Across the lamp smoking in the dawn, Dominique stared at him.
CHAPTER XIII.
FORT AMITIé.
The Fort stood high on a wooded slope around which the river swept through narrows to spread itself below in a lake three miles wide and almost thirty long. In shape it was quadrilateral with a frontage of fifty toises and a depth of thirty, and from each angle of its stone walls abutted a flanking tower, the one at the western angle taller than the others by a good twenty feet and surmounted by a flagstaff.
East, west, and south, the ground fell gently to the water's edge, entirely clear of trees: even their stumps had been uprooted to make room for small gardens in which the garrison grew its cabbages and pot-herbs; and below these gardens the Commandant's cows roamed in a green riverside meadow. At the back a rougher clearing, two cannon-shots in width, divided the northern wall from the dark tangle of the forest.
The canoe had been sighted far down the lake, and the Commandant himself, with his brother M. Etienne and his daughter Mademoiselle Diane, had descended to the quay to welcome the voyageurs. A little apart stood Sergeant Bédard, old Jérémie Tripier (formerly major-domo and general factotum at Boisveyrac, now at Fort Amitié promoted to be maréchal des logis), and five or six militiamen. And to John, as he neared the shore in the haze of a golden evening, the scene and the figures—the trim little stone fortress, the white banner of France transparent against the sky, the sentry like a toy figure at the gate, the cattle browsing below, the group at the river's brink—appeared as a tableau set for a child's play.
To add to the illusion, as the canoe came to the quay the sun sank, a gun boomed out from the tallest of the four towers, and the flag ran down its staff; all as if by clockwork. As if by clockwork, too, the taller of the two old gentlemen on the quay—the one in a gold-laced coat—stepped forward with a wave of his hand.
"Welcome, welcome, my good Dominique! It will be news you bring from Boisveyrac—more news of the great victory, perhaps? And who are these your comrades?"
"Your servant, Monseigneur; and yours, Monsieur Etienne, and yours, Mademoiselle Diane!" Dominique brought his canoe alongside and saluted respectfully. "All my own news is that we have gathered the harvest at Boisveyrac; a crop not far below the average, we hope. But Father Launoy desired me to bring you these strangers, who will tell of matters more important."