VI
Bill Fright awakened in his cell at Fort Vancouver.
The dawn was breaking, and pale blue smoke went up from the chimneys as Fort Vancouver awakened, yawning, for the new day's work. Quite naked, wrapping a blanket about him, stately as a Roman Emperor, Black Douglas came to his door to snuff the breath of the spring. Then stepping gingerly, barefooted across the crisp and dewy lawn and the gravel road beyond, he made his way out of the fort and across the village, until he stood upon the riverbank, where he dropped his blanket and bath towel. It looked very cold.
Mist lay on the shining water and the dim gray ships, whose masts went up so sharply etched against the deeps of sky. Beyond them lofty firs and spreading cedars faint as dreams arose from isles invisible, rapt, waiting. Far up the valley, soaring above the forest and the cloud belts, snow fields of icy blue were edged with flame against the throbbing splendors of the sunrise. Close at hand some little fussy birds were singing orisons, but the great prayer of the forest and the volcanoes was a Silence, faithful, calm, triumphant, rendered to Love and Power which reigns for ever, the Spirit in the Sun, their Lord, their God.
In that homage Douglas joined for a moment shivering with cold, then dived for his morning bath in the Columbia.
Near by, at the jetty, a crew of five voyageurs, the hoods of their blanket capotes like the cowls of monks, were urging a prisoner into their birch canoe. As he flatly refused to enter they gabbled like squattering sea fowl in shrill French, until the patron Louis le Grandeur bade them desist. "Laissez, mes enfants! Restez! Cet animal!" He shook his fist in Bill's face. "And how you t'ink we mak' ze bre'kfas' if we no depart—hein? Sacré, mojee, batteme, goddam pig!"
He turned about and saw Black Douglas climb dripping up the bank, all glowing from the sting of the crisp tide.
"V'la!" He ran to the big chief. "Bo'jour, M'sieu Dougla!" He saluted. "Sare—zees animal prisonnier Beel——"
"Good morning, le Grandeur. Ready to start, eh?"
"—'e say he no coom!"