The Sun of Quebec: A Story of a Great Crisis

by Joseph A. Altsheler

This was to be a great event in his life, and it must be carried out in the proper manner with every attention to detail. He put on the uniform of an English naval officer that he had found on the ship, and then rifle on shoulder and small sword in belt went through the forest toward the inlet.

The night was bright and beautiful, just fitted for a rescue, and an escape from an island. All the stars had come out to see it, and, with his head very high, he trod lightly as he passed among the trees, approaching the quiet beach. Before he left the wood he saw the top of the schooner's mast showing over a fringe of bushes. Evidently she had anchored outside the reefs and was sending in a boat to look further. Well, that was fit and proper, and his advice and assistance would be most timely.

The wind rose a little and it sang a lilting melody among the leaves. His imagination, alive and leaping, turned it into the song of a troubadour, gay and welcoming. Tayoga's spirits were abroad again, filling the air in the dusk, their favorite time, and he rejoiced, until he suddenly heard once more that faint note of warning, buried under the volume of the other, but nevertheless there.

Alone, driven in upon himself for so many months, he was a creature of mysticism that night. What he imagined he believed, and, obedient to the warning, he drew back. All the caution of the northern wilderness returned suddenly to him. He was no longer rushing forward to make a welcome for guests awaited eagerly. He would see what manner of people came before he opened the door. Putting the rifle in the hollow of his arm he crept forward through the bushes.

A large boat was coming in from the schooner, and the bright moonlight enabled him to see at first glance that the six men who sat in it were not men of Boston. Nor were they men of England. They were too dark, and three of them had rings in their ears.

Perhaps the schooner was a French privateer, wishing to make a secret landing, and, if so, he had done well to hold back. He had no mind to be taken a prisoner to France. The French were brave, and he would not be ill-treated, but he had other things to do. He withdrew a little farther into the undergrowth. The door of welcome was open now only a few inches, and he was peering out at the crack, every faculty alive and ready to take the alarm.

The boat drew closer, grounded on the beach, and the men, leaping out, dragged it beyond the reach of the low waves that were coming in. Then, in a close group, they walked toward the forest, looking about curiously. They were armed heavily, and every one of them had a drawn weapon in his hand, sword or pistol. Their actions seemed to Robert those of men who expected a stranger, as a matter of course, to be an enemy. Hence, they were men whose hands were against other men, and so also against young Robert Lennox, who had been alone so long, and who craved so much the companionship of his kind.

He drew yet deeper into the undergrowth and taking the rifle out of the hollow of his arm held it in both hands, ready for instant use. The men came nearer, looking along the edge of the forest, perhaps for water, and, as he saw them better, he liked them less. The apparent leader was a short, broad fellow of middle years, and sinister face, with huge gold rings in his ears. All of them were seamed and scarred and to Robert their looks were distinctly evil.

The door of welcome suddenly shut with a snap, and he meant to bar it on the inside if he could. His instinct gave him an insistent warning. These men must not penetrate the forest. They must not find his house and treasures. Fortunately the dinghy was up the creek, hidden under overhanging boughs. But the event depended upon chance. If they found quickly the water for which they must be looking, they might take it and leave with the schooner before morning. He devoutly hoped that it would be so. The lad who had been so lonely and desolate an hour or two before, longing for the arrival of human beings, was equally eager, now that they had come, that they should go away.

The men began to talk in some foreign tongue, Spanish or Portuguese or a Levantine jargon, perhaps, and searched assiduously along the edges of the forest. Robert, lurking in the undergrowth, caught the word "aqua" or "agua," which he knew meant water, and so he was right in his surmise about their errand. There was a fine spring about two hundred yards farther on, and he hoped they would soon stumble upon it.