The Sun of Quebec: A Story of a Great Crisis, Joseph A. Altsheler [good novels to read TXT] 📗

He broiled the steaks over a fine bed of coals in front of the house and ate them with bread that he baked himself from the ship's flour. He enjoyed his dinner and he was devoutly grateful for his escape. But how much pleasanter it would have been if Willet and Tayoga, those faithful comrades of many perils, were there with him to share it! He wondered what they were doing. Doubtless they had hunted for him long, and they had suspected and sought to trace Garay, but the cunning spy doubtless had fled from Albany immediately after his capture. Willet and Tayoga, failing to find him, would join in the great campaign which the British and Americans would certainly organize anew against Canada.

It was this thought of the campaign that was most bitter to Robert. He was heart and soul in the war, in which he believed mighty issues to be involved, and he had seen so much of it already that he wanted to be in it to the finish. When these feelings were strong upon him it was almost intolerable to be there upon the island, alone and helpless. All the world's great events were passing him by as if he did not exist. But the periods of gloom would not last long. Despite his new gravity, his cheerful, optimistic spirit remained, and it always pulled him away from the edge of despair.

Although he had an abundance of fresh meat, he went on a second hunt of the wild cattle in order to keep mind and body occupied. He wanted particularly to find the big bull that had knocked him down, and he knew that he would recognize him when he found him. He saw a herd grazing on the same little savanna by the[Pg 146] lake, but when he had stalked it with great care he found that it was not the one he wanted.

A search deeper into the hills revealed another herd, but still the wrong one. A second day's search disclosed the right group grazing in a snug little valley, and there was the big bull who had hurt so sorely his body and his pride. A half hour of creeping in the marsh grass and thickets and he was within easy range. Then he carefully picked out that spot on the bull's body beneath which his heart lay, cocked his rifle, took sure aim, and put his finger to the trigger.

But Robert did not pull that trigger. He merely wished to show to himself and to any invisible powers that might be looking on that he could lay the bull in the dust if he wished. If he wanted revenge for grievous personal injury it was his for the taking. But he did not want it. The bull was not to blame. He had merely been defending his own from a dangerous intruder and so was wholly within his rights.

"Now that I've held you under my muzzle you're safe from me, old fellow," were Robert's unspoken words.

He felt that his dignity was restored and that, at the same time, his sense of right had been maintained. Elated, he went back to the house and busied himself, arranging his possessions. They were so numerous that he was rather crowded, but he was not willing to give up anything. One becomes very jealous over his treasures when he knows the source of supplies may have been cut off forever. So he rearranged them, trying to secure for himself better method and more room, and he also gave them a more minute examination.

In a small chest which he had not opened before he found, to his great delight, a number of books, all the plays of Shakespeare, several by Beaumont and Fletcher,[Pg 147] others by Congreve and Marlowe, Monsieur Rollin's Ancient History, a copy of Telemachus, translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, Ovid, Horace, Virgil and other classics. Most of the books looked as if they had been read and he thought they might have belonged to the captain, but there was no inscription in any of them, and, on the other hand, they might have been taken from a captured ship.

With plenty of leisure and a mind driven in upon itself, Robert now read a great deal, and, as little choice was left to him, he read books that he might have ignored otherwise. Moreover, he thought well upon what he read. It seemed to him as he went over his Homer again and again that the gods were cruel. Men were made weak and fallible, and then they were punished because they failed or erred. The gods themselves were not at all exempt from the sins, or, rather, mistakes for which they punished men. He felt this with a special force when he read his Ovid. He thought, looking at it in a direct and straight manner, that Niobe had a right to be proud of her children, and for Apollo to slay them because of that pride was monstrous.

His mind also rebelled at his Virgil. He did not care much for the elderly lover, Æneas, who fled from Carthage and Dido, and when Æneas and his band came to Italy his sympathies were largely with Turnus, who tried to keep his country and the girl that really belonged to him. He was quite sure that something had been wrong in the mind of Virgil and that he ought to have chosen another kind of hero.

Shakespeare, whom he had been compelled to read at school, he now read of his own accord, and he felt his romance and poetry. But he lingered longer over the somewhat prosy ancient history of Monsieur Rollin. His[Pg 148] imaginative mind did not need much of a hint to attempt the reconstruction of old empires. But he felt that always in them too much depended upon one man. When an emperor fell an empire fell, when a king was killed a kingdom went down.

He applied many of the lessons from those old, old wars to the great war that was now raging, and he was confirmed in his belief that England and her colonies would surely triumph. The French monarchy, to judge from all that he had heard, was now in the state of one of those old oriental monarchies, decayed and rotten, spreading corruption from a poisoned center to all parts of the body. However brave and tenacious the French people might be, and he knew that none were more so, he was sure they could not prevail over the strength of free peoples like those who fought under the British flag, free to grow, whatever their faults might be. So, old Monsieur Rollin, who had brought tedium to many, brought refreshment and courage to Robert.

But he did not bury himself in books. He had been a creature of action too long for that. He hunted the wild cattle over the hills, and, now and then, taking the dinghy he hunted the sharks also. Whenever he found one he did not spare the bullets. His finger did not stop at the trigger, but pulled hard, and he rarely missed.

But in spite of reading and action, time dragged heavily. The old loneliness and desolation would return and they were hard to dispel. He could not keep from crying aloud at the cruelty of fate. He was young, so vital, so intensely alive, so anxious to be in the middle of things, that it was torture to be held there. Yet he was absolutely helpless. It would be folly to attempt escape in the little dinghy, and he must wait until a ship came. He would spend hours every day on the highest hill, watch[Pg 149]ing the horizon through his glasses for a ship, and then, bitter with disappointment, he would refuse to look again for a long time.

Whether his mind was up or down its essential healthiness and sanity held true. He always came back to the normal. Had he sought purposely to divest himself of hope he could not have done it. The ship was coming. Its coming was as certain as the rolling in of the tide, only one had to wait longer for it.

Yet time passed, and there was no sign of a sail on the horizon. His island was as lonely as if it were in the South Seas instead of the Atlantic. He began to suspect that it was not really a member of any group, but was a far flung outpost visited but rarely. Perhaps the war and its doubling the usual dangers of the sea would keep a ship of any kind whatever from visiting it. He refused to let the thought remain with him, suppressing it resolutely, and insisting to himself that such a pleasant little island was bound to have callers some time or other, some day.

But the weeks dragged by, and he was absolutely alone in his world. He had acquired so many stores from the schooner that life was comfortable. It even had a touch of luxury, and the struggle for existence was far from consuming all his hours. He found himself as time went on driven more and more upon his books, and he read them, as few have ever read anything, trying to penetrate everything and to draw from them the best lessons.

As a student, in a very real sense of the term, Robert became more reconciled to his isolation. His mind was broadening and deepening, and he felt that it was so. Many things that had before seemed a puzzle to him now became plain. He was compelled, despite his youth, to meditate upon life, and he resolved that when he took[Pg 150] up its thread again among his kind he would put his new knowledge to the best of uses.

He noted a growth of the body as well as of the mind. An abundant and varied diet and plenty of rest gave him a great physical stimulus. It seemed to him that he was taller, and he was certainly heavier. Wishing to profit to the utmost, and, having a natural neatness, he looked after himself with great care, bathing inside the reefs once every day, and, whether there was work to be done or not, taking plenty of exercise.

He lost count of the days, but he knew that he was far into the autumn, that in truth winter must have come in his own and distant north. That thought at times was almost maddening. Doubtless the snow was already falling on the peaks that had seen so many gallant exploits by his comrades and himself, and on George and Champlain, the lakes so beautiful and majestic under any aspect. Those were the regions he loved. When would he see them again? But such thoughts, too, he crushed and saw only the ship that was to take him back to his own.

Some change in the weather came, and he was aware that the winter of the south was at hand. Yet it was not cold. There was merely a fresh sparkle in the air, a new touch of crispness. Low, gray skies were a relief, after so much blazing sunshine, and the cool winds whipped his blood to new life. The house had a fireplace and chimney and often he built a low fire, not so much for the sake of warmth as for the cheer that the sparkling blaze gave. Then he could imagine that he was back in his beloved province of New York. Now the snow was certainly pouring down there. The lofty peaks were hidden in clouds of white, and the ice was forming around the edges of Andiatarocte and Oneadatote. Perhaps Willet and Tayoga were scouting in the snowy for[Pg 151]ests, but they must often hang over the blazing fires, too.

The coldness without, the blaze on the hearth, and the warmth within increased his taste for reading and his comprehension seemed to grow also. He found new meanings in the classics and he became saturated also with style. His were the gifts of an orator, and it was often said in after years, when he became truly great, that his speech, in words, in metaphor and in illustration followed, or at least were influenced, by the best models. Some people found in him traces of Shakespeare, the lofty imagery and poetry and the deep and wide knowledge of human emotions, of life itself. Others detected the mighty surge of Homer, or the flow of Virgil, and a few discerning minds found the wit shown in the comedies of the Restoration, from which he had unconsciously plucked the good, leaving the bad.

It is but a truth to say that every day he lived in these days he lived a week or maybe a month. The stillness, the utter absence of his kind, drove his mind inward with extraordinary force. He gained a breadth of vision and a power of penetration of which he had not dreamed. He acquired toleration, too. Looking over