"You see, madame, I was there," he said. "I chanced upon the colonel, and could I leave him to die? I brought him in, and since we did not desire to be troubled with a wounded man, why—well, we took him to his friends."
There was laughter at that, for some half-dozen other people had gathered, amongst them the colonel, who leaned on his crutch.
"You hear that, monsieur le colonel?" called madame, with a laugh, catching sight of the wounded officer. "I thought I should like to hear what this prisoner of yours had to say as to your rescue. You should listen to him. Ladies and gentlemen, I declare that these English are naive. Monsieur tells me that having chanced upon our wounded friend he brought him back to his friends for one reason only. Guess at it, if you please. No. You cannot, mon colonel. Very well, monsieur has the effrontery to say that he feared you would be a great trouble to them. He would not be bothered with so useless a person as our colonel."
There was loud laughter at that, laughter which sent Steve flying from the group, his cheeks aglow, while the gallant and merry colonel who had so befriended him stood leaning on the back of a chair, shaking his crutch after him.
"Ah! Let me catch the rogue," he called out, and then, "Madame. It is like the lad. Honest as the day. He says what he means whenever possible, and at other times keeps silent lest he should give offence. Despite what he says, I know him to be a brave and a generous lad."
Many and many a time in the months which followed did Steve take rod and line and cross to the river St. Charles. He was even given the use of a gun and a canoe, and permitted to go on the St. Lawrence, or even into the forest on the southern bank. But he was always careful to return before dusk, and made a point of reporting his arrival. And while he was a prisoner only in name, and the weeks grew into months, the reader may wonder what had been happening in other and more familiar quarters, for the war with France was now more than ever a fact, and the two nations were preparing for the struggle which both knew well must end in victory for one, and the consequent mastery of this huge continent.
Steve had gone to Fort William Henry in the winter of 1756, and the spring of 1757 found him in Quebec. It will be remembered that he had taken part in more than one of les petites guerres at the foot of Lake St. George. These conflicts had been of frequent occurrence, and throughout the winter they continued, Jim and his friends, as well as those in Fort William Henry, often sending out small parties to attack the French. The winter months passed, in fact, without other incident, save for one attempt made by the garrison of Ticonderoga. On March 18, 1757, they descended over the ice of Lake St. George, hoping to take the garrison of Fort William Henry by surprise. They were easily driven back, and retired to their own fort, having accomplished nothing. Elsewhere nothing of moment occurred, so that this long winter season may be described as being barren of incident.
Meanwhile the British Government had determined to support the colonial troops, and regiments had been collecting at Cork, in Ireland, preparatory to sailing for America. On the eighth of May some hundred sail set out with these reinforcements, and finally arrived at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, which the Earl of Loudon, now in command of our forces in America, had recently reached with his troops. Of these he had now under his immediate command some eleven thousand, and with them he hoped to be able to attack and capture the very formidable fortress of Louisbourg, which, it will be remembered, had been erected at great cost on Cape Breton Isle, just north of Nova Scotia. But information now came to hand that there were seven thousand Frenchmen in Louisbourg, two-thirds being regulars, while Indians swarmed in the vicinity. This formidable force, added to a French fleet of no mean proportions, was considered too powerful for the troops under Loudon's command, and in consequence the idea of an attack on Louisbourg was given up, and on August 16 Loudon embarked with the bulk of his troops, leaving the 27th, the 28th, the 43rd, and the 46th regiments as a garrison for Nova Scotia.
Valuable months had been wasted, and the projected descent on the formidable French fortress had ended in fiasco. But Loudon cannot be blamed alone for such a result. If reinforcements had been collected earlier and despatched without delay, they would have reached Cape Breton Isle before the French fleet put in an appearance. It was this delay, together with the prompt crossing of the Atlantic by the French fleet, which caused the expedition to be countermanded. But we lost far more than valuable time and money in this useless movement. By withdrawing his troops from America proper to Halifax, Loudon left the disputed country south of the great lakes and west of the line drawn north from the Alleghany mountains almost denuded of men. There were some three to four thousand to hold this huge country, a force insufficient even to keep back the French in the neighbourhood of Lake St. George, if they wished to press south in that direction.
It may readily be seen that Loudon was guilty of a serious error in thus denuding an important stretch of country, and it may equally be anticipated that the French were quick to take advantage of the withdrawal of our soldiers. Montcalm had been busily gathering Indians from far-off portions of Canada, Indians attracted to the French after their victory at Oswego. These, with numerous regulars and Canadians, he poured down the Richelieu river, massing them at Ticonderoga, till he had nearly 8000 there. Some forty different Indian tribes were represented, and if the native element had been cruel and bloodthirsty before, it promised to be even more so now. For these sons of Canada who crowded the huts at Ticonderoga were pure savages, vastly impressed by the French, and more than ever eager to join in this fray now that they had heard the tales of their brethren who had been already engaged.