MORE OF M. RADISSON’S RIVALS

So Ben Gillam must take M. Radisson aboard the Susan, or Garden, as she was called when she sailed different colours, the young fellow with a wry face, the Frenchman, all gaiety.  As the two leaders mounted the companion-ladder, hostages came towards the beach to join us.  I had scarce noticed them when one tugged at my sleeve, and I turned to look full in the faithful shy face of little Jack Battle.

“Jack!” I shouted, but he only wrung and wrung and wrung at my hand, emitting little gurgling laughs.

Then we linked arms and walked along the beach, where others could not hear.

“Where did you come from?” I demanded.

“Master Ben fished me up on the Grand Banks.  I was with the fleet.  It was after he met you off the straits; and here I be, Ramsay.”

“After he met us off the straits.”  I was trying to piece some connection between Gillam’s ship and the inland assailants.  “Jack, tell me!  How many days have you been here?”

“Three,” says Jack.  “Split me fore and aft if we’ve been a day more!”

It was four since that night in the bush.

“You could not build a fort in three days!”

“’Twas half-built when we came.”

“Who did that?  Is Captain Gillam stealing the Company’s furs for Ben?”

“No-o-o,” drawled Jack thoughtfully, “it aren’t that.  It are something else, I can’t make out.  Master Ben keeps firing and firing and firing his guns expecting some one to answer.”

“The Indians with the pelts,” I suggested.

“No-o-o,” answered Jack.  “Split me fore and aft if it’s Indians he wants!  He could send up river for them.  It’s some one as came from his father’s ship outside Boston when Master Ben sailed for the north and Captain Gillam was agoing home to England with Mistress Hortense in his ship.  When no answer comes to our firing, Master Ben takes to climbing the masthead and yelling like a fog-horn and dropping curses like hail and swearing he’ll shoot him as fails to keep appointment as he’d shoot a dog, if he has to track him inland a thousand leagues.  Split me fore and aft if he don’t!”

“Who shoot what?” I demanded, trying to extract some meaning from the jumbled narrative.

“That’s what I don’t know,” says Jack.

I fetched a sigh of despair.

“What’s the matter with your hand?  Does it hurt?” he asked quickly.

Poor Jack!  I looked into his faithful blue eyes.  There was not a shadow of deception there—­only the affection that gives without wishing to comprehend.  Should I tell him of the adventure?  But a loud halloo from Godefroy notified me that M. de Radisson was on the beach ready to launch.

“Almost waste work to go on fortifying,” he was warning Ben.

“You forget the danger from your own crews,” pleaded young Gillam.

“Pardieu!  We can easily arrange that.  I promise you never to approach with more than thirty of a guard.” (We were twenty-nine all told.) “But remember, don’t hoist a flag, don’t fire, don’t let your people leave the island.”