The Master of Ballantrae

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We awaked the next morning very early, and began with a sullen
spirit a conversation that came near to end in blows. We were now
cast on shore in the southern provinces, thousands of miles from
any French settlement; a dreadful journey and a thousand perils lay
in front of us; and sure, if there was ever need for amity, it was
in such an hour. I must suppose that Ballantrae had suffered in
his sense of what is truly polite; indeed, and there is nothing
strange in the idea, after the sea-wolves we had consorted with so
long; and as for myself, he fubbed me off unhandsomely, and any
gentleman would have resented his behaviour.

I told him in what light I saw his conduct; he walked a little off,
I following to upbraid him; and at last he stopped me with his
hand.

"Frank," says he, "you know what we swore; and yet there is no oath
invented would induce me to swallow such expressions, if I did not
regard you with sincere affection. It is impossible you should
doubt me there: I have given proofs. Dutton I had to take,
because he knew the pass, and Grady because Dutton would not move
without him; but what call was there to carry you along? You are a
perpetual danger to me with your cursed Irish tongue. By rights
you should now be in irons in the cruiser. And you quarrel with me
like a baby for some trinkets!"

I considered this one of the most unhandsome speeches ever made;
and indeed to this day I can scarce reconcile it to my notion of a
gentleman that was my friend. I retorted upon him with his Scotch
accent, of which he had not so much as some, but enough to be very
barbarous and disgusting, as I told him plainly; and the affair
would have gone to a great length, but for an alarming
intervention.

We had got some way off upon the sand. The place where we had
slept, with the packets lying undone and the money scattered
openly, was now between us and the pines; and it was out of these
the stranger must have come. There he was at least, a great
hulking fellow of the country, with a broad axe on his shoulder,
looking open-mouthed, now at the treasure, which was just at his
feet, and now at our disputation, in which we had gone far enough
to have weapons in our hands. We had no sooner observed him than
he found his legs and made off again among the pines.

This was no scene to put our minds at rest: a couple of armed men
in sea-clothes found quarrelling over a treasure, not many miles
from where a pirate had been captured - here was enough to bring
the whole country about our ears. The quarrel was not even made
up; it was blotted from our minds; and we got our packets together
in the twinkling of an eye, and made off, running with the best
will in the world. But the trouble was, we did not know in what
direction, and must continually return upon our steps. Ballantrae
had indeed collected what he could from Dutton; but it's hard to
travel upon hearsay; and the estuary, which spreads into a vast
irregular harbour, turned us off upon every side with a new stretch
of water.

We were near beside ourselves, and already quite spent with
running, when, coming to the top of a dune, we saw we were again
cut off by another ramification of the bay. This was a creek,
however, very different from those that had arrested us before;
being set in rocks, and so precipitously deep that a small vessel
was able to lie alongside, made fast with a hawser; and her crew
had laid a plank to the shore. Here they had lighted a fire, and
were sitting at their meal. As for the vessel herself, she was one
of those they build in the Bermudas.

The love of gold and the great hatred that everybody has to pirates
were motives of the most influential, and would certainly raise the
country in our pursuit. Besides, it was now plain we were on some
sort of straggling peninsula, like the fingers of a hand; and the
wrist, or passage to the mainland, which we should have taken at
the first, was by this time not improbably secured. These
considerations put us on a bolder counsel. For as long as we
dared, looking every moment to hear sounds of the chase, we lay
among some bushes on the top of the dune; and having by this means
secured a little breath and recomposed our appearance, we strolled
down at last, with a great affectation of carelessness, to the
party by the fire.

It was a trader and his negroes, belonging to Albany, in the
province of New York, and now on the way home from the Indies with
a cargo; his name I cannot recall. We were amazed to learn he had
put in here from terror of the SARAH; for we had no thought our
exploits had been so notorious. As soon as the Albanian heard she
had been taken the day before, he jumped to his feet, gave us a cup
of spirits for our good news, and sent big negroes to get sail on
the Bermudan. On our side, we profited by the dram to become more
confidential, and at last offered ourselves as passengers. He
looked askance at our tarry clothes and pistols, and replied
civilly enough that he had scarce accommodation for himself; nor
could either our prayers or our offers of money, in which we
advanced pretty far, avail to shake him.

"I see, you think ill of us," says Ballantrae, "but I will show you
how well we think of you by telling you the truth. We are Jacobite
fugitives, and there is a price upon our heads."

At this, the Albanian was plainly moved a little. He asked us many
questions as to the Scotch war, which Ballantrae very patiently
answered. And then, with a wink, in a vulgar manner, "I guess you
and your Prince Charlie got more than you cared about," said he.

"Bedad, and that we did," said I. "And, my dear man, I wish you
would set a new example and give us just that much."

This I said in the Irish way, about which there is allowed to be
something very engaging. It's a remarkable thing, and a testimony
to the love with which our nation is regarded, that this address
scarce ever fails in a handsome fellow. I cannot tell how often I
have seen a private soldier escape the horse, or a beggar wheedle
out a good alms by a touch of the brogue. And, indeed, as soon as
the Albanian had laughed at me I was pretty much at rest. Even
then, however, he made many conditions, and - for one thing - took
away our arms, before he suffered us aboard; which was the signal
to cast off; so that in a moment after, we were gliding down the
bay with a good breeze, and blessing the name of God for our
deliverance. Almost in the mouth of the estuary, we passed the
cruiser, and a little after the poor SARAH with her prize crew; and
these were both sights to make us tremble. The Bermudan seemed a
very safe place to be in, and our bold stroke to have been
fortunately played, when we were thus reminded of the case of our
companions. For all that, we had only exchanged traps, jumped out
of the frying-pan into the fire, ran from the yard-arm to the
block, and escaped the open hostility of the man-of-war to lie at
the mercy of the doubtful faith of our Albanian merchant.

From many circumstances, it chanced we were safer than we could
have dared to hope. The town of Albany was at that time much
concerned in contraband trade across the desert with the Indians
and the French. This, as it was highly illegal, relaxed their
loyalty, and as it brought them in relation with the politest
people on the earth, divided even their sympathies. In short, they
were like all the smugglers in the world, spies and agents ready-
made for either party. Our Albanian, besides, was a very honest
man indeed, and very greedy; and, to crown our luck, he conceived a
great delight in our society. Before we had reached the town of
New York we had come to a full agreement, that he should carry us
as far as Albany upon his ship, and thence put us on a way to pass
the boundaries and join the French. For all this we were to pay at
a high rate; but beggars cannot be choosers, nor outlaws
bargainers.

We sailed, then, up the Hudson River, which, I protest, is a very
fine stream, and put up at the "King's Arms" in Albany. The town
was full of the militia of the province, breathing slaughter
against the French. Governor Clinton was there himself, a very
busy man, and, by what I could learn, very near distracted by the
factiousness of his Assembly. The Indians on both sides were on
the war-path; we saw parties of them bringing in prisoners and
(what was much worse) scalps, both male and female, for which they
were paid at a fixed rate; and I assure you the sight was not
encouraging. Altogether, we could scarce have come at a period
more unsuitable for our designs; our position in the chief inn was
dreadfully conspicuous; our Albanian fubbed us off with a thousand
delays, and seemed upon the point of a retreat from his
engagements; nothing but peril appeared to environ the poor
fugitives, and for some time we drowned our concern in a very
irregular course of living.

This, too, proved to be fortunate; and it's one of the remarks that
fall to be made upon our escape, how providentially our steps were
conducted to the very end. What a humiliation to the dignity of
man! My philosophy, the extraordinary genius of Ballantrae, our
valour, in which I grant that we were equal - all these might have
proved insufficient without the Divine blessing on our efforts.
And how true it is, as the Church tells us, that the Truths of
Religion are, after all, quite applicable even to daily affairs!
At least, it was in the course of our revelry that we made the
acquaintance of a spirited youth by the name of Chew. He was one
of the most daring of the Indian traders, very well acquainted with
the secret paths of the wilderness, needy, dissolute, and, by a
last good fortune, in some disgrace with his family. Him we
persuaded to come to our relief; he privately provided what was
needful for our flight, and one day we slipped out of Albany,
without a word to our former friend, and embarked, a little above,
in a canoe.

To the toils and perils of this journey, it would require a pen
more elegant than mine to do full justice. The reader must
conceive for himself the dreadful wilderness which we had now to
thread; its thickets, swamps, precipitous rocks, impetuous rivers,
and amazing waterfalls. Among these barbarous scenes we must toil
all day, now paddling, now carrying our canoe upon our shoulders;
and at night we slept about a fire, surrounded by the howling of
wolves and other savage animals. It was our design to mount the
headwaters of the Hudson, to the neighbourhood of Crown Point,
where the French had a strong place in the woods, upon Lake
Champlain. But to have done this directly were too perilous; and
it was accordingly gone upon by such a labyrinth of rivers, lakes,
and portages as makes my head giddy to remember. These paths were
in ordinary times entirely desert; but the country was now up, the
tribes on the war-path, the woods full of Indian scouts. Again and
again we came upon these parties when we least expected, them; and
one day, in particular, I shall never forget, how, as dawn was
coming in, we were suddenly surrounded by five or six of these
painted devils, uttering a very dreary sort of cry, and brandishing
their hatchets. It passed off harmlessly, indeed, as did the rest
of our encounters; for Chew was well known and highly valued among
the different tribes. Indeed, he was a very gallant, respectable
young man; but even with the advantage of his companionship, you
must not think these meetings were without sensible peril. To
prove friendship on our part, it was needful to draw upon our stock
of rum - indeed, under whatever disguise, that is the true business
of the Indian trader, to keep a travelling public-house in the
forest; and when once the braves had got their bottle of SCAURA (as
they call this beastly liquor), it behoved us to set forth and
paddle for our scalps. Once they were a little drunk, goodbye to
any sense or decency; they had but the one thought, to get more
SCAURA. They might easily take it in their heads to give us chase,
and had we been overtaken, I had never written these memoirs.

We were come to the most critical portion of our course, where we
might equally expect to fall into the hands of French or English,
when a terrible calamity befell us. Chew was taken suddenly sick
with symptoms like those of poison, and in the course of a few
hours expired in the bottom of the canoe. We thus lost at once our
guide, our interpreter, our boatman, and our passport, for he was
all these in one; and found ourselves reduced, at a blow, to the
most desperate and irremediable distress. Chew, who took a great
pride in his knowledge, had indeed often lectured us on the
geography; and Ballantrae, I believe, would listen. But for my
part I have always found such information highly tedious; and
beyond the fact that we were now in the country of the Adirondack
Indians, and not so distant from our destination, could we but have
found the way, I was entirely ignorant. The wisdom of my course
was soon the more apparent; for with all his pains, Ballantrae was
no further advanced than myself. He knew we must continue to go up
one stream; then, by way of a portage, down another; and then up a
third. But you are to consider, in a mountain country, how many
streams come rolling in from every hand. And how is a gentleman,
who is a perfect stranger in that part of the world, to tell any
one of them from any other? Nor was this our only trouble. We
were great novices, besides, in handling a canoe; the portages were
almost beyond our strength, so that I have seen us sit down in
despair for half an hour at a time without one word; and the
appearance of a single Indian, since we had now no means of
speaking to them, would have been in all probability the means of
our destruction. There is altogether some excuse if Ballantrae
showed something of a grooming disposition; his habit of imputing
blame to others, quite as capable as himself, was less tolerable,
and his language it was not always easy to accept. Indeed, he had
contracted on board the pirate ship a manner of address which was
in a high degree unusual between gentlemen; and now, when you might
say he was in a fever, it increased upon him hugely.

The third day of these wanderings, as we were carrying the canoe
upon a rocky portage, she fell, and was entirely bilged. The
portage was between two lakes, both pretty extensive; the track,
such as it was, opened at both ends upon the water, and on both
hands was enclosed by the unbroken woods; and the sides of the
lakes were quite impassable with bog: so that we beheld ourselves
not only condemned to go without our boat and the greater part of
our provisions, but to plunge at once into impenetrable thickets
and to desert what little guidance we still had - the course of the
river. Each stuck his pistols in his belt, shouldered an axe, made
a pack of his treasure and as much food as he could stagger under;
and deserting the rest of our possessions, even to our swords,
which would have much embarrassed us among the woods, we set forth
on this deplorable adventure. The labours of Hercules, so finely
described by Homer, were a trifle to what we now underwent. Some
parts of the forest were perfectly dense down to the ground, so
that we must cut our way like mites in a cheese. In some the
bottom was full of deep swamp, and the whole wood entirely rotten.
I have leaped on a great fallen log and sunk to the knees in
touchwood; I have sought to stay myself, in falling, against what
looked to be a solid trunk, and the whole thing has whiffed away at
my touch like a sheet of paper. Stumbling, falling, bogging to the
knees, hewing our way, our eyes almost put out with twigs and
branches, our clothes plucked from our bodies, we laboured all day,
and it is doubtful if we made two miles. What was worse, as we
could rarely get a view of the country, and were perpetually
justled from our path by obstacles, it was impossible even to have
a guess in what direction we were moving.

A little before sundown, in an open place with a stream, and set
about with barbarous mountains, Ballantrae threw down his pack. "I
will go no further," said he, and bade me light the fire, damning
my blood in terms not proper for a chairman.

I told him to try to forget he had ever been a pirate, and to
remember he had been a gentleman.

"Are you mad?" he cried. "Don't cross me here! And then, shaking
his fist at the hills, "To think," cries he, "that I must leave my
bones in this miserable wilderness! Would God I had died upon the
scaffold like a gentleman!" This he said ranting like an actor;
and then sat biting his fingers and staring on the ground, a most
unchristian object.

I took a certain horror of the man, for I thought a soldier and a
gentleman should confront his end with more philosophy. I made him
no reply, therefore, in words; and presently the evening fell so
chill that I was glad, for my own sake, to kindle a fire. And yet
God knows, in such an open spot, and the country alive with
savages, the act was little short of lunacy. Ballantrae seemed
never to observe me; but at last, as I was about parching a little
corn, he looked up.

"Have you ever a brother?" said be.

"By the blessing of Heaven," said I, "not less than five."

"I have the one," said he, with a strange voice; and then
presently, "He shall pay me for all this," he added. And when I
asked him what was his brother's part in our distress, "What!" he
cried, "he sits in my place, he bears my name, he courts my wife;
and I am here alone with a damned Irishman in this tooth-chattering
desert! Oh, I have been a common gull!" he cried.

The explosion was in all ways so foreign to my friend's nature that
I was daunted out of all my just susceptibility. Sure, an
offensive expression, however vivacious, appears a wonderfully
small affair in circumstances so extreme! But here there is a
strange thing to be noted. He had only once before referred to the
lady with whom he was contracted. That was when we came in view of
the town of New York, when he had told me, if all had their rights,
he was now in sight of his own property, for Miss Graeme enjoyed a
large estate in the province. And this was certainly a natural
occasion; but now here she was named a second time; and what is
surely fit to be observed, in this very month, which was November,
'47, and I BELIEVE UPON THAT VERY DAY AS WE SAT AMONG THESE
BARBAROUS MOUNTAINS, his brother and Miss Graeme were married. I
am the least superstitious of men; but the hand of Providence is
here displayed too openly not to be remarked. (5)

The next day, and the next, were passed in similar labours;
Ballantrae often deciding on our course by the spinning of a coin;
and once, when I expostulated on this childishness, he had an odd
remark that I have never forgotten. "I know no better way," said
he, "to express my scorn of human reason." I think it was the
third day that we found the body of a Christian, scalped and most
abominably mangled, and lying in a pudder of his blood; the birds
of the desert screaming over him, as thick as flies. I cannot
describe how dreadfully this sight affected us; but it robbed me of
all strength and all hope for this world. The same day, and only a
little after, we were scrambling over a part of the forest that had
been burned, when Ballantrae, who was a little ahead, ducked
suddenly behind a fallen trunk. I joined him in this shelter,
whence we could look abroad without being seen ourselves; and in
the bottom of the next vale, beheld a large war party of the
savages going by across our line. There might be the value of a
weak battalion present; all naked to the waist, blacked with grease
and soot, and painted with white lead and vermilion, according to
their beastly habits. They went one behind another like a string
of geese, and at a quickish trot; so that they took but a little
while to rattle by, and disappear again among the woods. Yet I
suppose we endured a greater agony of hesitation and suspense in
these few minutes than goes usually to a man's whole life. Whether
they were French or English Indians, whether they desired scalps or
prisoners, whether we should declare ourselves upon the chance, or
lie quiet and continue the heart-breaking business of our journey:
sure, I think these were questions to have puzzled the brains of
Aristotle himself. Ballantrae turned to me with a face all
wrinkled up and his teeth showing in his mouth, like what I have
read of people starving; he said no word, but his whole appearance
was a kind of dreadful question.

"They may be of the English side," I whispered; "and think! the
best we could then hope, is to begin this over again."

"I know - I know," he said. "Yet it must come to a plunge at
last." And he suddenly plucked out his coin, shook it in his
closed hands, looked at it, and then lay down with his face in the
dust.

ADDITION BY MR. MACKELLAR. - I drop the Chevalier's narration at
this point because the couple quarrelled and separated the same
day; and the Chevalier's account of the quarrel seems to me (I must
confess) quite incompatible with the nature of either of the men.
Henceforth they wandered alone, undergoing extraordinary
sufferings; until first one and then the other was picked up by a
party from Fort St. Frederick. Only two things are to be noted.
And first (as most important for my purpose) that the Master, in
the course of his miseries buried his treasure, at a point never
since discovered, but of which he took a drawing in his own blood
on the lining of his hat. And second, that on his coming thus
penniless to the Fort, he was welcomed like a brother by the
Chevalier, who thence paid his way to France. The simplicity of
Mr. Burke's character leads him at this point to praise the Master
exceedingly; to an eye more worldly wise, it would seem it was the
Chevalier alone that was to be commended. I have the more pleasure
in pointing to this really very noble trait of my esteemed
correspondent, as I fear I may have wounded him immediately before.
I have refrained from comments on any of his extraordinary and (in
my eyes) immoral opinions, for I know him to be jealous of respect.
But his version of the quarrel is really more than I can reproduce;
for I knew the Master myself, and a man more insusceptible of fear
is not conceivable. I regret this oversight of the Chevalier's,
and all the more because the tenor of his narrative (set aside a
few flourishes) strikes me as highly ingenuous.

CHAPTER IV. - PERSECUTIONS ENDURED BY MR. HENRY.

You can guess on what part of his adventures the Colonel
principally dwelled. Indeed, if we had heard it all, it is to be
thought the current of this business had been wholly altered; but
the pirate ship was very gently touched upon. Nor did I hear the
Colonel to an end even of that which he was willing to disclose;
for Mr. Henry, having for some while been plunged in a brown study,
rose at last from his seat and (reminding the Colonel there were
matters that he must attend to) bade me follow him immediately to
the office.

Once there, he sought no longer to dissemble his concern, walking
to and fro in the room with a contorted face, and passing his hand
repeatedly upon his brow.

"We have some business," he began at last; and there broke off,
declared we must have wine, and sent for a magnum of the best.
This was extremely foreign to his habitudes; and what was still
more so, when the wine had come, he gulped down one glass upon
another like a man careless of appearances. But the drink steadied
him.

"You will scarce be surprised, Mackellar," says he, "when I tell
you that my brother - whose safety we are all rejoiced to learn -
stands in some need of money."

I told him I had misdoubted as much; but the time was not very
fortunate, as the stock was low.

"Not mine," said he. "There is the money for the mortgage."

I reminded him it was Mrs. Henry's.

"I will be answerable to my wife," he cried violently.

"And then," said I, "there is the mortgage."

"I know," said he; "it is on that I would consult you."

I showed him how unfortunate a time it was to divert this money
from its destination; and how, by so doing, we must lose the profit
of our past economies, and plunge back the estate into the mire. I
even took the liberty to plead with him; and when he still opposed
me with a shake of the head and a bitter dogged smile, my zeal
quite carried me beyond my place. "This is midsummer madness,"
cried I; "and I for one will be no party to it."

"You speak as though I did it for my pleasure," says he. "But I
have a child now; and, besides, I love order; and to say the honest
truth, Mackellar, I had begun to take a pride in the estates." He
gloomed for a moment. "But what would you have?" he went on.
"Nothing is mine, nothing. This day's news has knocked the bottom
out of my life. I have only the name and the shadow of things -
only the shadow; there is no substance in my rights."

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