Earth's Enigmas Part 11

Meanwhile, what had become of Jamie?

The wind had made him drowsy, and before he had been many minutes curled up in the tub, he was sound asleep.

When the dike gave way, some distance from Jamie's queer retreat, there came suddenly a great rush of water among the tubs, and some were straightway floated off. Then others a little heavier followed, one by one; and, last of all, the heaviest, that containing Jamie and his fortunes. The water rose rapidly, but back here there came no waves, and the child slept as peacefully as if at home in his crib. Little the Captain thought, when his eyes wandered over the floating tubs, that the one nearest to him was freighted with his heart's treasure! And well it was that Jamie did not hear his shouts and wake! Had he done so, he would have at once sprung to his feet and been tipped out into the flood.

By this time the great tide had reached its height. Soon it began to recede, but slowly, for the storm kept the waters gathered, as it were, into a heap at the head of the bay. All night the wind raged on, wrecking the smacks and schooners along the coast, breaking down the dikes in a hundred places, flooding all the marshes, and drowning many cattle in the salt pastures. All night the Captain, hopeless and mute in his agony of grief, lay clutching the gra.s.ses on the dike-top, not noticing when at length the waves ceased to drench him with their spray.

All night, too, slept Jamie in his tub.

Right across the marsh the strange craft drifted before the wind, never getting into the region where the waves were violent. Such motion as there was--and at times it was somewhat lively--seemed only to lull the child to a sounder slumber. Toward daybreak the tub grounded at the foot of the uplands, not far from the edge of the road. The waters gradually slunk away, as if ashamed of their wild vagaries. And still the child slept on.

As the light broke over the bay, coldly pink and desolately gleaming, Captain Joe got up and looked about him. His eyes were tearless, but his face was gray and hard, and deep lines had stamped themselves across it during the night.

Seeing that the marshes were again uncovered, save for great shallow pools left here and there, he set out to find the body of his boy. After wandering aimlessly for perhaps an hour, the Captain began to study the direction in which the wind had been blowing. This was almost exactly with the road which led to his home on the uplands. As he noticed this, a wave of pity crossed his heart, at thought of the terrible anxiety his father and mother had all that night been enduring. Then in an instant there seemed to unroll before him the long, slow years of the desolation of that home without Jamie.

All this time he was moving along the soaked road, scanning the marsh in every direction. When he had covered about half the distance, he was aware of his father, hastening with feeble eagerness to meet him.

The night of watching had made the old man haggard, but his face lit up at sight of his son. As he drew near, however, and saw no sign of Jamie, and marked the look upon the Captain's face, the gladness died out as quickly as it had come. When the two men met, the elder put out his hand in silence, and the younger clasped it. There was no room for words.

Side by side the two walked slowly homeward. With restless eyes, ever dreading lest they should find that which they sought, the father and son looked everywhere,--except in a certain old fish-tub which they pa.s.sed. The tub stood a little to one side of the road. Just at this time a sparrow lit on the tub's edge, and uttered a loud and startled chirp at sight of the sleeping child. As the bird flew off precipitately, Jamie opened his eyes, and gazed up in astonishment at the blue sky over his head. He stretched out his hand and felt the rough sides of the tub. Then, in complete bewilderment, he clambered to his feet. Why, there was his father, walking away somewhere without him! And grandpapa, too! Jamie felt aggrieved.

"Pap!" he cried, in a loud but tearful voice, "where you goin' to?"

A great wave of light seemed to break across the landscape, as the two men turned and saw the little golden head s.h.i.+ning, dishevelled, over the edge of the tub. The Captain caught his breath with a sort of sob, and rushed to s.n.a.t.c.h the little one in his arms; while the grandfather fell on his knees in the road, and his trembling lips moved silently.

Strayed.

In the Cabineau Camp, of unlucky reputation, there was a young ox of splendid build, but of a wild and restless nature.

He was one of a yoke, of part Devon blood, large, dark-red, all muscle and nerve, and with wide magnificent horns. His yoke-fellow was a docile steady worker, the pride of his owner's heart; but he himself seemed never to have been more than half broken in. The woods appeared to draw him by some spell. He wanted to get back to the pastures where he had roamed untrammelled of old with his fellow-steers. The remembrance was in his heart of the dewy mornings when the herd used to feed together on the sweet gra.s.sy hillocks, and of the clover-smelling heats of June when they would gather hock-deep in the pools under the green willow-shadows.

He hated the yoke, he hated the winter; and he imagined that in the wild pastures he remembered it would be for ever summer. If only he could get back to those pastures!

One day there came the longed-for opportunity; and he seized it. He was standing unyoked beside his mate, and none of the teamsters were near.

His head went up in the air, and with a snort of triumph he dashed away through the forest.

For a little while there was a vain pursuit. At last the lumbermen gave it up. "Let him be!" said his owner, "an' I rayther guess he'll turn up agin when he gits peckish. He kaint browse on spruce buds an'

lung-wort."

Plunging on with long gallop through the snow he was soon miles from camp. Growing weary he slackened his pace. He came down to a walk. As the lonely red of the winter sunset began to stream through the openings of the forest, flus.h.i.+ng the snows of the tiny glades and swales, he grew hungry, and began to swallow unsatisfying mouthfuls of the long moss which roughened the tree-trunks. Ere the moon got up he had filled himself with this fodder, and then he lay down in a little thicket for the night.

But some miles back from his retreat a bear had chanced upon his foot-prints. A strayed steer! That would be an easy prey. The bear started straightway in pursuit. The moon was high in heaven when the crouched ox heard his pursuer's approach. He had no idea what was coming, but he rose to his feet and waited.

The bear plunged boldly into the thicket, never dreaming of resistance.

With a m.u.f.fled roar the ox charged upon him and bore him to the ground.

Then he wheeled, and charged again, and the astonished bear was beaten at once. Gored by those keen horns he had no stomach for further encounter, and would fain have made his escape; but as he retreated the ox charged him again, das.h.i.+ng him against a huge trunk. The bear dragged himself up with difficulty, beyond his opponent's reach; and the ox turned scornfully back to his lair.

At the first yellow of dawn the restless creature was again upon the march. He pulled more mosses by the way, but he disliked them the more intensely now because he thought he must be nearing his ancient pastures with their tender gra.s.s and their streams. The snow was deeper about him, and his hatred of the winter grew apace. He came out upon a hillside, partly open, whence the pine had years before been stripped, and where now grew young birches thick together. Here he browsed on the aromatic twigs, but for him it was harsh fare.

As his hunger increased he thought a little longingly of the camp he had deserted, but he dreamed not of turning back. He would keep on till he reached his pastures, and the glad herd of his comrades licking salt out of the trough beside the accustomed pool. He had some blind instinct as to his direction, and kept his course to the south very strictly, the desire in his heart continually leading him aright.

That afternoon he was attacked by a panther, which dropped out of a tree and tore his throat. He dashed under a low branch and sc.r.a.ped his a.s.sailant off, then, wheeling about savagely, put the brute to flight with his first mad charge. The panther sprang back into his tree, and the ox continued his quest.

Soon his steps grew weaker, for the panther's cruel claws had gone deep into his neck, and his path was marked with blood. Yet the dream in his great wild eyes was not dimmed as his strength ebbed away. His weakness he never noticed or heeded. The desire that was urging him absorbed all other thoughts,--even, almost, his sense of hunger. This, however, it was easy for him to a.s.suage, after a fas.h.i.+on, for the long, gray, unnouris.h.i.+ng mosses were abundant.

By and by his path led him into the bed of a stream, whose waters could be heard faintly tinkling on thin pebbles beneath their coverlet of ice and snow. His slow steps conducted him far along this open course. Soon after he had disappeared, around a curve in the distance there came the panther, following stealthily upon his crimsoned trail. The crafty beast was waiting till the bleeding and the hunger should do its work, and the object of its inexorable pursuit should have no more heart left for resistance.

This was late in the afternoon. The ox was now possessed with his desire, and would not lie down for any rest. All night long, through the gleaming silver of the open s.p.a.ces, through the weird and checkered gloom of the deep forest, heedless even of his hunger, or perhaps driven the more by it as he thought of the wild clover bunches and tender timothy awaiting him, the solitary ox strove on. And all night, lagging far behind in his unabating caution, the panther followed him.

At sunrise the worn and stumbling animal came out upon the borders of the great lake, stretching its leagues of unshadowed snow away to the south before him. There was his path, and without hesitation he followed it. The wide and frost-bound water here and there had been swept clear of its snows by the wind, but for the most part its covering lay unruffled; and the pale dove-colors, and saffrons, and rose-lilacs of the dawn were sweetly reflected on its surface.

The doomed ox was now journeying very slowly, and with the greatest labor. He staggered at every step, and his beautiful head drooped almost to the snow. When he had got a great way out upon the lake, at the forest's edge appeared the pursuing panther, emerging cautiously from the coverts. The round tawny face and malignant green eyes were raised to peer out across the expanse. The laboring progress of the ox was promptly marked. Dropping its nose again to the ensanguined snow, the beast resumed his pursuit, first at a slow trot, and then at a long, elastic gallop. By this time the ox's quest was nearly done. He plunged forward upon his knees, rose again with difficulty, stood still, and looked around him. His eyes were clouding over, but he saw, dimly, the tawny brute that was now hard upon his steps. Back came a flash of the old courage, and he turned, horns lowered, to face the attack. With the last of his strength he charged, and the panther paused irresolutely; but the wanderer's knees gave way beneath his own impetus, and his horns ploughed the snow. With a deep bellowing groan he rolled over on his side, and the longing, and the dream of the pleasant pastures, faded from his eyes. With a great spring the panther was upon him, and the eager teeth were at his throat,--but he knew nought of it. No wild beast, but his own desire, had conquered him.

When the panther had slaked his thirst for blood, he raised his head, and stood with his fore-paws resting on the dead ox's side, and gazed all about him.

To one watching from the lake sh.o.r.e, had there been any one to watch in that solitude, the wild beast and his prey would have seemed but a speck of black on the gleaming waste. At the same hour, league upon league back in the depth of the ancient forest, a lonely ox was lowing in his stanchions, restless, refusing to eat, grieving for the absence of his yoke-fellow.

The Eye of Gluskap.

I.

It was close upon high tide, and the creek that wound in through the diked marshes was rapidly filling to the brim with the swirling, cold, yellow-gray waters of Minas. The sun, but half risen, yet lingered on the wooded crest of the Gaspereau hills; while above hung a dappled sky of pink and pale amber and dove-color. A yellow light streamed sharply down across the frost-whitened meadows, the smouldering ruins of Grand Pre village, and out upon the glittering expanse of Minas Basin. The beams tinged brightly the cordage and half-furled sails of two s.h.i.+ps that rode at anchor in the Basin, near the sh.o.r.e. With a pitilessly revealing whiteness the rays descended on the mournful encampment at the creek's mouth, where a throng of Acadian peasants were getting ready to embark for exile.

"Late grew the year, and stormy was the sea."

Already had five s.h.i.+ps sailed away with their sorrowful freight, disappearing around the towering front of Blomidon, from the straining eyes of friends and kinsfolk left behind. Another s.h.i.+p would sail out with the next ebb, and all was sad confusion and unwilling haste till the embarkation should be accomplished. The s.h.i.+p's boats were loaded down with rude household stuff, and boxes full of homespun linens and woollens.

Children were crying with the cold, and a few women were weeping silently; but the partings which had succeeded each other at intervals throughout the last few weeks had dulled the edge of anguish, and most of the Acadians wore an air of heavy resignation. The New England soldiers on guard gave what help they could, but sullenly; for they were weary of the misery that they had so long been forced to watch.

The people were huddled on a little patch of marsh within a curve of the dike. Beyond the dike there spread a stretch of reddish brown salt-flats, covered with water only at the highest spring-tides, and now meagrely sprinkled with sharp-edged blades and tufts of the gray salt-gra.s.ses. The flats were soft between the bunches of the gra.s.s, and a broad track was trampled into mire by the pa.s.sing down of many feet from the dike's edge to the boats.

In a work like this there are always a thousand unlooked-for delays, and before half the embarkation was effected the tide had reached the full, and paused and turned to ebb. As the strip of s.h.i.+ning red mud began to widen between the gra.s.ses and the water's edge, the bustle and confusion increased. Sometimes a woman who had already stepped into the boat, thinking that her people had preceded her, would spring over the side into the shallow water, and rush, sobbing with anxious fear, back to the encampment. Sometimes a child would lose sight of its father or mother in the press, and lift its shrill voice in a wail of desolation which found piteous echo in every Acadian heart.

Lower and lower fell the tide. The current was now thick and red with the mud which it was dragging from the flats to re-deposit on some crescent shoal at the mouth of the Canard or Piziquid. Over the dike and down toward the waiting boats came an old man, bent with years, supported by his son and his son's wife a middle-aged couple. The decrepit figure in its quaint Acadian garb was one to be remembered. Old Remi Corveau was a man of means among the Acadian peasants. His feet were incased in high-top moccasins of vividly embroidered moose-hide, and his legs in gaiters, or _mita.s.ses_, of dark blue woollen homespun, laced with strips of red cloth. His coat was a long and heavy garment of homespun blanket, dyed to a yellowish brown with many decoctions of a plant which the country-folk now know as "yaller-weed." A cap of coa.r.s.e sealskin covered his head, and was tied beneath his chin with a woollen scarf of dull red. The old man clutched his stick in his mittened right hand, muttering to himself, and seemed but half aware of what was going on. When he came to the edge of the wet, red clay, however, he straightened himself and looked about him. He gazed at the boats and at the anch.o.r.ed s.h.i.+ps beyond. A light of sudden intelligence flashed into his feeble eyes. He turned half round and looked back upon the ruined village, while his son and daughter paused respectfully.

"Hurry along there now," exclaimed one of the guards, impatiently; and the Acadian couple, understanding the tone and gesture, pulled at their father's arms to lead him into the boat. The old man's eyes flamed wildly, and crying, "_J'ne veux pas! j'ne veux pas!_" he broke from them and struggled back toward the dike. Instantly his son overtook him, picked him up in his arms, and carried him, now sobbing feebly, down to the boat, where he laid him on a pile of blankets. As the laden craft moved slowly toward the s.h.i.+p the old man's complainings ceased. When they went to hoist him over the s.h.i.+p's side they discovered that he was dead.

And now the very last boatload was well-nigh ready to start. The parish priest, who was staying behind to sail with the next and final s.h.i.+p, was bidding his sad farewells. A young woman drew near the boat, but hardly seemed to see the priest's kind face of greeting, so anxiously was she fumbling in the depths of a small bag which she carried on her arm.

The bag was of yellow caribou-skin, worked by Indian fingers in many-colored designs of dyed porcupine quills.

"What's the matter, Marie, my child?" inquired the priest, gently. "Hast thou lost something more, besides thy country and thy father's house?"