Fort Amity

Fort Amity, by Arthur Thomas
Quiller-Couch

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Title: Fort Amity
Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
Release Date: February 17, 2007 [EBook #20612]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORT
AMITY ***

Produced by Lionel Sear

FORT AMITY.
BY
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.

TO HENRY NEWBOLT.
My dear Newbolt,
Two schoolfellows, who had sat together in the Sixth at Clifton, met at
Paddington some twenty years later and travelled down to enter their
two sons at one school. On their way, while the boys shyly became
acquainted, the fathers discussed the project of this story; a small
matter in comparison with the real business of that day--but that it
happened so gives me the opportunity of dedicating Fort Amity to you,
its editor in The Monthly Review, as a reminder to outlast the short life
granted in these days to novels.
Yet if either of our sons shall turn its pages some years hence, though
but to remind himself of his first journey to school, I hope he will not
lay it down too contemptuously. The tale has, for its own purposes, so
seriously confused the geography of Fort Amitie, that he may search
the map and end by doubting if any such fortress ever existed and stood
a siege: but I trust it will leave him in no doubt of what his elders
understood by honour and friendship.
Of these two themes, at any rate, I have composed it, and dedicate it to
a poet who has sung nobly of both. "Like to the generations of leaves
are those of men"--but while we last, let these deciduous pages
commemorate the day when we two went back to school four strong.
May they also contain nothing unworthy to survive us in our two
fellow-travellers!
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH.
The Haven, April 20th, 1904.

PREFACE.
More than once, attempting a story of high and passionate love--in this

book, for example, and still more recklessly in my tale of Sir John
Constantine--I have had to pause and ask myself the elementary
question: Can such a story, if at once true and exemplary, conclude
otherwise than in sorrow?
The great artists in poetry and prose fiction seem to consent that it
cannot: and this, I think, not because--understanding love as they do,
with all its wonder and wild desire--they would conduct it to life-long
bliss if they could, but simply because they cannot fit it into this muddy
vesture of decay. They may dismiss us in the end with peace and
consolation:
And calm of mind, all passion spent.
And we know or have known that of its impulse among us lesser folk it
holifies and populates this world. But our own transience qualifies it.
Only when love here claims to be above the world--"All for Love, and
the World well Lost"--we feel that its exorbitance must wreck it here
and now, however it may shine hereafter. That is why all the great
legends of love--the tale of Tristan and Iseult, for instance-- are
unhappy legends: as that is why they still tease us.
I hope these remarks will not be deemed too pompous for the preface to
a story in which true love is crossed by a soldier's sense of honour. The
theme is a variant on a great commonplace: and, following my habit, I
let the incidents and characters have their own way without the author's
comment or interference.
Q.

CONTENTS.
Chapter
PREFACE.
I. MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T'EN GUERRE.

II. A BIVOUAC IN THE FOREST.
III. TICONDEROGA.
IV. THE VOYAGEURS.
V. CONTAINS THE APOLOGUE OF MANABOZHO'S TOE.
VI. BATEESE.
VII. THE WATCHER IN THE PASS.
VIII. THE FARTHER SLOPE.
IX. MENEHWEHNA SETTLES ACCOUNTS.
X. BOISVEYRAC.
XI. FATHER LAUNOY HAS HIS DOUBTS.
XII. THE WHITE TUNIC.
XIII. FORT AMITIE.
XIV. AGAIN THE WHITE TUNIC.
XV. THE SECOND DESPATCH.
XVI. THE DISMISSAL.
XVII. FRONTENAC SHORE.
XVIII. NETAWIS.
XIX. THE LODGES IN THE SNOW.
XX. THE REVEILLE.
XXI. FORT AMITIE LEARNS ITS FATE.

XXII. DOMINIQUE.
XXIII. THE FLAGSTAFF TOWER.
XXIV. THE FORT SURRENDERS.
XXV. THE RAPIDS.
XXVI. DICK'S JUDGEMENT.
XXVII. PRES-DE-VILLE.
EPILOGUE--I.--HUDSON RIVER.
II.--THE PHANTOM GUARD.

FORT AMITY.
CHAPTER I.
MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T'EN GUERRE.
"So adieu, Jack, until we meet in Quebec! You have the start of us,
report says, and this may even find you drinking his Majesty's health in
Fort Carillon. Why not? You carry Howe, and who carries Howe
carries the eagles on his standards; or so you announce in your last.
Well,