PREPARING FOR THE RAID.
"Thank heaven!" ejaculated Antoine Lecorbeau, "they have saved the dike!"
In Acadian eyes to tamper with the dikes was sacrilege.
"Well!" said the sergeant, with a somewhat cynical chuckle, "at least the English have got their feet wet!"
Pierre broke off his laugh in the middle, for at this moment the red lines charged. The deadly volley which rang out along the summit for an instant staggered the assailants; but they rallied and went over the barrier like a scarlet wave. The dike was much easier to scale when thus approached on the landward side.
And now ensued a fierce hand-to-hand struggle. The spectators could hardly contain their excitement as they saw their party, fighting doggedly, forced back step by step to the edge of the water. Some, slipping in the ooze of the retreating tide, fell and were carried down by the current. These soon swam ashore--discreetly landing on the further side of the river. The rest seeing the struggle hopeless, now broke and fled with a celerity that the English could not hope to rival. Along the flats, for perhaps a mile, a detachment of the English pursued them till a bugle sounded their recall. Then Major Lawrence, finding himself master of the field, directed his march to that low hill where he had encamped the previous spring, and a fatigue party was set to repair the dike.
On this hill the English proceeded to erect a fortified post, which they called Fort Lawrence; and in an incredibly short time the red flag was waving from its battlements, not three miles distant from Beauséjour, and an abiding provocation to the hot-headed soldiery of France. As for Le Loutre, after his disastrous repulse, he yielded to the inevitable, and gave up all thought of preventing the establishment of Fort Lawrence. But he was not discouraged; he was merely changing his tactics.
The Missaguash being the dividing line between the two powers, he caused his Acadian and Indian followers to enrage the English by petty depredations, by violations of the frontier, by attacks and ambuscades. Soon the English were provoked into retaliations; whereupon the regulars of Beauséjour found an excuse for taking part, and the turbid Missaguash became the scene of such perpetual skirmishes that its waters ran redder than ever.
Even then there might have been erelong an attempt at reconciliation, to which end the efforts of Captain Howe were ceaselessly directed. But Le Loutre made this forever impossible by an outrage so fiendish as to call forth the execration of even his unscrupulous employers. One morning the sentries on Fort Lawrence were somewhat surprised to see one who was apparently an officer from the garrison of Beauséjour, with several followers, approaching the banks of the Missaguash with a flag of truce. The party reached the dike, and the bearer of the flag waved it as if desiring to hold a parley. His followers remained behind at a respectful distance, standing knee-deep in the heavy aftermath of the fertile marsh.
In prompt response to this advance Captain Howe and several companions, under a white flag, set out from Fort Lawrence to see what was wanted. When Howe reached the river he detected something in the supposed officer's dress and language which excited his suspicions of the man's good faith, and he turned away as if to retrace his step's. Instantly there flashed out a volley of musketry from behind the dike on the further shore, and the beloved young captain fell mortally wounded. The pretended officer was one of Le Loutre's supporters, the Micmac chief, Jean Baptiste Cope, and the fatal volley came from a band of Micmacs who had, under cover of darkness, concealed themselves behind the dike.