his frail support.
Nothing was lacking to the lurid and dreadful scene. The hurrying
torches on the shores threw a grim light on the ghastly features and
staring eyes of the poor wretch thus hanging by a hair above the gulf
of death. Unquestionably Dumais was brave, but in this position of
unspeakable horror he lost his self-control.
Marcheterre and his friends, however, still cherished a hope of saving
him.
Descrying on the shore near the saw mill two great pieces of squared
timber, they dragged these to a rock which projected into the river
about two hundred feet above the fall; to each of these timbers they
attached a cable and launched them forth, in hopes that the current
would carry them upon the island. Vain attempt! They could not thrust
them far enough out into the stream, and the timbers, anchored, as it
were, by the weight of the chains, kept swaying mid way between shore
and island.
It seemed impossible to add to the awful sublimity of the picture, but
on the shore was being enacted a most impressive scene. It was religion
preparing the Christian to appear before the dread tribunal; it was
religion supporting him to endure the final agony.
The parish priest, who had been at a sick bed, was now upon the
scene. He was a tall old man of ninety. The burden of years had not
availed to bend this modern Nestor, who had baptized and married all
his parishioners, and had buried three generations of them. His long
hair, white as snow and tossed by the night wind, made him look like a
prophet of old. He stood erect on the shore, his hands stretched out
to the miserable Dumais. He loved him; he had christened him; he had
prepared him for that significant rite of the Catholic Church which
seems suddenly to touch a child's nature with something of the angelic.
He loved him also as the husband of an orphan girl whom the old priest
had brought up. He loved him for the sake of his two little ones, who
were the joy of his old age. Standing there on the shore, like the
Angel of Pity, he not only administered the consolations of his sacred
office, but spoke to him tender words of love. He promised him that the
seigneur would never let his family come to want. Finally, seeing the
tree yield more and more before every shock, he cried in a loud voice,
broken with sobs: "My son, make me the 'Act of Contrition' and I will
give you absolution." A moment later, in a voice that rang clear above