The Seats of the Mighty, Complete

by Gilbert Parker

With a belligerent pride Clark showed the way up the river one evening, the batteries of the town giving us plunging shots as we went, and ours at Point Levis answering gallantly. To me it was a good if most anxious time: good, in that I was having some sort of compensation for my own sufferings in the town; anxious, because no single word came to me of Alixe or her father, and all the time we were pouring death into the place.

But this we knew from deserters, that Vaudreuil was Governor and Bigot Intendant still; by which it would seem that, on the momentous night when Doltaire was wounded by Madame Cournal, he gave back the governorship to Vaudreuil and reinstated Bigot. Presently, from an officer who had been captured as he was setting free a fire-raft upon the river to run among the boats of our fleet, I heard that Doltaire had been confined in the Intendance from a wound given by a stupid sentry. Thus the true story had been kept from the public. From him, too, I learned that nothing was known of the Seigneur Duvarney and his daughter; that they had suddenly disappeared from the Intendance, as if the earth had swallowed them; and that even Juste Duvarney knew nothing of them, and was, in consequence, much distressed.

This officer also said that now, when it might seem as if both the Seigneur and his daughter were dead, opinion had turned in Alixe’s favour, and the feeling had crept about, first among the common folk and afterwards among the people of the garrison, that she had been used harshly. This was due largely, he thought, to the constant advocacy of the Chevalier de la Darante, whose nephew had married Mademoiselle Georgette Duvarney. This piece of news, in spite of the uncertainty of Alixe’s fate, touched me, for the Chevalier had indeed kept his word to me.

At last all of Admiral Holmes’s division was got above the town, with very little damage, and I never saw a man so elated, so profoundly elated as Clark over his share in the business. He was a daredevil, too; for the day that the last of the division was taken up the river, without my permission or the permission of the admiral or any one else, he took the Terror of France almost up to Bougainville’s earthworks in the cove at Cap Rouge and insolently emptied his six swivels into them, and then came out and stood down the river. When I asked what he was doing—for I was now well enough to come on deck—he said he was going to see how monkeys could throw nuts; when I pressed him, he said he had a will to hear the cats in the eaves; and when I became severe, he added that he would bring the Terror of France up past the batteries of the town in broad daylight, swearing that they could no more hit him than a woman could a bird on a flagstaff. I did not relish this foolish bravado, and I forbade it; but presently I consented, on condition that he take me to General Wolfe’s camp at Montmorenci first; for now I felt strong enough to be again on active service.

Clark took the Terror of France up the river in midday, running perilously close to the batteries; and though they pounded at him petulantly, foolishly angry at his contemptuous defiance, he ran the gauntlet safely, and coming to the flagship, the Sutherland, saluted with his six swivels, to the laughter of the whole fleet and his own profane joy.

“Mr. Moray,” said General Wolfe, when I saw him, racked with pain, studying a chart of the river and town which his chief engineer had just brought him, “show me here this passage in the hillside.”

I did so, tracing the plains of Maitre Abraham, which I assured him would be good ground for a pitched battle. He nodded; then rose, and walked up and down for a time, thinking. Suddenly he stopped, and fixed his eyes upon me.

“Mr. Moray,” said he, “it would seem that you, angering La Pompadour, brought down this war upon us.” He paused, smiling in a dry way, as if the thought amused him, as if indeed he doubted it; but for that I cared not, it was an honour I could easily live without.

I bowed to his words, and said, “Mine was the last straw, sir.”

Again he nodded, and replied, “Well, well, you got us into trouble; you must show us the way out,” and he looked at the passage I had traced upon the chart. “You will remain with me until we meet our enemy on these heights.” He pointed to the plains of Maitre Abraham. Then he turned away, and began walking up and down again. “It is the last chance!” he said to himself in a tone despairing and yet heroic. “Please God, please God!” he added.