The Ontario Readers Part 38

A prompt, decisive man, no breath Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!"

Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy Count such a summons less than joy?) Our buskins on our feet we drew; With mittened hands, and caps drawn low To guard our necks and ears from snow, We cut the solid whiteness through.

And, where the drift was deepest made A tunnel walled and overlaid With dazzling crystal: we had read Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, And to our own his name we gave, With many a wish the luck were ours To test his lamp's supernal powers.

We reached the barn with merry din, And roused the prisoned brutes within.

The old horse thrust his long head out, And grave with wonder gazed about; The c.o.c.k his l.u.s.ty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked; The horned patriarch of the sheep, Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.

WHITTIER: "Snow-bound."

THE HEROINE OF VERCHeRES

Vercheres was a fort on the south sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence, about twenty miles below Montreal. A strong block-house stood outside the fort, and was connected with it by a covered way. On the morning of the twenty-second of October, (1692) the inhabitants were at work in the fields, and n.o.body was left in the place but two soldiers, two boys, an old man of eighty, and a number of women and children. The commandant was on duty at Quebec; his wife was at Montreal; and their daughter, Madeline, fourteen years of age, was at the landing-place not far from the gate of the fort, with a man-servant.

Suddenly she heard firing from the direction where the settlers were at work, and an instant after the servant called out: "Run, miss!--run!

here come the Indians!" She turned and saw forty or fifty of them at the distance of a pistol-shot. She ran to the fort as quickly as possible, while the bullets whistled about her ears, and made the time seem very long. As soon as she was near enough to be heard, she cried out: "To arms!--to arms!" hoping that somebody would come out and help her; but it was of no use. The two soldiers in the fort were so scared that they had hidden in the block-house.

When she had seen certain breaches in the palisade stopped, she went to the block-house, where the ammunition was kept; and there she found the two soldiers, one hiding in a corner, and the other with a lighted match in his hand.

"What are you going to do with that match?" she asked. He answered: "Light the powder and blow us all up." "You are a miserable coward!"

said she. "Go out of this place." She then threw off her bonnet, put on a hat, and taking a gun in her hand she said to her two brothers: "Let us fight to the death. We are fighting for our country and our religion."

The boys, who were ten and twelve years old, aided by the soldiers, whom her words had inspired with some little courage, began to fire from the loop-holes on the Indians, who, ignorant of the weakness of the garrison, showed their usual reluctance to attack a fortified place, and occupied themselves with chasing and butchering the people in the neighbouring fields. Madeline ordered a cannon to be fired, partly to deter the enemy from an a.s.sault, and partly to warn some of the soldiers who were hunting at a distance.

A canoe was presently seen approaching the landing-place. In it was a settler named Fontaine, trying to reach the fort with his family. The Indians were still near; and Madeline feared that the new-comers would be killed, if something were not done to aid them. Distrusting the soldiers, she herself went alone to the landing-place.

"I thought," she said, in her account of the affair, "that the savages would suppose it to be a ruse to draw them towards the fort, in order to make a sortie upon them. They did suppose so; and thus I was able to save the Fontaine family. When they were all landed, I made them march before me in full sight of the enemy. We put so bold a face on it, that they thought they had more to fear than we. Strengthened by this reinforcement, I ordered that the enemy should be fired on whenever they showed themselves.

"After sunset a violent north-east wind began to blow, accompanied with snow and hail, which told us that we should have a terrible night. The Indians were all this time lurking about us; and I judged by all their movements that, instead of being deterred by the storm, they would climb into the fort under cover of darkness."

She then a.s.sembled her troops, who numbered six, all told, and spoke to them encouraging words. With two old men she took charge of the fort, and sent Fontaine and the two soldiers with the women and children to the block-house. She placed her two brothers on two of the bastions, and an old man on a third, while she herself took charge of the fourth. All night, in spite of wind, snow, and hail, the cry of "All's well" was kept up from the block-house to the fort, and from the fort to the block-house. One would have supposed that the place was full of soldiers. The Indians thought so, and were completely deceived, as they afterwards confessed.

At last the daylight came again; and as the darkness disappeared, the anxieties of the little garrison seemed to disappear with it. Fontaine said he would never abandon the place while Madeline remained in it. She declared that she would never abandon it: she would rather die than give it up to the enemy.

She did not eat or sleep for twice twenty-four hours. She did not go once into her father's house, but kept always on the bastion, except when she went to the block-house to see how the people there were behaving. She always kept a cheerful and smiling face, and encouraged her little company with the hope of speedy succour.

"We were a week in constant alarm," she continues, "with the enemy always about us. At last a lieutenant, sent by the governor, arrived in the night with forty men. As he did not know whether the fort was taken or not, he approached as silently as possible. One of our sentinels, hearing a slight sound, cried: 'Who goes there?' I was at the time dozing, with my head on a table and my gun lying across my arms. The sentinel told me that he heard voices from the river. I went at once to the bastion to see whether they were Indians or Frenchmen who were there. I asked: 'Who are you?' One of them answered: 'We are Frenchmen come to bring you help.'"

"I caused the gate to be opened, placed a sentinel there, and went down to the river to meet them. As soon as I saw the lieutenant I saluted him, and said: 'I surrender my arms to you.' He answered gallantly: 'They are in good hands, Miss.' He inspected the fort, and found everything in order, and a sentinel on each bastion. 'It is time to relieve them,' said I; 'we have not been off our bastions for a week.'"

A band of converts from St. Louis arrived soon afterwards, followed the trail of their heathen countrymen, overtook them on Lake Champlain, and recovered twenty or more French prisoners.

PARKMAN: "Frontenac and New France."

(Adapted)

JACQUES CARTIER

In the seaport of St. Malo, 'twas a smiling morn in May, When the Commodore Jacques Cartier to the westward sailed away; In the crowded old Cathedral, all the town were on their knees, For the safe return of kinsmen from the undiscovered seas; And every autumn blast that swept o'er pinnacle and pier, Filled manly hearts with sorrow, and gentle hearts with fear.

A year pa.s.sed o'er St. Malo--again came round the day, When the Commodore Jacques Cartier to the westward sailed away; But no tidings from the absent had come the way they went, And tearful were the vigils that many a maiden spent; And manly hearts were filled with gloom, and gentle hearts with fear, When no tidings came from Cartier at the closing of the year.

But the earth is as the Future, it hath its hidden side, And the Captain of St. Malo was rejoicing in his pride; In the forests of the North--while his townsmen mourned his loss-- He was rearing on Mount Royal the _fleur-de-lis_ and cross; And when two months were over, and added to the year, St. Malo hailed him home again, cheer answering to cheer.

He told them of a region, hard, iron-bound and cold, Nor seas of pearl abounded, nor mines of s.h.i.+ning gold; Where the wind from Thule freezes the word upon the lip, And the ice in spring comes sailing athwart the early s.h.i.+p; He told them of the frozen scene, until they thrilled with fear, And piled fresh fuel on the hearth to make them better cheer.

But when he changed the strain,--he told how soon is cast In early Spring, the fetters that hold the waters fast; How the Winter causeway, broken, is drifted out to sea, And the rills and rivers sing with pride the anthem of the free; How the magic wand of Summer clad the landscape to his eyes, Like the dry bones of the just when they wake in Paradise.

He told them of the Algonquin braves--the hunters of the wild; Of how the Indian mother in the forest rocks her child; Of how, poor souls, they fancy in every living thing A spirit good or evil, that claims their wors.h.i.+pping; Of how they brought their sick and maimed for him to breathe upon; And of the wonders wrought for them, thro' the Gospel of St. John.

He told them of the river, whose mighty current gave Its freshness for a hundred leagues to ocean's briny wave; He told them of the glorious scene presented to his sight, What time he reared the cross and crown on Hochelaga's height; And of the fortress cliff, that keeps of Canada the key;-- And they welcomed back Jacques Cartier from perils over sea.

THOMAS D'ARCY M'GEE

ANTS AND THEIR SLAVES

Peter Huber, the son of the noted observer of the ways and habits of bees, was walking one day in a field near Geneva, Switzerland, when he saw on the ground an army of reddish-coloured ants on the march. He decided to follow them and to find out, if possible, the object of their journey.

On the sides of the column, as if to keep it in order, a few of the insects sped to and fro. After marching for about a quarter of an hour, the army halted before an ant-hill, the home of a colony of small, black ants. These swarmed out to meet the red ones, and, to Huber's surprise, a combat, short but fierce, took place at the foot of the hill.

A small number of the blacks fought bravely to the last, but the rest soon fled, panic-stricken, through the gates farthest from the battle-field, carrying away some of their young. They seemed to know it was the young ants that the invaders were seeking. The red warriors quickly forced their way into the tiny city and returned, loaded with children of the blacks.

Carrying their living booty, the kidnappers left the pillaged town and started toward their home, whither Huber followed them. Great was his astonishment when, at the threshold of the red ants' dwelling, he saw numbers of black ants come forward to receive the young captives and to welcome them--children of their own race, doomed to be bond-servants in a strange land.

Here, then, was a miniature city, in which strong red ants lived in peace with small black ones. But what was the province of the latter?

Huber soon discovered that, in fact, these did all the work. They alone were able to build the houses in which both races lived; they alone brought up the young red ants and the captives of their own species; they alone gathered the supplies of food, and waited upon and fed their big masters, who were glad to have their little waiters feed them so attentively.

The masters themselves had no occupation except that of war. When not raiding some village of the blacks, the red soldiers did nothing but wander lazily about.

Huber wanted to learn what would be the result if the red ants found themselves without servants. Would the big creatures know how to supply their own needs? He put a few of the red insects in a gla.s.s case, having some honey in a corner. They did not go near it. They did not know enough to feed themselves. Some of them died of starvation, with food before them. Then he put into the case one black ant. It went straight to the honey, and with it fed its big, starving, silly masters. Here was a wonder, truly!

The little blacks exert in many things a moral force whose signs are plainly visible. For example, those tiny wise creatures will not give permission to any of the great red ones to go out alone. Nor are these at liberty to go out even in a body, if their small helpers fear a storm, or if the day is far advanced. When a raid proves fruitless, the soldiers coming back without any living booty are forbidden by the blacks to enter the city, and are ordered to attack some other village.

Not wis.h.i.+ng to rely entirely on his own conclusions, Huber asked one of the great naturalists of Switzerland, Jurine, to decide whether or not mistakes had been made regarding these customs of the ants. This witness, and indeed others, found that Huber's reports were true.

"Yet, after all," says Huber, "I still doubted. But on a later day I again saw in the park of Fontainebleau, near Paris, the same workings of ant life and wisdom. A well-known naturalist was with me then, and his conclusions were the same as mine.

"It was half-past four in the afternoon of a very warm day. From a pile of stones there came forth a column of about five hundred reddish ants.