Prisoners of Chance | Page 4

file of
grenadiers.
With the firing of the sunset gun the evening of their last earthly day,
the post-captain visited the condemned men, and spoke with each in
turn; they numbered five. All through the dark hours of that night
heavily armed sentries stood in the narrow passageway before
nail-studded doors, while each hour, as the ship's bell struck, the
Commandant of Marine peered within each lighted apartment where
rested five plainly outlined forms. With the first gray of the dawn the
unfortunate prisoners were mustered upon deck, but they numbered
only four. And four only, white faced, yet firm of step and clear of eye,
stood an hour later with backs to the rising sun and hearts to the
levelled rifles, and when the single volley had echoed and reechoed
across the wide river, the white smoke slowly lifting and blown away
above the trees, only four lifeless bodies lay closely pressed against the
red-brick wall--the fifth condemned man was not there: _Chevalier
Charles de Noyan had escaped his fate_. Like a spirit had he vanished
during those mysterious hours between midnight and dawn, leaving no

trace of his going save a newly severed rope which hung dangling from
a foreyard.
But had he escaped?
That morning--as we learn from private letters sent home by officers of
the Spanish fleet--there came to the puzzled O'Reilly a report that in the
dense blackness of that starless night a single boat sought to slip
silently past beneath the deep shadows of the upper battery. Unhalting
in response to a hail of the sentry, a volley was hastily fired toward its
uncertain outline, and, in the flare of the guns, the officer of the guard
noted the black figure of a man leap high into air, and disappear
beneath the dark surface of the river. So it was the Captain-General
wrote also the name "Charles de Noyan" with those of the other four,
endorsing it with the same terse military record, "Shot at sunrise."
Nor since that fateful hour has the world known otherwise, for,
although strange rumors floated down the great river to be whispered
about from lip to lip, and New Orleans wondered many a long month
whither had vanished the fair young wife, the daughter of Lafrénière,
yet no authentic message found its way out of the vast northern
wilderness. For nearly one hundred and fifty years history has accepted
without question the testimony of the Spanish records. The man who
alone could tell the strange story was in old age impelled to do so by a
feeling of sacred duty to the dead; and his papers, disarranged,
ill-written, already yellowed by years, have fallen to my keeping. I
submit them without comment or change, save only as to the
subdivision into chapters, with an occasional substitution for some
old-time phrase of its more modern equivalent. He who calls himself
"Geoffrey Benteen, Gentleman Adventurer," shall tell his own tale.
R. P.

Prisoners of Chance
CHAPTER I

THE REQUEST FOR AID
I am Geoffrey Benteen, Gentleman Adventurer, with much experience
upon the border, where I have passed my life. My father was that
Robert Benteen, merchant in furs, the first of the English race to make
permanent settlement in New Orleans. Here he established a highly
profitable trade with the Indians, his bateaux voyaging as far northward
as the falls of the Ohio, while his influence among the tribesmen
extended to the eastern mountains. My mother was of Spanish blood, a
native of Saint Augustine, so I grew up fairly proficient in three
languages, and to them I later added an odd medley of tribal tongues
which often stood me in excellent stead amid the vicissitudes of the
frontier. The early death of my mother compelled me to become
companion to my father in his wanderings, so that before I was
seventeen the dim forest trails, the sombre rivers, and the dark lodges
of savages had grown as familiar to me as were the streets and houses
of my native town. Hence it happened, that when my father fell the
victim of a treacherous blow, although he left to my care considerable
property and a widely scattered trade, I could not easily content myself
with the sameness of New Orleans; there I felt almost a stranger, ever
hungering for the woods and the free life of the mountains.
Yet I held myself to the work in hand until successful in straightening
out the tangled threads, and might have remained engaged in peaceful
traffic until the end of life, had it not been for a misunderstanding with
her who held my heart in captivity to her slightest whim. It matters
little now the cause of the quarrel, or where rested the greater blame;
enough that its occurrence drove me forth reckless of