“Chut, man!” said he crisply. “You couldn’t do a better thing to bring her to her senses than you are doing now.”
It was but a few steps down to the lane, and there we found ourselves in a jumble of heaped carts and blue-skirted, weeping women. My head was paining me sorely—a numb ache that seemed to rise in the core of my brain. But I remember noting with a far-off commiseration the blubbered faces of the women, and their poor little solicitudes for this or that bit of household gear which, from time to time, would fall crashing to the ground from the hastily laden carts. I found spirit to wonder that the tears which had exhausted themselves over the farewell to fatherland and hearthside should break out afresh over the cracking of a gilded glass or the shattering of a blue and silver jug. The women’s lamentations in a little hardened me, so that my ears ignored them; but the wide-eyed terrors of the children, their questions unanswered, their whimpering at the cold that blued their hands, all this pierced me. Tears for the children’s sorrow gathered in my heart, till it was nigh to bursting; and this curbed passion of pity, I think, kept my sick body from collapse. It in some way threw me back from my own misery on to my old unroutable resolution.
“I will win!” I said in my heart, as we came down upon the wharf at the Gaspereau mouth. “Though there seems to be no more hope, there is life; and while there is life, I hold on.”
When we reached the wharf the ebb was well advanced. The boats could not get near the wharf. Women had to wade ankle-deep in freezing slime to reach them. The slime was churned with the struggle of many feet. The stuff from the carts was at times dropped in the ooze, to be recovered or not as might chance. The soldiers toiled faithfully, and their leggings to the knee were a sorry sight. They were patient, these red-coats, with the women, who often seemed to lose their heads so that they knew not which boat they wanted to go in. To the children every red-coat seemed tender as a mother. For any one, indeed, they would do anything, except endure delay. Haste, haste, haste was all—and therefore there was calamitous confusion. While I stood on the wharf awaiting the order to embark, I saw a stout girl in a dark-red stomacher and grey petticoat throw herself screaming into the water where it was about waist deep, and scramble desperately to another boat near by. No effort was made to restrain her. Dripping with tide and slime she climbed over the gunwale; and belike found what she sought, for her cries ceased. Again I noted—Marc called my attention to it—a small child being passed from one boat to the other, as the two, bound for different ships, were about diverging. The mother had stumbled blindly into one boat while the child had been tossed into the other. In the effort to remedy this oversight the child was dropped into the water between the boats. The screams of the mother were like a knife in our ears. Two sailors went overboard at once, but there was some delay ere the little one was recovered. Then we saw its limp body passed in over the boatside; whether alive or dead we could not judge; but the screams ceased and our ear-drums blessed the respite.
With the next boat came our turn; and I found myself wading down the slope of icy ooze. I heard Marc, just behind me, mutter a careless imprecation upon the needless defiling of his boots. He was ever imperturbable, my cousin,—a hot heart, but in steel harness.
We loaded the roomy long-boat till the gunwale was almost awash. The big oars creaked and thumped in the rowlocks. We moved laboriously out to the ships, which swung on straining cable in the tide. As we came under her black-wall side, with the turbid red-grey current hissing past it, men on deck caught us with grapnels, and we swung, splashing, under the stern. Then, the tide being very troublesome, we were drawn again alongside.
Marc was at my elbow. “Look!” he cried, pointing to the ridge behind the village. I saw a wide-roofed cottage on the crest break into flame. There was a wind up there, though little as yet down here in the valley; and the flames streamed out to westward, the black smoke rolling low and ragged above them.
“So goes all Grand Pré in a little!” muttered Marc.
“It is P’tit Joliet’s house!” said I.
“Yes,” said a steady young voice behind me; and I turned to see Petit Joliet himself, watching with undaunted eyes the burning of his home. “Yes, and it was a fine house. It would have hurt my father sorely, were he alive now, to see it go up in smoke like that.”