Chapter XXXIV The Soul’s Supremer Sense

At this point it seems proper that I should once more speak in my own person; for at this point the story of my beloved once more converges to my own.

I was awakened out of a bitter dream by Marc’s lips moving at my ear in the stealthiest whisper. The first pallor of dawn was sifting down amongst us from the open hatch, opened for air. I nodded my head to signify I was awake and listening. There was a ringing gabble of small waves against the ship’s side, covering up all trivial sounds; and I knew we were tacking.

“Listen now, Paul,” said Marc’s obscure whisper, like a voice within my head. “We have made a beginning earlier than we planned, because the guards were sleepy, and the noise of these light waves favoured us. You knew, or guessed, we had a plan. That wily fox, La Mouche, brought a file with him in his boot. It was sent to him while he was in the chapel prison. Gr?l, 255none other, sent it to him inside a loaf of bread—and, faith, thereby came a broken tooth. Your Gr?l is wonderful, a deus ex machina every time. Well, we muffled the file in my shirt, and I scraped away, under cover of all this good noise, at the spring of La Mouche’s handcuffs, till it gave. Now he can slip them on and off in a twinkling; but to the eye of authority they are infrangible as ever. Oh, things are coming our way at last, for a change, my poor dejected! We will rise to-night, this very coming night, if all goes well; and the ship will be ours, for we are five to one.”

There was a thrill in his whisper, imperturbable Marc though he was. Under the long chafing of restraint his imperturbability had worn thin.

My own blood flowed with a sudden warmth at his words. Here was a near hope of freedom, and freedom would mean to me but one thing—a swift return to the neighbourhood where I might achieve to see Yvonne. I felt the strong medicine of this thought working health in every vein.

“But how to-night?” I whispered back, unwilling to be too soon sanguine. “It takes time to file fetters, n’est-ce pas?”

“Oh, but trust La Mouche!” replied Marc. “He understands those bracelets—as you, my cousin, in days you doubtless choose to forget, understood the more fragile, but scarce less fettering, 256ones affected by fair arms in Montreal, or Quebec, or even Trois Pistoles.”

I took it ill of my cousin to gall my sore at such a moment, but I strictly held my tongue; and after a vexing pause he went on:

“This wily La Mouche—with free hands and the knowing how, it is but a turn and a click, and the thing is off. It will be no mean weapon, too, when we’re ready to wield it.”

I stretched fiercely.

“Pray God it be to-night!” I muttered.

“S-sh-sh!” whispered Marc in my ear. “Not so loud, boy! Now, with this to dream on, go to sleep again. There’ll be something to keep us awake next night.”

“And when we’ve got the ship, what then?” I whispered, feeling no doubt of our success.

“We’ll run into the St. John mouth,” was the answer, “and then, leaving the women and children, with such men as will stay, at the Jemseg settlement, we will strike overland on snow-shoes for Quebec.”

“And I for Grand Pré,” said I doggedly.

I heard the ghost of a laugh flit from Marc’s lips.

“Good dog! Hold fast!” said he.

There was no gainsaying it. I was better. For perhaps an hour or two I slept like a baby, to awake deeply refreshed. A clear light came down 257the hatch, and there was a busy tramping of sailors overhead. It was high morning.

We were all awake, but silent. Sullen we might have seemed, and hopelessly submissive, but there was an alertness in the eyes flashing everywhere toward Marc and me, such as might have been warning to a folk less hardily indifferent than our captors. Two red-coated guards, taxed with the office of preventing conspiracy, paced up and down with their heads high and heeded us little. “What could these poor handcuffed wretches do, anyway?” was the palpable significance of their mien.

We desired indeed, at that time, to do nothing save eat the breakfast of weevilly biscuits just now served out to us, with good water still sweet from the wells of vanished Grand Pré. When one has hunger, there is rare relish in a weevilly biscuit; and I could have desired more of them than I got. With our fettered hands we ate like a colony of squirrels.

In the course of the morning it was not difficult, the guards being so heedless, to pass whispered word from one to another, so that soon all Marc’s plans were duly laid down. His was the devising and ordering head, while La Mouche, for all his subtlety, and long Philibert Trou, for all his craft, were but the wielded instruments. It was an unwonted part for me to be playing, this of blindly 258following another’s lead; but Marc had done well, seeing my heavy preoccupation, to make no great demand upon my wits. My arm, he knew, would be ready enough at need. I was not jealous. I wanted to fight the English; but I wanted to think—well, of just one thing on earth. Looking back now, I trust I would have been more useful to our cause that morning had not Marc’s capacity made wits of mine superfluous.

Throughout the morning we were all so quiet that the ship’s rats, lean and grey, came out and ate the few crumbs we had let drop. Nevertheless, ere an hour before noon every man knew the part he was to play in the venture of next night. Long Philibert and La Mouche, with two other Acadian woodsmen skilled in ambuscade, were to deal with the guard silently. Marc and I, with no stomach for aught but open warfare, were to lead the rush up through the hatchway, to an excellent chance of a bayonet through our gullets. I felt justified now, however, in considering as to whether I should be likely to find Yvonne still at Grand Pré, casting a ray of beauty on the ruins, or at Halifax, disturbing with her eyes the deliberations of the governor and his council.

I said—one hour before noon. About that time the speed of the ship sensibly slackened, and there seemed presently a confusion, an excitement of some sort upon deck. We heard hails and sharp 259orders. There was a sound as of people coming on board. And then, of a sudden, a strange trembling seized upon me. It was in every nerve and vein, and my heart shook merely, instead of beating. Such a feeling had come over me once before—when Yvonne’s eyes, turned upon me suddenly, seemed to say more than her lips would have permitted her to acknowledge. With a faint laugh at the very madness of it I could not but say to Marc:

“I think that is Yvonne coming!”

Whereupon he looked at me solicitously, as if he thought I was about to be taken with some sickness.

I bit my tongue for having said it.

Before many minutes, however, footsteps passed near the hatchway, and again the trembling took me. Then I caught a ripple of clear laughter—life has never afforded to my ears other melody so sweet as that laughter was, and is, and always will be. I sprang straight upon my feet, but instantly sat down again. Marc himself had heard it and was puzzled, for who that had ever heard the laughter of Yvonne de Lamourie could forget it?

“It—is she!” I said to him, in a thick voice.