LEVASSEUR’S HEROICS

It would be somewhere about ten o’clock on the following morning, a full hour before the time appointed for sailing, when a canoe brought up alongside La Foudre, and a half-caste Indian stepped out of her and went up the ladder.  He was clad in drawers of hairy, untanned hide, and a red blanket served him for a cloak.  He was the bearer of a folded scrap of paper for Captain Levasseur.

The Captain unfolded the letter, sadly soiled and crumpled by contact with the half-caste’s person.  Its contents may be roughly translated thus: 

“My well-beloved — I am in the Dutch brig Jongvrow, which is about to sail.  Resolved to separate us for ever, my cruel father is sending me to Europe in my brother’s charge.  I implore you, come to my rescue.  Deliver me, my well-beloved hero! — Your desolated Madeleine, who loves you.”

The well-beloved hero was moved to the soul of him by that passionate appeal.  His scowling glance swept the bay for the Dutch brig, which he knew had been due to sail for Amsterdam with a cargo of hides and tobacco.

She was nowhere to be seen among the shipping in that narrow, rock-bound harbour.  He roared out the question in his mind.

In answer the half-caste pointed out beyond the frothing surf that marked the position of the reef constituting one of the stronghold’s main defences.  Away beyond it, a mile or so distant, a sail was standing out to sea.  “There she go,” he said.

“There!” The Frenchman gazed and stared, his face growing white.  The man’s wicked temper awoke, and turned to vent itself upon the messenger.  “And where have you been that you come here only now with this?  Answer me!”

The half-caste shrank terrified before his fury.  His explanation, if he had one, was paralyzed by fear.  Levasseur took him by the throat, shook him twice, snarling the while, then hurled him into the scuppers.  The man’s head struck the gunwale as he fell, and he lay there, quite still, a trickle of blood issuing from his mouth.

Levasseur dashed one hand against the other, as if dusting them.

“Heave that muck overboard,” he ordered some of those who stood idling in the waist.  “Then up anchor, and let us after the Dutchman.”

“Steady, Captain.  What’s that?” There was a restraining hand upon his shoulder, and the broad face of his lieutenant Cahusac, a burly, callous Breton scoundrel, was stolidly confronting him.

Levasseur made clear his purpose with a deal of unnecessary obscenity.

Cahusac shook his head.  “A Dutch brig!” said he.  “Impossible!  We should never be allowed.”

“And who the devil will deny us?” Levasseur was between amazement and fury.

“For one thing, there’s your own crew will be none too willing.  For another there’s Captain Blood.”

“I care nothing for Captain Blood....”

“But it is necessary that you should.  He has the power, the weight of metal and of men, and if I know him at all he’ll sink us before he’ll suffer interference with the Dutch.  He has his own views of privateering, this Captain Blood, as I warned you.”