Instantly along the red-lit deck came soldiers running—three of them. The mate had grabbed a belaying-pin, but stood fingering it, uncertain of his status in relation to the soldiers.
“Corporal,” said Marc ceremoniously to one of them, discerning his rank by the stripes on his sleeve, “pardon the false alarm. There was no prisoner escaping. We were here on parole, by the favour of Lieutenant Waldron—as you yourself know, indeed, for we helped you this afternoon in getting scattered families together. But this man—we don’t know who he is—was brutal, and threatening violence in spite of our defenceless state. Please take us in charge!”
“Certainly, Captain de Mer,” said the man promptly. “I was just about coming for you!”
Then he turned to the mate with an air of triumphant aversion, in which lurked, perhaps, a consciousness of conflicting and ill-defined authorities.
“No belaying-pins for the prisoners!” he growled. “Keep them for yer poor swabs o’ sailor lads.”
As we marched down the deck under guard the sails overhead were all aglow, the masts and spars gleamed ruddily. The menacing radiance was by this time filling the whole heaven, and the small, quick-running surges flashed under it with a sinister sheen. As we reached the open hatch I turned for a last look at Grand Pré.
The whole valley was now as it were one seething lake of smoke and flame, the high, half-shrouded spire of the chapel rising impregnable on the further brink. The conflagration was fiercest now along the eastern half of the main street, toward the water side. Even at this distance we heard the great-lunged roar of it. High over the chaos, like a vaulted roof upheld by the Gaspereau Ridge, arched an almost stationary covering of smoke-cloud, impenetrable, and red as blood along its under side. The smoke of the burning was carried off toward the Habitants and Canard—where there was nothing left to burn. Between the red stillness above and the red turbulence below, apart and safe on their high slope, gleamed the cottages of the Colony of Compromise. With what eyes, I wondered, does my beloved look out upon this horror? Do they strain sadly after the departing ships—or does the Englishman stand by and comfort her?
As I got clumsily down the ladder the last thing I saw—and the picture bit its lines in strange fashion on my memory—was the other ship, a league behind us, black-winged against the flame.
Then the hatch closed down. By the glimmer of a swinging lanthorn we groped our way to a space where we two could lie down side by side. Marc wanted to talk, but I could not. There was a throbbing in my head, a great numbness on my heart. In my ears the voice of the Minas waves assailing the ship’s timbers seemed to whisper of the end of things. Grand Pré was gone. I was being carried, sick and in chains, to some far-off land of strangers. My beloved was cared for by another.
“No!” said I in my heart (I thought at first I had spoken it aloud, but Marc did not stir), “when my foot touches land my face shall turn back to seek her face again, though it be from the ends of earth. It is vain, but I will not give her up. I am not dead yet—though hope is!”