Brothers of Peril: A Story of old Newfoundland

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

For hours after retiring Kingswell lay awake, reviewing, in his restless brain, the incidents of that crowded day. His couch was luxurious, compared to the resting-places he had known since leaving the Heart of the West; but, for all that, sleep evaded him. From the other side of the hearth Ouenwa's deep and regular breathing reached his alert ears. He saw the yellow light blink to darkness above the curtain of skins, when D'Antons extinguished his candle in the other apartment. The red firelight rose and fell, dwindled and flooded high. The core of it contracted and expanded, and a straight log across the middle of the glow was like a heavy eyelid. It was like something alive—like something stirring between sleeping and waking, desiring sleep, yet afraid to forsake a vigil. To the restless explorer beside the hearth it suggested a drowsy servitor nodding and starting in a deserted hall. "What is it waiting for?" he wondered, and smiled at the conceit. "What does it fear? Mayhap the master and mistress are late at a rout, and are people without consideration for the feelings of their servants."

From such harmless imagery his mind slipped to the less pleasant subject of Sir Ralph Westleigh. He recalled what he had seen and heard of the days of the baronet's glory—of the great places near Bristol, with their stables that were the envy of dukes, and their routs that lured people weary and dangerous journeys—of the famous Lady Westleigh and her jewels—of Sir Ralph's kindliness to great and small alike. His own father, the merchant-knight of Bristol, had held the baronet in high esteem. Bernard himself, when a child, and later when a well-grown lad, had experienced the hospitality of Randon Hall and Beverly. At the time of his last visit to Beverly, rumour was busy with the baronet's affairs. During Lady Westleigh's life, all had gone well, apparently. After her death, Sir Ralph spent less of his time at home, and more of it in distant London, and even in Paris. Stories went abroad of his heavy gaming and his ruinous bad luck. People said the love of the dice and the cards had settled in the man like a disease, working on him physically to such an extent that he looked a different person when the heat of the play was on him. Also it played the devil with him morally—and perhaps mentally. So things took the turn and started down-hill. Then the run was short and mad, despite warnings of friends, threats of relatives, and the baronet's own numerous clever checks and parries to avoid disaster. There was a season of hope after the sale of Randon. But the lurid clouds gathered again. Then Beverly was impoverished to the last oak and the last horse in the stud. The baronet took his daughter to town, and, by a turn of luck, put in a few merry months. Then a certain Scotch viscount caught him playing as no gentleman, no matter how dissolute, is supposed to play. The Scotchman made a clamour, and was killed for his trouble. That was the last known of Sir Ralph Westleigh and his daughter by any one of the outside world until the Pelican landed her voyagers before the stockade of Fort Beatrix on Gray Goose River.

All these matters employed Kingswell's thoughts as he lay awake in Captain d'Antons' cabin and watched the fire on the rough hearth fall lower and lower. Pity for the young girl, who had been born and bred to such a different heritage, pained and fretted him more keenly than a personal loss. The discomfort of it was almost as if his conscience were accusing him of disloyalty to a friend, though that was absurd, as neither he nor his had helped Westleigh in his descent, nor cried out against him when he met disaster at the bottom. But he had never, during those two years after their disappearance, given them more than a passing thought—and they had been friends and neighbours. He had experienced no pity for the young and beautiful girl with whom he had played in the racquet court at Beverly. Like the great world of which he was so insignificant a part, he had forgotten. Two lives, more or less, were of no consequence in such stirring times. He groaned, as if the realization of a great sin had come to him. Then, to the anger against himself was added anger against the world that had dragged Sir Ralph into this oblivion of dishonour, and the innocent girl into exile. What had she done to be driven beyond the bounds of civilization, her safety dependent on the whims of a French buccaneer? Ah, there was the raw spot, sure enough! In the little space of time between two risings of the sun, Kingswell had met a man and marked him for an enemy. Nursing a bitter, though somewhat muddled, resentment, he at last fell asleep, guarded from storm and frost by the roof of the very man who had inspired his anger.

For the next few days matters went smoothly at Fort Beatrix. It was evident to even the least experienced of the settlers that the winter had come to stay. The snow lay deep and dry over the frozen earth. The river was already hidden under a skin of gleaming ice, made opaque by the snow that had mingled with the water while it was freezing. The little settlement took up the routine of the dreary months. Axes were sharpened at the great stone in the well-house. The men donned moccasins of deerskin. They tied ingenious racquets, or snow-shoes, to their feet and tramped into the sombre forests. All day the thud, thud of the axes jarred across the air, interrupted ever and anon by the rending, splitting lament of some falling tree.

Kingswell put his men under William Trigget's orders, and he and Ouenwa spent much of their time with the choppers. Also, they journeyed with the trappers. Captain d'Antons, who was a skilled and tireless woodsman, led them on many weary marches in quest of game and fur. Most of the caribou had travelled southward, in herds of from ten to one hundred head, at the approach of winter; but a few remained in the sheltered valleys. Fortunately the settlers were familiar with the habits of the deer, and had laid in a supply of dried venison during the summer. However, whenever the hunters managed to make a kill, the fresh meat was enthusiastically received at the fort. Hares and grouse were snared, as were foxes and other small animals. A few wolves and one or two wildcats were shot. The bears were all tucked safely away in their winter quarters, and the beavers were frozen into theirs. On the whole, the hunters had a hard time of it, and no great reward for their toil. But it was work that kept both their brains and sinews employed, and so was of a deal more worth than the bare value of the pelts and dinners it supplied.

One day in early December, when Kingswell, D'Antons, the younger Donnelly, and Ouenwa were traversing a drifted expanse of "barren," marching in single file and without undue noise, they came upon another trail of racquet prints. They halted. They regarded this unexpected evidence of the proximity of their fellow man with misgivings—for snow had fallen in abundance, and therefore the trail was new. They glanced uneasily about them, scanning clumps of spruce and fir and mounds of snow-drifted rock with anxious eyes. They strained their ears for some warning sound—or for the twanging of bowstrings. They saw nothing. They heard nothing but the disconsolate chirping of a moose-bird in a thicket close at hand. D'Antons lowered his gaze to the trail.

"From the westward, and heading for the river," he said. "Then they are not from the village on Gander Lake."

"Big number," remarked Ouenwa. "Ten, twenty, thirty—don't know how much! Whole camp, I think."

"Ay," agreed Donnelly, "they sure has packed clear down through two falls o' snow. Ye could trot a pony along the pat' they has made."

"Are you on friendly terms with the savages?" inquired Kingswell of Captain d'Antons. The Frenchman smiled uncheerfully and shrugged his lean shoulders. He was not one to speak unconsidered words.