A fortnight or so after Wolfe’s army and Saunders’s fleet had sat down before Quebec, McGilveray, having been told by a sentry at Montmorenci where Anstruther’s regiment was camped, that a French girl on the other side of the stream had kissed her hand to him and sung across in laughing insolence:
“Malbrouk s’en va t’en guerre,”
he had forthwith set out to hail this daughter of Gaul, if perchance she might be seen again.
At more than ordinary peril he crossed the river on a couple of logs, lashed together, some distance above the spot where the picket had seen Mademoiselle. It was a moonlight night, and he might easily have been picked off by a bullet, if a wary sentry had been alert and malicious. But the truth was that many of these pickets on both sides were in no wise unfriendly to each other, and more than once exchanged tobacco and liquor across the stream. As it chanced, however, no sentry saw McGilveray, and presently, safely landed, he made his way down the stream. Even at the distance he was from the falls, the rumble of them came up the long walls of firs and maples with a strange, half-moaning sound—all else was still. He came down until he was opposite the spot where his English picket was posted, and then he halted and surveyed his ground.
Nothing human in sight, no sound of life, no sign of habitation. At this moment, however, his stupidity in thus rushing into danger, the foolishness of pursuing a woman whom he had never seen, and a French woman at that, the punishment that would be meted out to him if his adventure was discovered—all these came to him.
They stunned him for a moment, and then presently, as if in defiance of his own thoughts, he began to sing softly:
“Malbrouk s’en va t’en guerre.”
Suddenly, in one confused moment, he was seized, and a hand was clapped over his mouth. Three French soldiers had him in their grip-stalwart fellows they were, of the Regiment of Bearn. He had no strength to cope with them, he at once saw the futility of crying out, so he played the eel, and tried to slip from the grasp of his captors. But though he gave the trio an awkward five minutes he was at last entirely overcome, and was carried away in triumph through the woods. More than once they passed a sentry, and more than once campfires round which soldiers slept or dozed. Now and again one would raise his head, and with a laugh, or a “Sapristi!” or a “Sacre bleu!” drop back into comfort again.
After about ten minutes’ walk he was brought to a small wooden house, the door was thrown open, he was tossed inside, and the soldiers entered after. The room was empty save for a bench, some shelves, a table, on which a lantern burned, and a rude crucifix on the wall. McGilveray sat down on the bench, and in five minutes his feet were shackled, while a chain fastened to a staple in the wall held him in secure captivity.
“How you like yourself now?” asked a huge French corporal who had learned English from an English girl at St. Malo years before.