Through the woods, brilliant with the autumn coloring in the keen Canadian air, they wandered, pursuing the track of the river, and at last they came upon a group of rough voyageurs intent upon their noonday meal. “Does there happen to be one Antoine Crepin among you?” asked Jacques Bisset as he approached. “I am in search of him; a fugitive from France am I, and I seek this Antoine, whom I well knew in my youth.”
The men eyed him and looked askance at the delicate features of this questioner’s companion. “Antoine Crepin?” at last one spoke up. “I know him; he has gone farther along; he winters near Trois Rivières always.”
“And do you go that way?”
“We go, yes, there or somewhere.”
“Have you room for two more in your party? I have—what have I? Not much; a little of the silver of France for our passage.” He carefully drew some coins from his pouch.
The men conferred together. “We will take you. Keep your money. It is share and share alike. You and the boy there will need something to begin life with, my friend. You have chosen a bad time for your travels, with the country alive with disputes. Up and down the river it is the same; they say the English may approach. For ourselves we get out, but we may fall into the hands of the Iroquois before night. However, that is the life; one cannot tell when one is in danger; one may be drowned or be torn by a wild beast, or be scalped by an Indian; one thing is as likely as another; it is all chance; if you wish to take yours with us, very well.”
That wild journey, would Alaine ever forget it? the frail canoes shooting through the whirling rapids and borne on and on; the night beneath the bright stars, with the cries of prowling beasts in her ears, and the haunting dread of an Indian war-whoop disturbing her dreams; those days when weird songs and rude jests awoke the echoes in silent places. She had not labored in field and garden to be other than free of movement, and her skill in cooking won her the approval of her rough companions. It was even harder for Jacques Bisset to hide the fact of his former calling than it was for Alaine to disguise her sex, and many a laugh arose at the old man’s expense. “He is schoolmaster; he is scrivener; he is—what is he?” they cried. “And he guards the lad as if he were taking him to a monastery. Here, Alain, boy, leave that mother-man of yours and we’ll give you a chance to kill a deer, a chance you’ll not have had back there in France.”
And Alaine would laugh and say, “I’d rather cook your deer than kill him, and this uncle, he will learn one day, though he is not young. Leave us here to keep up the fire and cook your food; we will sit and fish, and if you come home empty-handed we maybe will have something for you.” So they would troop off and leave them to watch the camp till they returned with their game and were ready to launch again upon the river, each day bearing them farther from Quebec, where the guns of the fort were growling out their defiance of the doughty Phipps and where François Dupont had awakened from his long sleep to one predominant fact: the city was threatened; it was French, above all it was French, and to arms he flew, remembering for a time only dimly that there were such persons as Father Bisset or Alaine Hervieu, or, if he remembered, it was to feel a grim satisfaction that they were there on his side. It was only after Frontenac’s valiant defence, and when the bumptious Phipps sailed away the worse off by eight vessels and many men, that François began to think of his own affairs. “I promised the old priest that I would wait for him. Very well, I have waited. I shall find him, no doubt, somewhere with the monks at the college or the seminary. He may be assisting them at Notre Dame des Victoires to decorate with trophies after this our victory. Vive La France!” he shouted aloud at the remembrance. “I, too, share in that victory. Good! I first find Father Bisset, and then my vessel, if she is not blown up. We shall set sail rather later than we intended, but it is better than a few days too soon, for we might by this time be prisoners of that Phipps.”
To the convent he went. No priest and no Mademoiselle Hervieu had ever been there. François looked mystified. “It was uncommonly heady, that wine,” he remarked to himself. “I scarcely remember ever to have been so muddled by a little bout; yet—ah, yes, he has taken alarm. He learned that the English were coming and he removed himself and mademoiselle to a safer place. He will return. I sit here and wait; it is all that I can do. He learns of victory and he returns. I said I would wait, and I wait.”
More than once Alaine had seen Father Bisset take from his pocket a paper which he studied carefully and then seemed lost in thought, a proceeding which brought forth jests from the rollicking voyageurs. “An order for good living, is it, Jacques Bisset?” one would cry. “A letter from the king himself, very likely,” put in a big fellow with an immense voice to match his proportions. “We have here, my friends, one carrying orders for Louis XIV.; he will lead us against the English.” He bowed low, sweeping the ground with his fur cap. “I have discovered you, Monsieur le General Jacques Bisset.” Every one joined in the laugh that followed, and from that time he was dubbed General Jacques.