Heralds of Empire | Page 5

The pier ran to deep water. At the far end I spoke.
"Not another word against Hortense and Jack! Promise me!"
His back was to the water, mine to the shore. He would have promised readily enough, I think, if the other monkeys had not followed--Rebecca with big tear-drops on both cheeks, Hortense quivering with wrath, Jack flushed, half shy and half shamed to be championed by a girl.
"Come, Ben; 'fore I count three, promise----"
But he lugged at me. I dodged. With a splash that doused us four, Ben went headlong into the sea. The uplift of the waves caught him. He threw back his arms with a cry. Then he sank like lead.
The sailor son of the famous captain could not swim. Rebecca's eyes nigh jumped from her head with fright. Hortense grew white to the lips and shouted for that lout of a blackamoor sound asleep on the sand.
Before I could get my doublet off to dive, Jack Battle was cleaving air like a leaping fish, and the waters closed over his heels.
Bethink you, who are not withered into forgetfulness of your own merry youth, whether our hearts stopped beating then!
But up comes that water-dog of a Jack gripping Ben by the scruff of the neck; and when by our united strength we had hauled them both on the pier, little Mistress Hortense was the one to roll Gillam on his stomach and bid us "Quick! Stand him on his head and pour the water out!"
From that day Hortense was Jack's slave, Jack was mine, and Ben was a pampered hero because he never told and took the punishment like a man. But there was never a word more slurring Hortense's unknown origin and Jack's strange wrist marks.
[1] Young Stanhope's informant had evidently mixed tradition with fact. Radisson was fined for going overland to Hudson Bay without the governor's permission, the fine to build a fort at Three Rivers. Eli Kirke's kinswoman was a daughter of Sir John Kirke, of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company.--Author.
CHAPTER II
I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED
So the happy childhood days sped on, a swift stream past flowered banks. Ben went off to sail the north sea in Captain Gillam's ship. M. Picot, the French doctor, brought a governess from Paris for Hortense, so that we saw little of our playmate, and Jack Battle continued to live like a hunted rat at the docks.
My uncle and Rebecca's father, who were beginning to dabble in the fur trade, had jointly hired a peripatetic dominie to give us youngsters lessons in Bible history and the three R's. At noon hour I initiated Rebecca into all the thrilling dangers of Indian warfare, and many a time have we had wild escapes from imaginary savages by scaling a rope ladder of my own making up to the high nursery window. By-and-bye, when school was in and the dominie dozed, I would lower that timid little whiffet of a Puritan maid out through the window to the turnstile. Then I would ride her round till our heads whirled. If Jack Battle came along, Rebecca would jump down primly and run in, for Jack was unknown in the meeting-house, and the meeting-house was Rebecca's measure of the whole world.
One day Jack lingered. He was carrying something tenderly in a red cambric handkerchief.
"Where is Mistress Hortense?" he asked sheepishly.
"That silly French woman keeps her caged like a squirrel."
Little Jack began tittering and giggling.
"Why--that's what I have here," he explained, slipping a bundle of soft fur in my hand.
"It's tame! It's for Hortense," said he.
"Why don't you take it to her, Jack?"
"Take it to her?" reiterated he in a daze. "As long as she gets it, what does it matter who takes it?"
With that, he was off across the marshy commons, leaving the squirrel in my hand.
Forgetting lessons, I ran to M. Picot's house. That governess answered the knocker.
"From Jack Battle to Mistress Hortense!"
And I proffered the squirrel.
Though she smirked a world of thanks, she would not take it. Then Hortense came dancing down the hall.
"Am I not grown tall?" she asked, mischievously shaking her curls.
"No," said I, looking down to her feet cased in those high slippers French ladies then wore, "'tis your heels!"
And we all laughed. Catching sight of the squirrel, Hortense snatched it up with caresses against her neck, and the French governess sputtered out something of which I knew only the word "beau."
"Jack is no beau, mademoiselle," said I loftily. "Pah! He's a wharf lad."
I had thought Hortense would die in fits.
"Mademoiselle means the squirrel, Ramsay," she said, choking, her handkerchief to her lips. "Tell Jack thanks, with my love," she called, floating back up the stairs.
And the governess set to laughing in the pleasant French way that shakes all over and has no spite. Emboldened, I asked why Hortense could