Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (441 page)

“Ah, monsieur, you cannot think what a good walker I am. In this splendid air one might go on forever.”

“We will cross then.”

In a very few minutes they were at the other side and had landed at the edge of the forest. There the guns and ammunition were allotted to each man, and his share of the provisions and of the scanty baggage. Then having paid the Indians, and having instructed them to say nothing of their movements, they turned their backs upon the river and plunged into the silent woods.

CHAPTER XXXI
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THE HAIRLESS MAN
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All day they pushed on through the woodlands, walking in single file, Amos Green first, then the seaman, then the lady, and De Catinat bringing up the rear. The young woodsman advanced cautiously, seeing and hearing much that was lost to his companions, stopping continually and examining the signs of leaf and moss and twig. Their route lay for the most part through open glades amid a huge pine forest, with a green sward beneath their feet, made beautiful by the white euphorbia, the golden rod, and the purple aster. Sometimes, however, the great trunks closed in upon them, and they had to grope their way in a dim twilight, or push a path through the tangled brushwood of green sassafras or scarlet sumach. And then again the woods would shred suddenly away in front of them, and they would skirt marshes, overgrown with wild rice and dotted with little dark clumps of alder bushes, or make their way past silent woodland lakes, all streaked and barred with the tree shadows which threw their crimsons and clarets and bronzes upon the fringe of the deep blue sheet of water. There were streams, too, some clear and rippling where the trout flashed and the king-fisher gleamed, others dark and poisonous from the tamarack swamps, where the wanderers had to wade over their knees and carry Adele in their arms. So all day they journeyed ‘mid the great forests, with never a hint or token of their fellow-man.

But if man were absent, there was at least no want of life. It buzzed and chirped and chattered all round them from marsh and stream and brushwood. Sometimes it was the dun coat of a deer which glanced between the distant trunks, sometimes the badger which scuttled for its hole at their approach. Once the long in-toed track of a bear lay marked in the soft earth before them, and once Amos picked a great horn from amid the bushes which some moose had shed the month before. Little red squirrels danced and clattered above their heads, and every oak was a choir with a hundred tiny voices piping from the shadow of its foliage. As they passed the lakes the heavy gray stork flapped up in front of them, and they saw the wild duck whirring off in a long V against the blue sky, or heard the quavering cry of the loon from amid the reeds.

That night they slept in the woods, Amos Green lighting a dry wood fire in a thick copse where at a dozen paces it was invisible. A few drops of rain had fallen, so with the quick skill of the practised woodsman he made two little sheds of elm and basswood bark, one to shelter the two refugees, and the other for Ephraim and himself. He had shot a wild goose, and this, with the remains of their biscuit, served them both for supper and for breakfast. Next day at noon they passed a little clearing, in the centre of which were the charred embers of a fire. Amos spent half an hour in reading all that sticks and ground could tell him. Then, as they resumed their way, he explained to his companions that the fire had been lit three weeks before, that a white man and two Indians had camped there, that they had been journeying from west to east, and that one of the Indians had been a squaw. No other traces of their fellow-mortals did they come across, until late in the afternoon Amos halted suddenly in the heart of a thick grove, and raised his hand to his ear.

“Listen!” he cried.

“I hear nothing,” said Ephraim.

“Nor I,” added De Catinat.

“Ah, but I do!” cried Adele gleefully. “It is a bell — and at the very time of day when the bells all sound in Paris!”

“You are right, madame. It is what they call the Angelus bell.”

“Ah, yes, I hear it now!” cried De Catinat. “It was drowned by the chirping of the birds. But whence comes a bell in the heart of a Canadian forest?”

“We are near the settlements on the Richelieu. It must be the bell of the chapel at the fort.”

“Fort St. Louis! Ah, then, we are no great way from my friend’s seigneury.”

“Then we may sleep there to-night, if you think that he is indeed to be trusted.”

“Yes. He is a strange man, with ways of his own, but I would trust him with my life.”

“Very good. We shall keep to the south of the fort and make for his house. But something is putting up the birds over yonder. Ah, I hear the sound of steps! Crouch down here among the sumach, until we see who it is who walks so boldly through the woods.”

They stooped all four among the brushwood, peeping out between the tree trunks at a little glade towards which Amos was looking. For a long time the sound which the quick ears of the woodsman had detected was inaudible to the others, but at last they too heard the sharp snapping of twigs as some one forced his passage through the undergrowth. A moment later a man pushed his way into the open, whose appearance was so strange and so ill-suited to the spot, that even Amos gazed upon him with amazement.

He was a very small man, so dark and weather-stained that he might have passed for an Indian were it not that he walked and was clad as no Indian had ever been. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, frayed at the edges, and so discoloured that it was hard to say what its original tint had been. His dress was of skins, rudely cut and dangling loosely from his body, and he wore the high boots of a dragoon, as tattered and stained as the rest of his raiment. On his back he bore a huge bundle of canvas with two long sticks projecting from it, and under each arm he carried what appeared to be a large square painting.

“He’s no Injun,” whispered Amos, “and he’s no Woodsman either.

Blessed if I ever saw the match of him!”

“He’s neither voyageur, nor soldier, nor coureur-de-bois,” said De

Catinat.

“‘Pears to me to have a jurymast rigged upon his back, and fore and main staysails set under each of his arms,” said Captain Ephraim.

“Well, he seems to have no consorts, so we may hail him without fear.”

They rose from their ambush, and as they did so the stranger caught sight of them. Instead of showing the uneasiness which any man might be expected to feel at suddenly finding himself in the presence of strangers in such a country, he promptly altered his course and came towards them. As he crossed the glade, however, the sounds of the distant bell fell upon his ears, and he instantly whipped off his hat and sunk his head in prayer. A cry of horror rose, not only from Adele but from everyone of the party, at the sight which met their eyes.

The top of the man’s head was gone. Not a vestige of hair or of white skin remained, but in place of it was a dreadful crinkled discoloured surface with a sharp red line running across his brow and round over his ears.

“By the eternal!” cried Amos, “the man has lost his scalp!”

“My God!” said De Catinat. “Look at his hands!”

He had raised them in prayer. Two or three little stumps projecting upwards showed where the fingers had been.

“I’ve seen some queer figure-heads in my life, but never one like that,” said Captain Ephraim.

It was indeed a most extraordinary face which confronted them as they advanced. It was that of a man who might have been of any age and of any nation, for the features were so distorted that nothing could be learned from them. One eyelid was drooping with a puckering and flatness which showed that the ball was gone. The other, however, shot as bright and merry and kindly a glance as ever came from a chosen favourite of fortune. His face was flecked over with peculiar brown spots which had a most hideous appearance, and his nose had been burst and shattered by some terrific blow. And yet, in spite of this dreadful appearance, there was something so noble in the carriage of the man, in the pose of his head and in the expression which still hung, like the scent from a crushed flower, round his distorted features, that even the blunt Puritan seaman was awed by it.

“Good-evening, my children,” said the stranger, picking up his pictures again and advancing towards them. “I presume that you are from the fort, though I may be permitted to observe that the woods are not very safe for ladies at present.”

“We are going to the manor-house of Charles de la Noue at Sainte Marie,” said De Catinat, “and we hope soon to be in a place of safety. But I grieve, sir, to see how terribly you have been mishandled.”

“Ah, you have observed my little injuries, then! They know no better, poor souls. They are but mischievous children — merry-hearted but mischievous. Tut, tut, it is laughable indeed that a man’s vile body should ever clog his spirit, and yet here am I full of the will to push forward, and yet I must even seat myself on this log and rest myself, for the rogues have blown the calves of my legs off.”

“My God! Blown them off! The devils!”

“Ah, but they are not to be blamed. No, no, it would be uncharitable to blame them. They are ignorant poor folk, and the prince of darkness is behind them to urge them on. They sank little charges of powder into my legs and then they exploded them, which makes me a slower walker than ever, though I was never very brisk. ‘The Snail’ was what I was called at school in Tours, yes, and afterwards at the seminary I was always ‘the Snail.’”

“Who are you then, sir, and who is it who has used you so shamefully?” asked De Catinat.

“Oh, I am a very humble person. I am Ignatius Morat, of the Society of Jesus, and as to the people who have used me a little roughly, why, if you are sent upon the Iroquois mission, of course you know what to expect. I have nothing at all to complain of. Why, they have used me very much better than they did Father Jogues, Father Breboeuf, and a good many others whom I could mention. There were times, it is true, when I was quite hopeful of martyrdom, especially when they thought my tonsure was too small, which was their merry way of putting it. But I suppose I was not worthy of it; indeed I know that I was not, so it only ended in just a little roughness.”

“Where are you going then?” asked Amos, who had listened in amazement to the man’s words.

“I am going to Quebec. You see I am such a useless person that, until I have seen the bishop, I can really do no good at all.”

“You mean that you will resign your mission into the bishop’s hands?” said De Catinat.

“Oh, no. That would be quite the sort of thing which I should do if I were left to myself, for it is incredible how cowardly I am. You would not think it possible that a priest of God could be so frightened as I am sometimes. The mere sight of a fire makes me shrink all into myself ever since I went through the ordeal of the lighted pine splinters, which have left all these ugly stains upon my face. But then, of course, there is the Order to be thought of, and members of the Order do not leave their posts for trifling causes. But it is against the rules of Holy Church that a maimed man should perform the rites, and so, until I have seen the bishop and had his dispensation, I shall be even more useless than ever.”

“And what will you do then?”

“Oh, then, of course, I will go back to my flock.”

“To the Iroquois!”

“That is where I am stationed.”

“Amos,” said De Catinat, “I have spent my life among brave men, but I think that this is the bravest man that I have ever met!”

“On my word,” said Amos, “I have seen some good men, too, but never one that I thought was better than this. You are weary, father. Have some of our cold goose, and there is still a drop of cognac in my flask.”

“Tut, tut, my son, if I take anything but the very simplest living it makes me so lazy that I become a snail indeed.”

“But you have no gun and no food. How do you live?”

“Oh, the good God has placed plenty of food in these forests for a traveller who dare not eat very much. I have had wild plums, and wild grapes, and nuts and cranberries, and a nice little dish of tripe-de-mere from the rocks.”

The woodsman made a wry face at the mention of this delicacy.

“I had as soon eat a pot of glue,” said he. “But what is this which you carry on your back?”

“It is my church. Ah, I have everything here, tent, altar, surplice, everything. I cannot venture to celebrate service myself without the dispensation, but surely this venerable man is himself in orders and will solemnise the most blessed function.”

Amos, with a sly twinkle of the eyes, translated the proposal to Ephraim, who stood with his huge red hands clenched, mumbling about the saltless pottage of papacy. De Catinat replied briefly, however, that they were all of the laity, and that if they were to reach their destination before nightfall, it was necessary that they should push on.

“You are right, my son,” said the little Jesuit. “These poor people have already left their villages, and in a few days the woods will be full of them, though I do not think that any have crossed the Richelieu yet. There is one thing, however, which I would have you do for me.”