Marguerite De Roberval: A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier

by Thomas Guthrie Marquis

"To the gallows with him!" he repeated. "We are well rid of such a villain."

Gaillon's character was well known, and no one pitied his fate. Scarcely a man in the colony did not breathe more freely when he knew that it was beyond his power to work any further mischief; but they shuddered as they looked upon his dangling form, and wondered who next among them would meet a similar fate.

In the meantime, De Roberval had not forgotten his promise to return for his niece. But he had greatly miscalculated the distance and the time it would take a ship to go and return. In the present condition of the colony it would be utterly out of the question for him to be absent in person for so long a period. He had no difficulty, however, in finding one or two of the young noblemen who were willing to undertake the expedition; but an obstacle presented itself on which he had not counted. Not a man among the sailors could be found who was willing to return to the dreaded spot. Threats, commands, persuasions were alike in vain; no power on earth could have induced the crews to venture near the place where they had seen with their own eyes the flames of hell, and the demons hastening to claim their victims.

Roberval dared not attempt force. Able-bodied seamen were too few and too precious to risk the loss of even one. He was obliged to give up the attempt, and to resign himself to all the horrors of remorse. Whatever he may have felt he kept it to himself, and no man dared open his lips on the subject.

Winter set in, and proved a terrible one for the inhabitants of Charlesbourg Royal. They suffered keenly from the cold; and their miseries were greatly increased by the scarcity of food. Few dared go beyond the walls to seek supplies, as the prowling savages were ever ready to cut them off. They lived, too, in constant dread of De Roberval's iron rule; and for the slightest offences they were brought to the whipping-post, cast into the guardhouse, chained hand and foot, or led shivering to the gallows. Scurvy, too, broke out, and no Indian could be found to direct them to the tree whose virtues had once saved the remnants of Cartier's crew. They fell like the brown leaves before the frosts of autumn; and the feeble arms of their suffering and half-starved comrades made the walls resound with the dull thud of the pick, as they almost daily cut into the hard, frozen ground, to make ready graves. Those of gentler blood had nearly all succumbed, and no priest was left to give the last rites to the dead. When spring came, almost half the colony had disappeared, and those who survived were naught but living skeletons.

When the ice had left the river, and the snows the land, Roberval determined to make an effort to explore the great inland seas which had been depicted on Cartier's map, and if possible to find the spot where the nugget of gold had been discovered. But he had no idea of the distances in this vast continent; and after a month's struggling up turbulent rivers, and over rugged stretches where the foot of white man had never before trod, he returned disheartened to his settlement. Here he found that the men he had left in charge had been taking advantage of his absence to hold high revels, and the wildest confusion reigned in the fort. Disgusted and hopeless, he resolved to break up his colony and return to France, his ambition thwarted, his hopes rudely shattered, and his dreams of glory and renown in the New World faded into nothing but bitter memories and unvailing regrets.

As he sailed down the Gulf of St Lawrence with the handful of men who were left to him, he resolved to make one more effort to return to the Isle of Demons, and learn, at any rate, what he could of the fate of the three women—though he had no thought of the possibility that they might have survived. But when the crew learned whither they were bound, they rose in a body and mutinied. A few of those on board stood by Roberval in his resolve, but they were overborne, some of them struck down; and De Roberval, seeing his own life in danger, ordered Jehan Alfonse, who had returned to his allegiance, a sadder and a wiser man—like his commander—to steer away for France.

And thus, while Charles skirted the north of Newfoundland, De Roberval was leaving the mouth of the Hochelaga; and, sailing westward past the island of Cape Breton, kept on his steady way across the ocean.

On his arrival at La Rochelle, he let the mutineers go unmolested, fearing lest the story of his niece might be noised abroad. When he returned to court he reported that both girls had died in the New World. Rumours of the truth went up and down the land; but the court and the Church were silent, for the King stood in need of De Roberval. The high esteem in which he was held led all who learned the tale to believe that if he had been cruel, his cruelty must have been but the just punishment of guilt; and for the sake of the ancient and honourable name of his house, no one dared ask him any questions.

De Roberval threw himself and all his energies into the new war which was in progress, and in the clash of arms and the excitement of battle tried to drown the nightmare conscience that gave him no rest by night or day.