"So they appeared to me, monsieur; but you understand that I took no part—"
"By advancing the angles boldly"—here the Commandant pressed his finger-tips together by way of illustration—"we allow so much more play to enfilading fire. I speak only of defence against direct assault; for of opposing such a structure to artillery the General could have had no thought."
"Half a dozen six-pounders, well directed, could have knocked it about his ears in as many minutes."
"That does not detract from his credit. Every general fights with two heads—his own and his adversary's; and, for the rest, we have to do what we can do with our material." The Commandant halted and gazed down whimsically upon the courtyard, in the middle of which his twenty-five militiamen were being drilled by M. Etienne and Sergeant Bédard. "My whole garrison, sir! Eh? you seem incredulous. My whole garrison, I give you my word! Five-and-twenty militiamen to defend a post of this importance; and up at Fort Frontenac, the very key of the West, my old friend Payan de Noyan has but a hundred in command! I do not understand it, sir. Stores we have in abundance, and ammunition and valuable presents to propitiate the Indians who no longer exist in this neighbourhood. Yes, and—would you believe it?—no longer than three months ago the Governor sent up a boatload of women. It appeared that his Majesty had forwarded them all the way from France, for wives for his faithful soldiers. I packed them off, sir, and returned them to M. de Vaudreuil. 'With all submission to his Majesty's fatherly wisdom,' I wrote, 'the requirements of New France at this moment are best determined by sterner considerations'; and I asked for fifty regulars to man our defences. M. de Vaudreuil replied by sending me up one man, and he had but one arm! I made Noyan a present of him; his notions of fortification were rudimentary, not to say puerile."
The Commandant paused and dug the surface of the terre-plein indignantly with his heel. "As for fortification, do I not know already what additional defences we need? Fort Amitié, monsieur, was constructed by the great Frontenac himself, and with wonderful sagacity, if we consider the times. Take, for example, the towers. You are acquainted, of course, with the modern rule of giving the bastions a salient angle of fifteen degrees in excess of half the angle of the figure in all figures from the square up to the dodecagon? Well, Fort Amitié being a square—or rather a right-angled quadrilateral—the half of its angle will be forty-five degrees; add fifteen, and we get sixty; which is as nearly as possible the salience of our flanking towers; only they happen to be round. So far, so good; but Frontenac had naturally no opportunity of studying Vauban's masterpieces, and perhaps as the older man he never digested Vauban's theories. He did not see that a quadrilateral measuring fifty toises by thirty must need some protection midway in its longer curtains, and more especially on the riverside. A ravelin is out of the question, for we have no counterscarp to stand it on—no ditch at all in fact; our glaçis slopes straight from the curtain to the river. I have thought of a tenaille—of a flat bastion. We could do so much if only M. de Vaudreuil would send us men!—but, as it is, on what are we relying? Simply, M. à Clive, on our enemies' ignorance of our weakness."
John turned his face away and stared out over the river. The walls of the fort seemed to stifle him; but in truth his own breast was the prison.
"Well now," the Commandant pursued, "your arrival has set me thinking. We cannot strengthen ourselves against artillery; but they say that these English generals learn nothing. They may come against us with musketry, and what served Fort Carillon may also serve Fort Amitié. A breastwork—call it a lunette—half-way down the slope yonder, so placed as to command the landing-place at close musket range—it might be useful, eh? There will be trouble with Polyphile Cartier—'Sans Quartier,' as they call him. He is proud of his cabbages, and we might have to evict them; yes, certainly our lunette would impinge upon his cabbages. But the safety of the Fort would, of course, override all such considerations."
He caught John by the arm and hurried him along for a better view of Sans Quartier's cabbage-patch. And just then Mademoiselle Diane came walking swiftly towards them from the end of the terre-plein by the flagstaff tower. An instant later the head and shoulders of Dominique Guyon appeared above the ascent.
Clearly he was following her; and as she drew near John read, or thought he read, a deep trouble in the child's eyes. But from her eyes his glance fell upon a bundle that she carried, and his own cheek paled. For the bundle was a white tunic, and it took a second glance to assure him that the tunic was a new one and not Sergeant Barboux's!
"Eh? What did I tell you? She has been rifling the stores already!" Here the Commandant caught sight of Dominique and hailed him. "Holà, Dominique!"