One morning the privateer was compelled to run from an English brig of war of nearly twice her force; and although a swift sailer, the French vessel soon found that she could not escape from her pursuer. She disdained to refuse the combat, and the two vessels commenced cannonading each other.
For several hours a sanguinary conflict was kept up, when the Canadian sailor, dashed with blood, and blackened with powder, ran towards the child and lifting it in his arms, carried it to the gangway. There, in the midst of the tumult, with blood running over the decks, amidst the confusion of cries and the crash of falling masts, he wished to engrave on the child’s memory the circumstance of a separation, of which he had a strong presentiment. In this moment, which should leave even upon the memory of an infant, a souvenir that would never be effaced, he called out to the child, while shielding it with his huge body, “Kneel, my son!”
The child knelt, trembling with affright.
“You see what is going on?”
“I am afraid,” murmured Fabian, “the blood—the noise—” and saying this he hid himself in the arms of his protector.
“It is well,” replied the Canadian, in a solemn tone. “Never forget, then, that in this moment, a sailor, a man who loved you as his own life, said to you—kneel and pray for your mother!”
He was not permitted to finish the speech. At that moment a bullet struck him and his blood spouting over the child, caused it to utter a lamentable cry. The Canadian had just strength left to press the boy to his breast, and to add some words; but in so low a tone that Fabian could only comprehend a single phrase. It was the continuation of what he had been saying—“Your mother—whom I found—dead beside you.”
With this speech ended the consciousness of the sailor. He was not dead, however; his wound did not prove fatal.
When he came to his senses again he found himself in the fetid hold of a ship. A terrible thirst devoured him. He called out in a feeble voice, but no one answered him. He perceived that he was a prisoner, and he wept for the loss of his liberty, but still more for that of the adopted son that Providence had given him.
What became of Fabian? That the history of the “Wood-Rangers” will tell us; but before crossing from the prologue of our drama—before crossing from Europe to America—a few events connected with the tragedy of Elanchovi remain to be told.