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“‘THE SWORD AND THE CRUCIFIX,’ WHISPERED DE SANCERRE,
POINTING TO THE SOLDIER AND THE PRIEST”

With
Sword and Crucifix

Being an Account of the Strange Adventures of
Count Louis de Sancerre, Companion of Sieur
de la Salle, on the Lower Mississippi
in the Year of Grace 1682

BY
EDWARD S. VAN ZILE

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1900

Copyright, 1899, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

WITH SWORD AND CRUCIFIX

CHAPTER I
IN WHICH A GREAT EXPLORER LISTENS AT MIDNIGHT
TO A TALE OF LOVE

“Louis le Grand, King of France and Navarre, has deserted pleasure to follow piety—and times are changed, monsieur.”

The speaker, Louis de Sancerre, of Languedoc, descendant of a famous constable of France, leaned against a tree near the shore of a majestic river, and musingly watched the moonbeams as they chased the ripples toward an unknown sea. A soft, cool breeze, heavy with the odor of new-born flowers, caressed his pale, clear-cut face, and toyed with the ruffles and trappings of a costume more becoming at Versailles than in the mysterious wilderness through which its wearer had floated for many weeks.

On the bank at the exiled courtier’s feet lay reclining the martial figure of a man, whose stern, immobile face, lofty brow, and piercing eyes told a tale of high resolve and stubborn will. Sieur de la Salle, winning his way to immortality through wastes of swamp and canebrake and the windings of a great river, had made his camp at a bend in the stream from which the outlook seemed to promise the fulfilment of his dearest hopes. On the crest of a low hill, sloping gently to the water, his followers had thrown up a rude fort of felled trees, and now at midnight the adventurous Frenchmen and their score of Indian allies were tasting sleep after a day of wearisome labor.

De la Salle and a hapless waif from the splendid court of Louis XIV., more sensitive than their subordinates to the grandeur of the undertaking in which they were engaged, had felt no wish to slumber. They had strolled away from the silent camp; and, for the first time since Count Louis de Sancerre had joined the expedition, its leader had been learning something of the flippant, witty, reckless, debonair courtier’s career.

“Beware the omnipresent ear of the Great Order, Monsieur le Comte!” exclaimed La Salle, rising to his elbow and searching the shadows behind him with questioning eyes. “Think not, de Sancerre, that in the treacherous quiet of this wilderness you may safely speak your mind. I have good reason to distrust the trees, the waters, and the roving winds. Where I go are ever savages or silence, but always in my ear echoes the stealthy footfall of the Jesuit. And this is well, monsieur. I seize this country in the name of France; the Order takes it in the name of God!”

“In the name of God!” repeated de Sancerre, mockingly. “You know Versailles, monsieur? There is no room for God. Banished once by a courtesan, the Almighty now succumbs to a confessor.”

“Hold, monsieur!” cried La Salle, sternly. “This is blasphemy! Blasphemy and treason! But enough of priests! You tell me that you loved this woman from the court of Spain?”

“How can I say? What is love, monsieur?” exclaimed de Sancerre, lightly, throwing himself down beside his leader.

It was as if a butterfly, born of the moonbeams, had come to ask a foolish riddle of the grim forest glades. The incarnation of all that was most polished, insincere, diabolical, fascinating at Versailles had taken the form of a handsome man, not quite forty years of age, who reclined at midnight upon the banks of an unexplored river, and pestered the living embodiment of high adventure and mighty purposes with the light and airy nothings of a courtier’s tongue. How should Sieur de la Salle know the mystery of love? He who had wooed hardship to win naught but the kiss of disappointment, he who had cherished no mistress save the glory of France, no passion but for King and Church, was not a source from which a flippant worldling could wring a definition of the word of words.

The majestic silence of the night was broken by the raucous muttering of some restless dreamer within the confines of the camp. An owl hooted, and far away a wolf bayed at the moon. La Salle arose, climbed the bank to see that his sentries were attentive at their posts, and then returned to Count de Sancerre’s side.

“You do not answer me, Sieur de la Salle!” exclaimed the latter, testily. “I have sought the answer from La Fontaine, from Moliêre, Racine; aye, from Bossuet and Fénelon. ’Twas all in vain. They were men, you say, and did not understand? But I have asked the question of de Montespan, la Vallière, la Fayette, Sêvigné. One was witty, another silent, and all were wrong. There remained, of course, de Maintenon. Her I never asked. She would have said, I doubt not, that love is a priest who leads by prayer to power.”

“You wander far afield, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked La Salle, coldly, after an interval of silence. “The night grows old, and still you have not told me why you left the splendors that you love, to risk your life in this fierce struggle in an unknown land.”

“To risk my life?” cried the Count, laughingly. “If that were all! To tear my velvets where no draper is, to see the gay-plumed birds a-laughing at my plight, to long in vain for powder for my wig, to find my buckles growing red with damp—all this is worse than death. But still, I bear it bravely, do I not? Ah, well, Turenne—God rest his soul!—taught me the lessons of a hard campaign. What is this voyage in a bark canoe upon the peaceful breast of yonder stream? A pleasure-jaunt, monsieur, to one who fought with France against the world—who sheathed his sword at Nimeguen. Once only were we beaten, de la Salle. The Dutch let in the sea, and, lo! his Majesty and Luxembourg, Turenne and Condé, Vauban and the rest, were powerless against the mighty ally of the foe. I say to you, Monsieur le Capitaine, beware the sea! You seek it in your quest. ’Tis full of treachery.”

The Count had arisen and drawn his sword, which gleamed in the moonlight as he turned its point toward the unknown mouth the roving river sought.

“This blade,” he said, reseating himself and patting the steel with affection, “flashed gayly for the King upon the Rhine. Alas for me, it drove me at the last to seek my fortunes in a weary land.”

“You drew it, then, for something other than the cause of France?” remarked La Salle, suspiciously.

“For that of which we spoke, which no tongue voices but all hearts have felt. I drew it once for love—et voilà tout!”

“You killed a Spaniard, then?”

“They speak the truth, monsieur, who say your mind is quick. She—as I told you—came to France with Spain’s great embassy. He, a strutting grandee, proud and bigoted, came with the suite, holding some post that made his person safe. The tool of diplomats, the pet of priests, my rival—as he was—defied my hate. ’Tis said they were betrothed, Don Josef and— But hold! her name I need not speak.”

The Count remained silent for a time, watching the moon-kissed waters at his feet. La Salle, grim, reticent, but not unsympathetic, gazed steadfastly at his companion’s delicately-carved face. A stern knight-errant, who sought to win an empire for his king, lay wasting the midnight hours to listen to a love-tale from a flippant tongue.

“’Twas with this blade,” went on de Sancerre after a time, waving his sword from side to side in the moonlight, “that I pierced his heart—and broke my own. For which all praise be to Saint Maturin, who watches over fools.”

“He was no coward, then?” questioned La Salle.

“Not when his pride was pricked,” answered de Sancerre. “Great wars have been begun with less diplomacy than I employed to make my insult drive him to his steel. But, Spanish blood is hot, and, truth to tell, my tongue can cut and thrust. Her eyes were on us at a fête champêtre when, standing by his side, I spoke the words that made him mine at midnight—’neath a moon like this. There’s little left to tell. He knew a Spanish trick or two, but, monsieur, he was a boy! In the moonlight there his eyes were so like hers I lost all pity—and—so—he died.”

“And then?”

“And then I vowed a candle to St. Christopher and sailed across the sea. Breathe it not, monsieur—I bore a letter from de Montespan to Frontenac.”

“Then cut your tongue out ere you tell the tale,” exclaimed La Salle, gruffly. After a moment’s silence he went on, more gently: “But, Monsieur le Comte, I cannot understand the ease of your escape. You’ve roused the anger of the King, de Maintenon, the Jesuits, and Spain. Such foes could crush an empire in a day.”

“But you yourself, monsieur, have stood against them all.”

“I?” exclaimed La Salle, musingly. “You may be right, my friend. I sometimes wonder if my life is charmed. Whom can I trust, monsieur? Allies false when the hour of danger came, assassins at my bedside, and poison in my food—all these I’ve known, monsieur. And still I live.”

The two adventurers had arisen and were facing each other in the moonlight. La Salle, tall, commanding—a king by the divine right of a dauntless soul—stood, with head uncovered, looking down at the slender, graceful patrician confronting him.

“You strive for France, Sieur de la Salle,” exclaimed de Sancerre, the mocking note gone from his voice—“for the glory of dear France—and France will not destroy you.”

“For France!” repeated La Salle, solemnly. “For France and for the Church! Vive le Roi!”

Silently they turned and, mounting the hillock, made their way toward the sleeping camp, while the Mississippi rolled on beneath the moon to tell a strange tale to the listening waters of the gulf.

CHAPTER II
IN WHICH DE SANCERRE IS CONFRONTED BY A
MYSTERY

Like a statue done in bronze stood Chatémuc before a hastily-constructed hut at the rear of the log fort in which the rank and file of the explorers lay sleeping. La Salle had chosen the sentry as his special body-guard, for at many a critical juncture in his long years of exploration—menaced at all times, as he had been, by a thousand lurking perils—the daring Frenchman had tested the loyalty and courage of this stalwart Mohican, who, for love of a white man, had wandered many weary miles from his tribal hunting-grounds.

Within the rude but spacious hut over which the phlegmatic Indian stood guard lay sleeping, as La Salle and de Sancerre entered the enclosure, two men who had found rest upon heaps of leaves and grass, and whose strangely-contrasted outlines, emphasized by the errant moonbeams that penetrated the chinks between the logs, called attention to the curious mixture of unrelated nationalities of which La Salle’s expedition was made up. In one corner of the hut reclined the slender form of the Franciscan friar, Zenobe Membré. Upon his placid, smiling face—a countenance suggestive of religious enthusiasm even while he slept—rested a ray of silvery light, as if the prayer that he had uttered ere he fell asleep had transformed itself into a halo to glorify his pillow through the night. His thin hands were crossed upon his breast, and showed white and transparent against the gray background of his garb.

Within the shadows at an opposite corner of the apartment lay the lithe, muscular figure of a man whose costume made it difficult for the observer to determine whether the wearer was a foot-soldier from the Low Countries or a Canadian coureur de bois. The truth was that Henri de Tonti’s experiences as an Italian officer in the Sicilian wars had left their impress upon his attire as an explorer under de la Salle. As he lay, fully dressed, in the moonlight that night he might well have been a sculptor’s dream, representing in his outlines the martial genius of the Old World, bringing “not peace but a sword” to the New. A bare hand rested lovingly upon the cross-piece of his rapier, which he had unfastened from his waist and tossed upon the dry grass of his couch. His other hand was covered by a glove.

tempting beds of leaves, La Salle and de Sancerre stood side by side in the centre of the hut for a moment, gazing thoughtfully at the weird tableau that their slumbering comrades made.

“The sword and crucifix!” whispered de Sancerre, pointing from the soldier to the priest. “Strange allies these, monsieur.”

“But one without the other were in vain! They serve together by the will of God. Good-night, Monsieur le Comte.”

How long de Sancerre had slept before he was awakened by a light touch upon his shoulder he never knew. It must have been a considerable time, for, as he opened his reluctant eyes, he saw that the moonlight no longer gleamed in all quarters of the hut, but dimly illumined only one corner thereof. Inured though he was to perils of all kinds, the Count felt a thrill of dismay as his eyes rested upon a hideous, grinning face leering at him from the shadows close at hand. He sat up hurriedly, uttering no sound, but fumbling in the leaves and grass for his rapier. A glance assured him that his comrades had been undisturbed by the intruder at his side.

“Be not afraid, señor,” whispered a voice in broken Spanish. “The children of the moon have naught to fear from us.”

De Sancerre, to whom Spanish was like a native tongue, raised himself upon his elbow and gazed searchingly at the misshapen hag who had disturbed his sleep.

“I crave your pardon,” he murmured, with the air of a courtier addressing a coquette in the Salon de Venus, while the mocking smile that his face so often wore gleamed in the half-light. “Then I am of the children of the moon?”

“At night ye come from out the shadows of the distant lands, ye white-faced offspring of your Queen, the Moon. The Sun, our God, has told us you would come. Be not afraid. We have rare gifts for you—and loving hearts.”

The harsh, guttural voice in which the aged crone spoke these gentle words added to the uncanny effect of her wrinkled, time-marked face, peering at the smiling Frenchman through the gloom.

“I bring you this,” she went on, still speaking in a mongrel Spanish patois, which de Sancerre found it difficult to interpret. “Remember what I say. The children of the sun send greeting to their brothers of the moon.”

She laid upon the dried grass of his bed a piece of white mulberry bark, upon which de Sancerre’s eyes rested indifferently for an instant. When he raised them again the hag had left his side, and he saw her pushing her way through an opening in the tree-limbs at the further end of the hut. For an instant her diminutive body stopped the gap in the wooden wall. Then, from where he lay, the Frenchman could catch a glimpse of moonbeams on the river through the opening that she had made.

For a moment this strange visitation affected de Sancerre unpleasantly. Surrounded, as their little party was, by unknown tribes with whom the wily Spaniards had had intercourse, the words of the old crone, cordial though they had been in their way, filled the Count with alarm. Furthermore, the ease with which she had made an undiscovered entrance to their hut emphasized the disquiet that he had begun to feel. Thorough soldier as he was, this seemingly harmless invasion of his leader’s quarters became to his mind a more menacing episode the more he weighed it in all its bearings.

Rising noiselessly from his resting-place, de Sancerre made his way between his sleeping comrades to the entrance to the hut. Stepping forth into the white night, he confronted Chatémuc, who still stood motionless in the same spot that he had occupied when La Salle and his companion had returned from the river. The Mohican, from long service with the explorer, had acquired a practical knowledge of the French tongue, but, as a general rule, he made use of it only in monosyllables.

“Chatémuc,” said de Sancerre, sternly, “your eyes are heavy with the moonlight or with sleep. You keep indifferent guard. Did you not see an aged witch who even now stood within the hut and roused me from my sleep?”

The tall Mohican gazed down upon the Frenchman with keen, searching eyes, which glowed at that moment with a fire that proved him innocent either of treason or stupidity. His stern, immobile face gave no indication of the astonishment which the Frenchman’s accusation must have caused him.

“There’s nothing stirring but the river and the leaves,” said Chatémuc, with grim emphasis, turning his shapely head slowly to sweep the landscape in all directions with eyes for which the forest had no mysteries.

“Ma foi, my Chatémuc! You’re as proud and stubborn as de Groot, the Hollander. But follow me. I’ll show you a hole that proves I dreamed no dream.”

De Sancerre, behind whom stalked the stately Mohican, made his way hurriedly to the further side of the hut. Pointing to an opening between the logs, through which a small boy might have crawled, the Count said:

“Behold, monsieur, the yawning chasm in your reputation as a sentry! ’Twould not admit an army, but it might serve for a snake.”

Chatémuc had fallen upon his knees, and was examining the aperture and the trampled grass which led to it. Presently he arose and turned towards the Count.

“A woman,” he muttered. “Small. Light. Old.”

“Fine woodcraft, Chatémuc! You read the blazonry that crossed the drawbridge with great skill—after the castle has been captured. But let it pass. No harm’s been done, save that your pride has had a fall. And so I leave you to your watch again. If you loved me, Chatémuc, you’d keep old women from my midnight couch. I fear my sleep is lost.”

Stealing noiselessly past the motionless forms of La Salle, the friar, and the Italian captain, after his successful demonstration of Chatémuc’s negligence as a sentinel, de Sancerre approached his tumbled bed of leaves with weary step. A feeling of depression, a sudden realization of the horrid possibilities that his environment suggested, a sensation of impotent rebellion at the fate that had hurled him from the very centre of seventeenth-century civilization into the rude embrace of a horror-haunted wilderness, came suddenly upon the vivacious Frenchman, mocking at his stoical views of life and making of the satirical tendency of his mind a knife with which to cut himself.

“Nom de Dieu!” he muttered, as he gazed down upon the dry grass and leaves of his uninviting couch, “these be fine lodgings for a Count of Languedoc! At the worst, with Turenne, there was always Versailles at our rear.”

At that instant his heavy eyes lighted upon the slip of white bark which his recent caller had left with him as a token of good-will. De Sancerre bent down and, grasping the seemingly meaningless gift, gazed at it inquiringly. To his amazement, he made out in the darkness what seemed to him to be a bit of writing, scratched with a pointed instrument upon this fragment from a mulberry bush. Hastily, stealthily, making his way to the opening through which the donor of the gift had forced her exit, the Count leaned forward, and in the moonlight read, with wondering eyes, the name:

Julia de Aquilar

It was the name of the woman for love of whom he had killed a Spaniard and lost his native land. Instantly his mind harked back to the confession that, but an hour or so before, he had poured into the ears of Sieur de la Salle. Had an eavesdropper overheard his words, and, in a spirit of mischief, sought to tease him by a trick? He rejected the supposition at once, for the conviction came upon him, increasing a thousandfold the consternation which he felt, that he had deliberately refrained from mentioning the name of his inamorata to La Salle.

De Sancerre drew himself erect and stood motionless for a moment, the most amazed and startled being in all the strange new world.

CHAPTER III
IN WHICH A MAIDEN SHOWS HER HEART

Sieur de la Salle’s temporary stockade had been erected upon the western bank of the great river, and his followers had received with delight the report that their leader had decided to indulge in a few days of recuperation before continuing his journey to the gulf. After weeks of labor at the paddles, the canoemen were in sore need of rest. The party consisted of twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen Indians—Abenakis and Mohicans—ten squaws, and three pappooses. Discontent and even open grumbling had already developed in this incongruous assemblage, and it was only the stern, imperious personality of de la Salle that had saved the expedition from falling asunder through the inherent antagonisms of the elements of which it was composed.

But upon the morning following the Count de Sancerre’s receipt of an inexplicable gift from the children of the sun there reigned an air of gayety in the camp. Provisions were plentiful, the terminus of the exploration, it was rumored, was near at hand, and, for the next few days, at least, no exhausting task, no menacing danger seemed likely to annoy the adventurers. The glories of early spring upon the lower Mississippi met their wondering and grateful eyes. In his delight the Frenchman carolled forth a chanson to greet the rising sun, while his phlegmatic comrade, the native American, grunted with satisfaction as he reclined upon the long grass and appeared to muse indolently upon the strange vivacity of the men from over-sea.

Shortly after dawn de Sancerre, pale, heavy-eyed, restless, weary of his vain efforts to gain a dreamless sleep, had wandered away from the camp and thrown himself listlessly down upon the gently sloping shore of the river, across whose ripples flashed the gleaming arrows of the April sun. As he lay there, reclining against a slender tree-trunk, the last few hours seemed to him to have been a long nightmare, through which the mocking black eyes of a woman of wondrous beauty had taunted him for his helplessness.

As de Sancerre, refreshed by the cool breeze that chased the sunbeams across the flood, recalled every detail of his recent adventure, he found himself confronted not only by a mystery, but by a choice between two courses of action which must be made at once. Should he tell his comrades of the strange episode that had disturbed his rest, or should he keep the secret to himself, trusting to Chatémuc’s pride and reticence to repress the story of the night? In a certain sense he was under obligations to de la Salle to keep him informed of every happening which, even remotely, might affect the welfare of the expedition. On the other hand, there was that in his leader’s personality which caused de Sancerre to hesitate before telling him a tale which, he reflected, would sound like the ravings of a lunatic. He could picture the cold, disdainful glance in de la Salle’s searching eye ere he turned upon his heel with the curt remark that the Count de Sancerre’s dreams should test the friar’s skill.

To the Count, thus vexed by a most disturbing problem, came Katonah, sister of Chatémuc, the only Indian maiden in Sieur de la Salle’s strangely-assorted suite. With the most punctilious courtesy de Sancerre sprang erect, removed from his head his travel-worn but still picturesque bonnet, and, making a sweeping bow, pointed to the grass-grown seat that he had just vacated.

“Mademoiselle Katonah, I bid you welcome! I was dreaming, petite, of the land across the sea. Your eyes and smile shall change my mood again.”

The Indian girl gazed at the Frenchman with dark, fearless eyes, in which there gleamed a light that told the courtier a tale he had no wish to learn. Not that the Count was better than his age, more scrupulous than the pleasure-loving court in which his youth had been passed, but in the freer, nobler atmosphere of this brave New World, and in the companionship of men striving in the midst of peril to do great deeds, all that was most admirable in de Sancerre’s character had been born anew, and, to his own amazement, he had learned that his views of life had undergone a change, that there had grown up something in his soul which gave the lie to his scoffing tongue, still from habit the tongue of a mondain fashioned in an evil school.

Katonah, reclining against the tree and gazing upward at the Frenchman, formed a deep-toned picture becoming to that land of hazy sunlight, drowzy zephyrs, and opening flowers, bright-hued and redolent of spring. Her dark eyes, clear-cut features, and white, even teeth, her slender, supple limbs, satisfied even the exacting eye of a man who had looked with admiration upon La Vallière, de Montespan, de Maintenon.

“The land across the sea!” exclaimed Katonah, waving a slender, well-turned hand toward the opposite shore of the great river. “You would go back to it?” She had learned the French tongue from her brother, Chatémuc.

Her eloquent eyes rested questioningly upon the pallid, symmetrical face of de Sancerre.

The barbaric directness of her question brought a smile to the Frenchman’s lips as he threw himself down by her side and took her hand in his.

“Mayhap some day I shall go back, ma petite. But at this moment I have no wish to go.”

De Sancerre was looking at Katonah, but in his mind was the picture of a scrap of white bark upon which had been scrawled the name of the only woman his heart had ever loved. Perhaps Katonah weighed his words at their real worth, for she withdrew her hand from his, while her gentle eyes rested mournfully upon the mighty river upon whose bosom she had learned the joy and sorrow of a hopeless love.

De Sancerre, whose delicately-moulded face, graceful figure, ready wit, and quick perceptions, added to high birth and a reputation for physical courage, had made him a favorite at a voluptuous court, felt a mixture of self-satisfaction and annoyance at the unsought homage that he had won from this handsome savage. No coquette at Versailles could have put into artful words the flattery that Katonah gave him by a glance. But de Sancerre realized that, under existing circumstances, her devotion to him might involve them both in serious peril. Her brother, Chatémuc, was a sentry whose eyes and ears would not always be blind and deaf to what was stirring besides the river and the leaves.

“Katonah,” said the Count, presently, “let me tell you why I may never go back to the land beyond the sea.”

The Indian girl gazed up at him with earnest attention.

“To the great wigwam of the king who rules all kings there came a maiden from a distant land. Her eyes were like the night, her hair the color of a raven’s wing.”

De Sancerre met Katonah’s eyes and remained silent for a time. There was something in her glance that chilled him for the moment with an inexplicable foreboding. Annoyed at his weakness, he went on:

“All men loved her, ma petite, and so it was not strange that I— Mais n’importe. Among the braves, Katonah, who followed in her train was a youth with evil eye, a black, soft-footed, proud, and boastful man, to whom her word was sworn.”

“You killed him, then,” said Katonah, with conviction.

De Sancerre started nervously and gazed around him searchingly. There was an uncanny precipitancy in Katonah’s mental methods which affected him unpleasantly.

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “I killed him, Katonah.”

“And the maiden with the raven hair? You carried her away?”

“No, Katonah. I came across the sea and left her there.”

The eyes of the Mohican wore a puzzled expression as she tried to read his face.

“I do not understand,” she murmured, presently.

De Sancerre remained silent for a while. He realized that, with the limited vocabulary at his disposal, he could not make the Indian girl comprehend the exigencies which, in a civilized land, might arise to drive a lover from his loved one’s side. The mind of the savage maiden was unfitted to grasp those finer distinctions which made the habits and customs at Versailles so superior to the methods and manners prevailing among her Mohican kindred. Presently the expatriated courtier said:

“Katonah, let me tell you a strange tale. Your brother kept guard last night between the river and our hut. But while we slept an aged woman crept up beside my bed and gave me this.”

De Sancerre removed from his breast the piece of mulberry bark upon which rested the name of Julia de Aquilar. Katonah gazed at the writing awe-struck.

“It is the name,” said the Frenchman, in answer to her glance, “of the woman with the raven hair.”

The Indian girl, with marvellous grace and agility, sprang to her feet. Motionless she stood for a moment looking down at de Sancerre.

“She followed you across the sea?” she asked, in a dull, passionless voice.

De Sancerre smiled as he slipped the bark into his doublet and rose to a standing posture.

“That could not be, Katonah,” he said, lightly. “I think some wizard, making medicine, has read her name upon my heart.”

More he might have said, but at that instant Chatémuc, with stormy brow, stood beside them. Not glancing at the Frenchman, his angry gaze rested upon the shrinking figure of Katonah. With an imperious gesture he pointed towards the camp, and, as the girl hurried away in obedience to her brother’s silent behest, de Sancerre threw himself wearily upon the bank, a mocking light gleaming in his eyes as he turned and watched the retreating Mohicans until they were lost to sight behind the osier-trees.

CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH DE LA SALLE REACHES A FATEFUL
DECISION

“I have heard it said that the good Father le Jeune, the Jesuit, not speaking Algonquin, was obliged to expound the mysteries of the faith to the Montagnais through the aid of a blasphemous backslider, far gone in liquor. This tool of Satan put vile words into the mouth of the Jesuit, so that the Montagnais laughed mockingly while le Jeune fondly thought that he was explaining to them the doctrine of the Trinity.”

Henri de Tonti, Zenobe Membré, and Sieur de la Salle had joined the Count de Sancerre, after the departure of Chatémuc and Katonah, and the quartet had formed itself for the time being into a council, to answer at once an insistent and momentous question. Two white-robed envoys, carrying a disk of burnished copper to represent the sun, had entered La Salle’s hut an hour before this, bringing to him an invitation to visit, with his followers, the city of their chief. Henri de Tonti, enthusiastic lay proselyter though he was, had taken the ground that an expedition to the haunts of the sun-worshippers would result in nothing more valuable than a waste of time and energy, while it might involve the party in unforeseen dangers. To check the enthusiasm of the Franciscan friar, who longed to convert these friendly idolaters to the true faith, de Tonti had just been calling the attention of the council to the difficulties besetting a missionary who attempted to explain the teachings of Mother Church in a tongue with which he was not thoroughly conversant.

The slender, white-faced friar, whose great physical endurance was suggested by nothing in his outward seeming but the clear, steady gleam in his large gray eyes, turned, rather impatiently, from the Italian adventurer and put forth an appealing palm towards Sieur de la Salle, who lay at full length upon the bank, his head resting upon his upturned hand, as he listened attentively to the debate between the soldier and the priest.

“There is much efficacy in signs, monsieur,” exclaimed Membré, with fervor. “Could I have led a thousand redmen to a knowledge of the truth had I always waited for an alien tongue? When all seemed lost, when their ears were deaf, when my prayers and hymns were but the feeble strivings of a voice they would not heed, has come a miracle, vouchsafed by Jesus Christ, and howling savages have fallen prone in penitence before the cross. I ask not much of you, monsieur, but in the name of Mother Church I crave an escort to these children of the sun. To pass them by, to leave them hopeless in their blind idolatry, to say no word to bring them to the faith—Mother of God, but this would be a sin!”

The delicate face of the Franciscan glowed with the fervor of his soul. He had drawn himself up to his full height, and his rich, penetrating voice echoed weirdly across the gleaming waters of the flood.

De la Salle put up his hand with a gesture seemingly intended to calm the exuberance of the devoted priest. Turning to de Sancerre, who was seated on his right, he said:

“What think you, Monsieur le Comte? Shall we risk a visit to these children of the sun?”

“Mais oui, monsieur. There is no other course. If they should take offence at our neglect—ma foi, it might go hard with us.”

A scornful smile played across de Tonti’s scarred and rugged face. He was annoyed at his failure to prevent the delay which this apparently useless visit to a pagan tribe would engender. De Sancerre observed the satirical expression upon the Italian’s countenance, but wisely refrained from giving voice to the anger which he felt at the sight. Between de Tonti and de Sancerre a national antagonism had been intensified by the jealousy existing between them regarding the attitude of their leader. The evident fondness shown by de la Salle for the companionship of the itinerant French nobleman had displeased the Italian veteran, whose long years of devotion to the explorer’s service had begotten a claim to special consideration. In more highly civilized surroundings the friction between de Tonti and de Sancerre would long ago have found relief in bloodshed. One striking difference between Versailles and the wilderness lay in the fact that in the latter greater provocation was needed to impel men to run each other through with steel than in the parks in which gay courtiers insulted one another with soft words.

“Furthermore, monsieur,” went on de Sancerre, observing that his words had not impelled de la Salle to come to an immediate decision regarding the question at issue—“furthermore, there may be a way to find an interpreter through whom these lost idolaters shall learn the teachings of our faith.” If there sounded a note of insincerity in the Frenchman’s voice, none marked it save de Tonti, whose smile was always satirical when de Sancerre touched upon the Church.

“Your words, Monsieur le Comte, mean much or nothing. Explain yourself,” said de la Salle, coldly.

“Did you notice at the further end of yonder hut a hole through which a good-sized dog might crawl?” asked de Sancerre, impressively, arising and pointing toward the camp.

“Sieur de la Salle has eyes for everything, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked de Tonti, tauntingly.

Paying no attention to his rival, de Sancerre went on:

“Through that hole last night there crept into the hut an aged hag, who, coming to my side, gave us a welcome from the children of the sun. They call us—as you know—the children of the moon.”

De la Salle, calm, phlegmatic, but ever on the alert, gazed searchingly at the speaker.

“Your tale is somewhat late, monsieur,” he remarked, meaningly.

“I feared the gossip of an idle camp,” said de Sancerre, lightly, carelessly tossing a pebble into the rippling waters at his feet. “The matter’s not of moment but for this: the old crone spoke a Spanish patois, hard to understand, but not impossible. Her tongue, I think, might serve our friar well.”

“A Spanish patois?” repeated de la Salle, musingly. “’Tis well you spoke of this, Monsieur le Comte. I told the keen-eyed Colbert that there was no time to lose. Below, around us lie the lands of gold, and stretched across them rests the arm of Spain. The time has come when we must lop it off.”

De la Salle had arisen and, with his hand upon the hilt of his sword, gazed toward the waters which flowed toward a Spanish sea. He looked, for the moment, the very incarnation of the martial spirit of an adventurous age, bidding defiance to a mighty foe. Suddenly he turned and eyed his followers sternly. In a voice which admitted of no reply, he said:

“De Tonti, de Sancerre, and Membré, prepare to set out at once to these people of the sun. I’ll give you presents for their chiefs and wives. Send Chatémuc to me. He shall go with you, and his sister—Katonah, is it not? She’ll find the woman with the Spanish tongue where you, as men, might fail.”

“But,” exclaimed de Sancerre, springing to his feet, “there may be peril for the girl in this. ’Tis best we go alone.”

“I am amazed, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked La Salle, sternly. “Obey my orders! ’Tis not for you to question what I plan. Whatever comes of this, the blame shall rest with me.”

De Tonti, Membré, and de Sancerre had turned to make their way hurriedly back to the camp.

“De Sancerre,” called La Salle, ere they had gone beyond ear-shot. The French nobleman returned hurriedly to his leader’s side.

“There is no danger to Katonah in all this,” said La Salle, meaningly, his eyes reading de Sancerre’s face. “No harm can come to her, for Chatémuc is ever by her side. No nobleman in Spain or France is prouder, de Sancerre, than Chatémuc. You understand me?”

“Ma foi, I am not dull, monsieur!” exclaimed the Count, a note of anger in his voice. Then he turned on his heel and strode rapidly toward the camp.

CHAPTER V
IN WHICH A DAUGHTER GRANTS A FATHER’S WISH

Late in the afternoon of a day in April, just one year before the date of the occurrences recorded in the foregoing chapters of this tale, Don Rodrigo de Aquilar, statesman, soldier, scholar, devout Catholic, sat at a curiously-carved table in the library of his ancestral house in the street of Las Palmas, Seville. His gray hair and pointed beard, his keen, dark eyes and lofty brow, the simple elegance of his attire, and the artistic luxury of his surroundings combined to form a striking picture in the half-lights of the waning day. Upon the table before him lay pompous tomes, quaint old manuscripts, and several crude maps and charts.

Copies of the letters of Menendez to Philip II. of Spain, made by Don Rodrigo in the archives of Seville; a transcript of the bull “by the authority whereof Pope Alexander, the sixth of that name, gave and granted to the Kings of Castile and their successors the regions and islands found in the west ocean sea by the navigations of the Spaniards:” a reproduction of a map of the western world, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney by Michael Lok; a volume entitled Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages, hot with hatred of the Spanish, and other misleading data concerning a misunderstood continent confronted the Castilian aristocrat, and by their united efforts cast upon him a spell which had brought to his thin cheeks a hectic flush, and to his haughty lips lines of determination.

It was, however, with a much later manuscript than any one of those above mentioned that Don Rodrigo was engaged at the moment of which we write. Bending eagerly forward from a quaintly-cut, high-backed chair, the aged Spaniard was scanning attentively a parchment upon which a recent explorer, with artistic tendencies, had inscribed a pictorial outline of his discoveries. Ports, harbors, islands, and rivers competed for the attention of the observer with rudely outlined birds, beasts, and fishes. Indians feasting and dancing, Indians flogged by priests. Indians burning alive for heresy, gave grim testimony to the fact that the eccentric cartographer had witnessed sympathetically the saving of souls in the New World. It was not upon these, however, nor upon the chameleon with two legs confronting a bat-winged griffin having the tail of an alligator—a weird product, according to the map-maker, of Mexico—that Don Rodrigo de Aquilar was squandering the retreating light of day. His eyes and mind rested upon a sketch representing a group of Indians working silver mines.

“Methinks, Juan, the venture’s worth the risk. Were it not for Doña Julia, I’d slip my anchor of old age and sail across the sea. I have no mind to place the King’s gift in an agent’s hands, to let him rob the Mexicans and me.”

Don Rodrigo had leaned back in his chair, and was gazing across the disordered table at a pale, dark-eyed youth, attired in black velvet, whose thin, nervous hand had been making a copy of letters-patent from Charles of Spain to his Majesty’s “dear beloved son in Christ, Don Rodrigo de Aquilar.” Juan Rodriquez, secretary to Don Rodrigo, was a lineal descendant of a marinero of Seville who had returned safely to his native city after circumnavigating the globe with Magellan. Of this same marinero it had been written that he was “energetic, courageous, but marvellous unprincipled.”

“I have heard Doña Julia say, señor,” remarked Juan in a softly modulated voice—“I have heard her say, within the last few days, that she would be glad to see those strange lands over-sea, where palaces are made of gold and pearls grow upon the trees.”

A grim smile played across the haughty countenance of the old statesman.

“An idle whim begot of idle tales, young man! But were I sure that sufferings and danger would not beset our ship, I’d take the girl and look upon my grant before I die. ’Twill be her heritage at last. But, look you, Juan! These blind cartographers have dealt in fancies tempting men to death. Somewhere beneath the soil of yonder fatal land lie my two sons—and in my death a famous name must die. And I am old. They’d say at court, should I set sail from here, that his Majesty’s rich gifts had made me mad at last.”

There was silence at the table for a time. Don Rodrigo reclined in his chair and watched the changing lights and shadows of the waning day as they emphasized the sombre beauty of the room. Presently he said:

“You’ve made the footings, Juan? A hundred thousand ducats will cover everything?”

“And leave a handsome margin, señor,” answered the secretary, referring to a parchment upon which daintily-executed rows of figures had been inscribed. “As times go, señor, the vessel costs you but a song.”

Don Rodrigo eyed Juan Rodriquez searchingly. His secretary’s apparent eagerness for the venture mystified him. Diplomatist, educated in a crafty school, the old Spaniard had never lost sight of the advantages to be gained at times by frank directness.

“You are urging me to take this step, Juan. Let me ask you why?”

The pale face of the youth had turned yellow in the twilight. His dark, shifty eyes refused to meet his master’s insistent gaze. His thin hand drummed nervously on the dry, rattling parchment in front of him as he said, with an attempt at candor which did not ring true:

“I believe, señor, that it would be well for Doña Julia, and for you, to leave Seville for a time. She mourns Don Josef—does she not? And you, Don Rodrigo, have won a triumph in diplomacy that frees you for a while from public life. The voyage now is not so fraught with danger as of old, nor is there peril when you reach New Spain. More than one fair lady of Seville has been across and back for love of Mother Church. And, as I said, the marvels of the sea might serve to turn your daughter’s mind from thoughts of her betrothed.”

Don Rodrigo gazed earnestly at the eager face of his secretary.

“You believe, then, Juan, that Doña Julia’s heart was broken when Don Josef fell, run through by the Frenchman’s sword? You think she loved him?”

“Nay, señor, such thoughts are not for me,” answered Juan, in a voice that resembled the purring of a cat. “But this I see—that since you returned from France her eyes are heavy and her cheeks are pale. The songs she used to sing we hear no more. She’s fading like a flower which craves the sun. Give her, señor, new aims, new scenes, the splendors of the sea, the marvels of New Spain, and once again her eyes and smile will be as sunny as they were of old.”

“You’re wise beyond your years, young man,” remarked the old diplomat, playfully. “Mayhap, my Juan, you know a charm to make me young again. Or perhaps you can find the island of Bimini and the fountain of eternal youth which bold de Leon sought. But, hark, I hear her step! We’ll lay the venture, in all its bare simplicity, before her, and do as she decides.”

As Don Rodrigo ceased speaking there entered the library a dark-haired, large-eyed, graceful girl, who glided from the shadows of the twilight toward the centre of the room, and stood motionless at the lower end of the long table. A belated sunbeam, stealing through the distant window, caressed her face for a moment, upon which a sad smile rested as her eyes met her father’s.

“You disobey his Majesty’s behest, Don Rodrigo de Aquilar!” she exclaimed, playfully, pointing toward the books and maps before her. “Did not the King command you to take a well-earned rest, my father?”

“But his Majesty has never ordered me to sit here and die,” remarked Don Rodrigo, emphatically. “Be seated, Julia. You come to us at a most opportune moment. For my services in France his Majesty has granted me fair lands across the sea. Mines rich in silver belong to me by virtue of this seal. The question is, my daughter, will you go with me to view my province in New Spain?”

Juan Rodriquez, who had arisen upon Doña Julia’s entrance, stood watching the girl with stealthy eyes, in which there gleamed a light not there before. There was silence in the room for a moment. Then Julia, looking Don Rodrigo fearlessly in the face, said:

“I will go with you gladly, father. Seville has stifled me. But place no faith upon my changing whims. If we’re to go, then let us sail at once.”

CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH JUAN RODRIQUEZ UNDERGOES AN UNPLEASANT
HALF-HOUR

In the year 1681 the fickle Guadalquivir still pursued a liberal policy toward Seville and vouchsafed sufficient water to that port to enable sea-going vessels to begin or end their voyages within sight of the Alcazar. Later on, the Spanish sailors were forced, by the treachery of the famous river, to abandon Seville and betake themselves to Cadiz for an ocean harborage.

At the time, however, at which Don Rodrigo de Aquilar fitted out the Concepcion—a high-pooped vessel of ninety tons burden—for his voyage to the silver mines bestowed upon him by Charles II. of Spain, the harbor at Seville enabled the aged diplomat to equip his ship without leaving his library. By giving his orders to his secretary, Juan Rodriquez, who carried them to Gomez Hernandez, captain of the Concepcion, Don Rodrigo was relieved of the friction which in those days frequently soured an adventurer’s disposition even before he had put to sea.

The necessity for haste, lest the veering winds of Doña Julia’s fickle fancy should at the last moment balk her father’s enterprise, had been impressed upon Juan Rodriquez, who needed no hint from Don Rodrigo to make him a gadfly to the captain of the Concepcion. Long before he weighed anchor, Gomez Hernandez had sworn by his favorite saint that if the opportunity ever came to him to put the white-faced, soft-voiced secretary into irons, he would show him no pity. That the perilous voyage before them might furnish him with the means for punishing Juan’s insolence the captain well knew. Let the Concepcion toss the Canaries well astern, and for many weeks Gomez Hernandez would be autocrat in a little kingdom of his own.

Doña Julia’s cabin was, as it were, the hawser which held the clumsy little ship to her moorings. A stuffy room between decks, it seemed cruel to ask a maiden used to the luxury of Seville, Madrid and Paris to spend weeks within its irritating confines. Don Rodrigo had devoted great energy and ingenuity to the task of making his daughter’s quarters aboard ship less repulsive than they had at first seemed. Rugs from the Orient, a hammock made of padded silk, jars of sweetmeats from Turkey, a priceless oil-painting of the Virgin Mary, and other quaintly contrasted offshoots of a fond father’s anxious care combined to make Doña Julia’s cabin a compartment whose luxury was ludicrous and whose discomfort was pathetic.

Had Don Rodrigo de Aquilar better understood the peculiarities of his daughter’s disposition, he would have spent less time in making of her cabin a mediæval curiosity-shop, and would have weighed anchor a week sooner than he did—thus gaining a span of time which would have begotten across the sea a radical difference in the outcome of his expedition. Something of this found its way into the mind of the aged Spaniard after the Concepcion had cleared the mouth of the Guadalquivir and was standing out to sea. Beside him upon the poop-deck stood Julia, her dark eyes gleaming with excitement as they swept the tumbling sea or glanced upward at the bulging sails which drove the awkward craft haltingly across the deep. She had paid little or no attention to the cabin which had taxed Don Rodrigo’s ingenuity, Juan’s patience, and Captain Hernandez’s temper for a month; but the flush in her cheeks and the smile upon her lips, as she watched the waters sweeping the Old World away from her, gladdened her father’s heart as he scanned her changing face.

“The sea is kind to us. See yonder rainbow ’gainst the purple east! An omen such as that is worth a candle to St. Christopher.”

The soft, insistent voice of Juan Rodriquez broke in upon the musings of the grandee and his daughter.

“’Tis not so strange the saints should wish us well,” remarked Don Rodrigo, removing a black velvet cap from his head to let the sea-wind play with his white locks. “We go to serve the work of Mother Church. To tell the heathen of Mary and her Son, to raise the cross where blood-soaked idols stand, to fight the devil with the Book and prayer.”

“And, then—to work the mines,” put in Juan gently.

Doña Julia turned quickly and flashed an angry glance at the soft-tongued secretary. She had noticed, with annoyance, a change in Juan’s manner since the ship had steered for the open sea. In a way that defied explanation in words, the young man had carried himself for the past few hours as if, upon the deck of a ship, he had found himself upon an equality with his master. There was an elusive sarcasm in his words at times, a defiant gleam in his restless eyes, a mocking note in his voice, which the girl noted with an inexplicable feeling of foreboding.

“Aye—to work the mines,” repeated Don Rodrigo, unsuspiciously. “Why not? ’Tis nigh two centuries since treasures from New Spain came over-sea. And for their paltry gold we’ve given them the cross. For every ducat gained by Spain, a soul’s been won for heaven. Harsh measures with the stubborn—these, of course. ’Tis thus the Church must win its way on earth. The fight is not yet done. Upon the border of the lands I own the good Dominicans have built a mission-house. On you, my daughter, will devolve the task to raise a great cathedral where the friars dwell. I’ll dig the silver from the ground for you, and mayhap from my place in paradise the saints will give me eyes to see the glory of your deeds. May Mother Mary will it so!”

The old man’s eyes were upturned in fervor toward the changing glories of the evening sky. The excitement of the embarkation, the enlivening influence of the stiff, salt breeze, and the mysterious promises held out to him by that seductive West toward which his vessel plunged had stirred the blood in the aged Spaniard’s veins, and emphasized at the same moment both his religious enthusiasm and his earthly ambitions.

Doña Julia was on the point of commenting upon her father’s words when there sprang to the deck from below a slender, active man who, ashore, would have looked like a sailor, but aboard ship resembled a soldier. Gomez Hernandez, captain of the Concepcion, was the very incarnation of that dauntless spirit which had, within the lapse of two centuries, carried the arms of Castile and Aragon to the farthest quarters of an astonished globe. Bright, dark eyes, a cruel mouth, a small, agile, muscular frame, and a manner proud or cringing as occasion dictated, combined to make of Gomez Hernandez a typical Spanish seaman of the seventeenth century. Saluting Don Rodrigo de Aquilar respectfully the captain said:

“May I trouble you, señor, to join me in my cabin for a while? I have matters to lay before you which brook no delay.”

Hernandez’s words were addressed to the diplomat, but his piercing eyes rested as he spoke upon the face of Juan Rodriquez. The secretary, even paler than his wont was, gazed across the sea toward the horizon from which the shades of night had begun to creep.

“Await me here, Julia,” said Don Rodrigo, cheerfully, turning to follow the captain to the lower deck. “I will return to you at once. Lead on, my captain. You’ll find I am not mutinous, no matter what you ask.”

In another moment Doña Julia and Juan Rodriquez stood alone upon the poop. The secretary turned from his contemplation of the sea and his restless eyes fell full upon the disturbed face of the girl, a face of marvellous beauty in the half-lights of the fading day. There was silence between them for a time. The creaking of timbers, the complaining of the cordage, the angry splash of the disturbed sea, and from the bow the subdued notes of an evening hymn, sung by devout sailors, reached their ears.

“Señora,” said Juan, moving toward Doña Julia, “I have much to say to you—and there is little time. If my words to you should seem abrupt, the blame lies with my tongue, not with my heart. If that could speak, you’d find me eloquent indeed. I—”

With an imperious gesture, Doña Julia checked his speech. Her symmetrical, somewhat voluptuous, mouth was curved at that moment in a smile of disdain.

“Spare me—and spare yourself, Juan Rodriquez,” she said, coldly, turning her back to the sea and facing squarely the youth, whose eyes met hers with a glance of crafty defiance not unmingled with an admiration that filled her with loathing. “You say more only at your peril. I’ll forgive you your presumption—once. But take good heed of what I say. If you address me in such words again, it shall go hard with you.”

A grayish pallor overspread Juan’s face in the twilight. A cruel smile played across his thin lips, and his hand grasped a railing at his side as if it would crush the stubborn wood.

“THE CAPTAIN HURLED HIM DOWN UPON THE DECK”

“You threaten me, Doña Julia de Aquilar,” he murmured, showing his teeth in an evil smile. “You know not what you do. See how our ship is driving toward the murky blackness of the West. Think you I shall be powerless beyond? I say to you, señora, that you, your father, and all you hold most dear, are in the grasp of Juan Rodriquez—your servant in Seville, your master in New Spain.”

He had seized the girl’s wrist and was gazing into her white face with vindictive, hungry eyes. She wrenched her arm free from his repellent grasp, and, drawing herself up to her full height, gazed haughtily at the boastful youth.

“What mad fancies there may be in your mind, Juan Rodriquez, I cannot guess. But this I know: if I should breathe a word of what you’ve said into my father’s ears, you’d lie a prisoner between the decks. And he shall know of this, unless you swear to me to leave me to myself, to speak no word to me, to keep your eyes from off my face, my name from off your lips.”

The threatening smile upon Juan’s mobile face had changed to a spiteful grin while the girl was speaking.

“Your love for Don Rodrigo would be weak, indeed, should you, señora, speak a word of this. I tell you, Doña Julia, your father’s in my grasp. I’ll show him mercy—but I make my terms with you. ’Tis no mad fancy, nor an idle boast,” went on Juan, making a significant gesture toward the slashed velvet upon his breast, “which you have heard from me. I know my power. If you are wise, you’ll take my word for this.”

There was a calm, convincing note in Juan’s voice that froze the rising anger in Doña Julia’s veins. She knew the crafty nature of the man too well to believe that he would thus threaten her unless he had gained possession of some weapon for the working of great mischief. In mute dismay she stood for a moment gazing helplessly at the gray, grim waters which seemed to yawn in hunger for the tossing ship. Suddenly she felt an arm around her waist, and turning quickly found the flushed face of the youth pressed close to hers. An exclamation of mingled disgust, anger, and fear escaped her.

At that instant the strong, nervous hand of Gomez Hernandez seized Juan Rodriquez by the neck. With an ease which his slight figure rendered marvellous, the captain twisted the youth like a plaything in his grasp, and then hurled him, full length, prone upon the deck.

“I crave your pardon, señora,” said Hernandez, with cool politeness, bowing low to Doña Julia, “but Don Rodrigo requests your presence in his cabin.”

CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH JUAN RODRIQUEZ TAKES HIS REVENGE

The voyage of the Concepcion, thus inauspiciously begun, continued with fair weather upon the sea and squalls threatening aboard the ship. Doña Julia spent much time in her oddly-equipped cabin; Don Rodrigo, impatient of delay, fretted at the tedium of the passage and paced the poop restlessly for hours at a time. Between Juan Rodriquez and Captain Hernandez a sullen truce was maintained for several weeks succeeding the incident recorded at the end of the foregoing chapter. But Juan had neither forgotten nor forgiven the insult which he had received at the hands of the relentless navigator. He awaited, with the patience of a crafty schemer, an opportunity to avenge himself upon the man who had turned his melodramatic declaration of love into an undignified farce.

A Carmelite friar, who had begged passage to Hispaniola from Don Rodrigo, discovered, after a time, a radical change in the disposition manifested by the heterogeneous crew toward his white frock and all that it represented. In so far as the discipline of Captain Hernandez permitted open grumbling, the sailors grew outspoken in their protests. The good priest, who had found the crew devoted to their beads at the outset of the voyage, was unable, as the weeks went by, to persuade the sailors to put their grievance into words. Nor was he able to keep them at their prayers or to lead their voices in quaint old Latin hymns. There was in the ship a mysterious, elusive influence which had convinced the impressionable, superstitious seamen that the vessel was accursed and that somebody aboard ship, being in league with Satan, was able to nullify the effects of their religious observances. Thus it was that the sweet-faced Carmelite labored in vain to restore before the mast the devout atmosphere which had prevailed among the crew while the coast of Spain still lay but a few miles astern.

Matters grew worse aboard the Concepcion after the white friar had been put ashore at the Indies and the clumsy vessel had begun to beat up the Gulf of Mexico against baffling head-winds. The sailors whispered to each other that the desertion of the Carmelite had left the Prince of Darkness in full control of the ship. To a crew composed in large part of Spanish desperadoes, with a sprinkling of Portuguese cutthroats, it was not easy to restore an atmosphere of religious fervor after it had once been destroyed by evil tongues. Experienced as he was in the fickleness of the half-savage sailors who in those adventurous days manned the omnipresent ships of Spain, Captain Hernandez witnessed with grave concern the gradual abandonment by his crew of its religious attitude and the increasing tendency of the sailors to imply, either by word or manner, that Mary and the saints had abandoned the ship to a cruel fate.

To Julia de Aquilar the voyage had become a seemingly interminable imprisonment. The elation which she had felt at the outset of the cruise had never returned to her after the depressing episode which had aroused in Juan Rodriquez a deadly hatred for the captain of the ship. The girl had caught the gleam of murder in the secretary’s eyes as he lay out-stretched upon the deck gazing upward at Gomez Hernandez, and in her cabin, as she tossed restlessly in her hammock, her mind grew sick with a foreboding which waxed more insistent as the weary days and nights crept by. Now and then she would climb the clumsy ladder to walk the deck for a while, but the dread of finding herself again alone with Juan Rodriquez made her shy of this diversion. Don Rodrigo, whose spirits rose higher the nearer the ship approached the land in which his silver lay concealed, would enter her stuffy cabin—a hole between decks hardly worthy of the name—to rally her upon her indifference to the splendors of the sea and the polychromatic beauties of the islands on their bow. Upon her father’s departure, the tears, held back while he was by her side, would dim the lustre of her splendid eyes, and her white, slender hands would rise in supplication to the smiling Virgin who looked down upon her from the slanting wooden wall above her head.

Why had she, to whom the Old World offered all its sweetest gifts, become a voluntary exile, a hopeless maiden weeping in a corner of a vagrant ship? Ever with her through those weary weeks this question craved an answer. Ever from the past arose the gorgeous pictures of her former life, a life of courtly splendor where the world was gay. In the dark watches of the night, Doña Julia de Aquilar, half dozing, half awake, would tread again the stately mazes of a contre-dance or smile demurely upon a powdered and bejewelled cavalier. She would hear again the merry, mocking voices of Versailles or the stately tones of Spanish gentlemen. Suddenly the lurching of the ship would rouse her from her waking dream, and, putting up a hand, as if defying fate, she would touch the wooden walls of her voluntary cell, walls that seemed to be bearing down upon her with the weight of worlds, crushing out the color from her cheeks, the light from her eyes, the joy of youth from her rebellious soul.

But, waking or sleeping, one face was always gazing at her from the past, a face which seemed to laugh in courteous derision at her plight. “I slew Don Josef—your betrothed,” the haunting vision seemed to say, while upon the clear-cut countenance which memory photographed the girl could see the gay and mocking smile of one who knew the world too well. Her betrothed? Though dead, she hated him. Caprice and vanity had forged for her the chains that had made her, at Versailles, a captive, longing to be free. And when her freedom came, when the sword of him whose vibrant voice she could hear above the creaking and groaning of the ship had severed forever the bonds which tied her to an unloved man, her liberty was nothing worth, taking its revenge upon her for her former negligence by coming back too late. She had learned, through the gossip of a chattering court, that he who had cut down her betrothed had fled across the sea. Never again would she look upon de Sancerre’s face, nor hear a voice which, while it mocked at love, had thrilled her heart of hearts. The years in passing would leave to her a memory—and nothing more.

What mattered it, then, whether she passed her weary span of life in the city of Seville or in the strange environment toward which the ship plunged on? In either case, the romance of her youth was dead. That the strange chances of existence would ever bring Louis de Sancerre again to her side, Julia de Aquilar never dreamed. Even in the prayers that she offered day and night to the Virgin Mother above her head she had never voiced a longing which, put into words, would have sounded to her ears like the incipient ravings of insanity. Her betrothed and the man whom she had begun to love had both passed from her life at the same moment, and through the gloom of night there came to Doña Julia no ray of hope save from the gentle radiance of Mother Church. The veil, and its promise of perfect peace, grew constantly more alluring to her distraught soul, as week crept into week and the very timbers of the ship cried ever louder against the cruel persistence of the lonely sea.

From a dreamless sleep—a rare blessing vouchsafed by Mother Mary—Doña Julia awoke one night with a start and sat upright in her hammock, peering into the darkness with straining eyes. What had disturbed her slumber she did not at first know. But above her head echoed the shuffling sounds of hurrying feet, and the flapping of canvas as the ship came about in a stiff breeze. Leaping down from her hammock and throwing a long, black cape over her shoulders, she groped her way to the entrance to her cabin and threw open the clumsy door. A swinging lantern lighted the hatchway, and, almost before her eyes had grown accustomed to the sudden glare, above her head sounded the grewsome cry of “Man overboard!”

At that instant down the ladder in front of the trembling girl crept the slinking figure of Juan Rodriquez. For a fleeting moment Doña Julia caught a glimpse of the youth’s pallid face, upon which there rested an evil smile made up of fear, cruelty, and triumph. Believing himself unobserved, Juan stood for a moment at the foot of the ladder looking upward toward the deck and listening intently to the uproar above his head. Then, with a subdued chuckle, which sent a chill through the heart of the motionless girl, he stole into the shadows toward his berth amidships.

The harsh cries of the panic-stricken sailors filled the night with a horrid din. The Spanish maiden, undecided whether to climb to the deck or to return to her hammock, crossed herself devoutly and murmured a prayer to St. Christopher, who watches over seamen and protects the faithful from night alarms. The mischievous lantern, vibrating wildly as the ship took the seas broadside on, threw lights and shadows across the disturbed face of the girl, and seemed to rejoice at its chance to add to the uncanny features of her surroundings.

The turmoil on the deck decreased as the moments passed, but Doña Julia still stood waiting, listening, praying; chafing at inaction, but distrustful of the night beyond the hatchway. To her, thus agitated, came her father down the ladder, his worn figure bent as if it carried a great burden. He turned and faced her, and as the playful lantern swung toward them she saw that his face was ghastly pale, and that his thin hand trembled as he wiped the sea-spray from his furrowed brow.

“What is it, father?” asked the girl, springing toward Don Rodrigo and placing both hands upon his shoulders as she peered into his white face.

“Captain Hernandez,” muttered the old man, in a voice that told the story of his despair—“he fell into the sea. None saw him in the blackness of the night, but far astern the helmsman heard a cry—and that was all! God rest his soul!” he groaned, crossing himself. “It will go hard with us, I fear.”

“But, father—Mother Mary, pray for him!—the voyage nears its end. Captain Hernandez—the saints receive him!—had with him men who know these seas?”

“I trust them not,” murmured the old man, wearily. Then, as if he regretted the admission he had made, he bent and kissed the anxious face of his daughter and said, with an effort at cheerfulness, “But fear not, Julia. All will yet be well. I’ve vowed an altar to St. James of Compostella, whose blessing rests on pilgrims of the faith. But how to calm the crew I hardly know. The sailors seem nigh mad with fear. They say that Satan is aboard the ship.”

“Alas, I think he is,” murmured Julia to herself, as she returned to her cabin and threw herself despondently upon her swinging bed. That she had solved by chance the awful secret of the captain’s death, she could not for a moment doubt.

CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH SATAN HAS HIS WAY WITH THE
CONCEPCION

Dawn crept sullenly across the heaving bosom of the gulf, as if disaffected by the night’s dark deed. The sun gazed for a moment upon a ship accursed, then hid its light behind black, evil-looking clouds. From the east and south came winds that smote the sea and dug deep valleys in the briny waste. Then, where the valleys gaped, great hills of water rose and wet the air, and chased each other toward the wind-made chasms just beyond. Losing their temper in their wild career, the boisterous blasts let forth an angry roar and lashed the waters viciously. Before the dawn could take the name of day, a mighty battle raged between the gale and gulf.

The command of the Concepcion had fallen to Miquel Sanchez, a veteran seaman, but unskilled in the nicer points of navigation. Knowing the treacherous nature of the waters through which his ship was reeling, uncertain of his course, and depending for aid upon a sullen, superstitious crew, already persuaded that the vessel had been doomed to destruction, the outlook seemed menacing, wellnigh hopeless, to the new master of the Concepcion, as he paced his narrow deck at dawn, and hoarsely shouted orders for the taking in of sail. The ship, showing her keel to the yawning chasms in the sea, rushed affrighted under bare poles through the welter toward the west. As the storm increased in fury, the panic of the crew grew less controllable. Even the helmsman strove to tell his beads when the eyes of Sanchez turned to scan the sky; and, broken by the howling blasts, the noise of prayers and curses echoed from the decks. The desperate sailors knew the sea too well to hug the hope that such a ship as theirs could foil the fury of the storm. Had not a priest deserted them? Had not their captain perished in the waves? Who doubted Satan’s presence on the ship would be too dull to die!

Don Rodrigo de Aquilar had made his way with much effort to Doña Julia’s cabin, and had found her on her knees before the painting of the Virgin, praying for a miracle that should snatch the vessel from its certain doom. The girl’s face, above which raven-black locks were coiled in picturesque disorder, was white from the imminence of their peril, while her soft, dark eyes gleamed with the fervor of her supplication. As she arose to greet her father, the hand which she slipped into his was cold, but trembled not. If the fear of death lurked in her heart, it was only by the pallor of her cheek its presence could be known. Her eyes were steady and her lips were firm as she stood there reading her father’s haggard face to find, if so the saints decreed, a gleam of hope to cheer her soul.

“God’s mercy on us all!” muttered the old Spaniard, pressing his daughter’s hand to his breast. “This Sanchez is as stubborn as a Moor! He will not change his helm! I am no seaman, but I’ve sat with poor Hernandez many an hour and conned the chart of this same sea we sail. But yesternoon he made a reckoning. If the sun spake sooth, upon the course we hold we’ll dash to pieces ’gainst a curving coast. I told this sullen Sanchez what I knew, but, ’though he crossed himself, he gave no heed to me.”

Doña Julia’s arm, showing white as marble against the black cloak hanging from his shoulders, was thrown around her father’s neck. Kissing his pallid cheek, she said:

“I have no love of life; no fear of death! To die with you, my father—will it be so hard?”

“To die without confession—that is hard!” exclaimed Don Rodrigo, despondently. “I begged the Carmelite to stay with us; but, still, he gave me absolution ere he left. And if I perish, ’tis for Mother Church! But listen, Julia! I am old and worn. A few years more or less are little worth. But you are young. You must not die, my child! If I had lured you to an ocean grave, I’m sure my soul would find no peace in Paradise.”

Doña Julia had seated herself upon the edge of her uneasy hammock, and was looking down at her father, who had attempted to maintain an upright posture upon the treacherous surface of a sea-chest fastened by clamps to the cabin floor. Suddenly the old Spaniard arose and stumbled to the hatchway.

“Juan!” he cried, striving to cast his voice amidships in spite of the howling of the gale, the ominous thumping of the loosened ballast, the cries of frantic sailors, and the thunder of the seas as they pounded vengefully against the frail timbers of the ship. “Juan Rodriquez, come aft at once! Juan! Juan!”

A hand, cold as ice, was clapped upon the old man’s white and trembling lips.

“Father, I implore you, do not summon him,” prayed Julia, striving to drag the aged Spaniard back into her cabin. “He cannot serve you now. For Mother Mary’s sake, I beg of you to leave him to his prayers. He has sore need of them.”

Her protest came too late. In the dim, gray light of the hatchway the girl caught sight of a face which even in that awful hour wore an inscrutable, evil smile, as if the diabolical spirit of the storm had rejoiced the soul of Juan Rodriquez.

“We’re driving fast, Juan, upon an unknown coast,” said Don Rodrigo, coolly, a detaining arm thrown around his daughter’s waist. “You’re lithe and muscular, and come of fearless stock. I’ve seen you in the water at Seville.” At this moment the increasing uproar aboard ship compelled the old man to raise his thin voice to a shout. Drawing from his breast a package wrapped in oil-skin, he thrust it toward the out-stretched hand of his secretary. “Here is my patent from the King of Spain. ’Twill serve as Julia’s title to the mines—to the greater glory of our Mother Church! And, for the sake of heathen souls beyond, your arm, my Juan, must save my daughter from these hungry seas. I say to you—”

“Father, as you love me, as you hope for Paradise, put no trust in this man’s loyalty! If you must die, I do not care to live. A thousand deaths were better than a life saved by a—”

At that instant a crash, as if the storm had served as usher to the crack of doom, drove the word she would have uttered back upon her tongue. Don Rodrigo’s white head was turned to crimson by its impact with an iron-jointed beam, and, plunging forward, he lay dead beside his daughter’s feet. Doña Julia tottered forward a step or two, and then fell swooning into Juan’s arms.

CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH TWO CHILDREN OF THE SUN ASTONISH A
SCOUNDREL

Before the day was ended the winds and waves had signed a truce, but on the beach, far to the westward of the Mississippi’s mouth, lay ghastly trophies of their recent war. In a vain effort to propitiate the demon of the storm—according to the Portuguese sailors: to lighten the vessel, the captain would have said—cables, spars, water-casks, kits and chests of varying size, puncheons of wine, bags of sea-biscuit, cannon, powder, and stone ballast had been thrown overboard in a futile effort to float the shattered ship from a sunken reef. A portion of this impotent sacrifice the sullen surf had uplifted upon its crest, and, rushing shoreward, had tossed it spitefully upon the sands.

As the hours dragged on, while the storm, in full retreat, hurried its black battalions toward the west, the moaning beach became a resting-place for grimmer flotsam than sailor’s kit or broken spar. Trusting to the stanchness of their ships and the favor of their saints, the Spanish seamen in those adventurous days but seldom learned to swim. In constant peril from the hungry waves, forever searching unknown seas, where shipwreck menaced him at every hour, the Spaniard or the Portuguese would drown, amazed to find no saving potency in strings of beads, no buoyancy in dangling crucifix.

When the ship Concepcion, abandoned by the saints, struck on a rock, concealed beneath the waves by Satan’s crafty hand, there was only one man aboard the vessel who had learned to breast the surf with strength and skill sufficient for a crisis such as this—and he was a white-faced landsman, who had spent his life with pen and books, learning nothing of the sea save what had come to him when bathing in the sunny waters of Seville.

For the first time in all the countless centuries since the floods had tossed it there, the curving beach now watched the grewsome pastime which a shipwreck grants the surf. A shadow on a billow rushing landward, a black spot on a white-plumed, tossing wave, a splash and hissing on the trembling sands, and there on the shore, as the storm-wind rushes by, lies a thing which was once a man, a black-and-white blotch in the dim light vouchsafed by the scudding clouds. With uncanny satisfaction at its task, the undercurrent, slinking back again beneath the sea, returns to lay upon the sands another horrid plaything of the surf. ’Tis novel sport for this deserted coast, but how the waves enjoy it! They roar and thunder, sob and laugh and hiss; they toss their new-found toys upon the sands, then snatch them back again and turn them ’round and ’round as if in envy of the grasping beach. But as the hours pass by, the shore keeps gaining what the billows lose. When the sun has pierced the western clouds, to cast a passing gleam across the panting sea, the glistening sands are dotted far and wide with worthless relics of the surf’s grim sport.

The arms of Juan Rodriquez had been moved by mighty passions to a most stupendous feat. Strong swimmer though he was, the burden of a senseless girl, and the striving of the deep to make no blunder in the game it played, had turned his heart to ice, while the minutes seemed like hours and each stroke that he made was feebler than the last. But the struggling wretch was urged to mad endeavor by a combination of the most potent motives which can inspire the efforts of a man. Fear of death and love of a woman united in that awful hour to give to Juan’s slender but well-knit body a stubborn endurance that foiled the undertow and checked, for the nonce, the surf’s ghastly pastime. Slowly but persistently, with gasping breath and straining eyes, now smothered in the brine, now lifted like a cork upon a wave, a man who was not fit to die fought wildly with the sea for life and love. To leave the girl to drown and struggle on alone, with certain victory within his grasp, his dread of death had tempted him to do. But at that instant a kindlier current than he had hoped to find eased for a moment the pressure upon his chest, and bore him slantingly athwart the beach far westward of the wrecked Concepcion.

To the fainting youth and his senseless burden the damp strand offered no easy couch, but it was better to lie there on the shore, while the enemy, checkmated, scolded and threatened and boasted in complaining impotence just outside the danger-line, than to choke and die, and go to judgment unshrived and with black crimes upon one’s soul. What mattered it to Juan Rodriquez that for a time, as he lay struggling for breath upon the beach, the ripples, malicious offspring of the giant breakers, washed moist sand into his hair and ears, and licked his corpselike face as if they kissed him for his prowess while they whispered vengeful threats?

Presently the victorious swimmer regained his senses, and, tottering to his feet, dragged the shrunken figure of Doña Julia further up the beach. Her black gown clung close around her as she lay, as if asleep, upon the sands, the only thing of beauty that the sea had brought to land. Juan bent down and placed his hand upon her bosom. The gleam of despair in his sunken eyes died out as he felt the feeble beating of her heart and upon his cheek the faint impact of her returning breath. Then he drew himself up to his full height, cast a glance of triumph at the treacherous sea, and, assured of Doña Julia’s safety, hurried eastward across the shingle, glistening at that moment from the rays of the setting sun.

It was a dismal task that the dripping, trembling youth had essayed. From one staring, motionless victim of the storm to another went Juan, placing his shaking hand above hearts which would never beat again, and starting back in horror from faces which served as mirrors to the pain of sudden death. And ever as he crept on from one purple corpse to another the conviction became more fixed in his mind that he alone, of all the sturdy men upon that fated ship, had kept the spark of life within his breast. Suddenly the sightless eyes of Miquel Sanchez stared up at him in the sunlight.

“Curse you! Curse you!” cried Juan, kicking the unprotesting corpse in senseless rage. “Had I known you were a lubber, Hernandez had not died! ’Tis well for you the sea took all your life, or I’d choke the dying breath from out your throat! Curse you!”

Bending down, the youth, a madman for the instant, seized a handful of moist sand and hurled it spitefully into the upturned face of the man whose stubborn ignorance had placed in jeopardy his schemes for self-aggrandizement. But at that horrid moment Juan Rodriquez knew, for self-confession forced itself upon him, that it was his own weak yielding to the thirst for vengeance which had wrecked the vessel. Coward that he was, the fury of his self-reproach found vicious vent upon a lifeless trunk that had no power of protest against so grave a wrong.

The fervor of his unjust anger spent, Juan turned, like a snarling cur, from the outraged corpse, and, hungry for human intercourse, resolved to return at once to Doña Julia’s side, restore her to her senses, and fortify his faltering heart by the sound of a living voice. He had gazed into dead men’s faces until his soul was sick with the horror of the day. He glanced at the sinking sun petulantly, as if he awaited with impatience the black shroud that oncoming night would throw over the motionless bodies scattered along the beach.

Suddenly the youth, an expression of mingled astonishment, horror, and fear upon his changing face, fell upon his knees and crossed himself with a fervor begotten of the miracle upon which his straining eyes now gazed.

Beside the out-stretched figure of Doña Julia stood two angelic beings, taller than the run of men, who faced the sun and raised their arms straight upward toward the evening sky. They wore white robes, and from the distant dune to which the startled Juan crawled it seemed as if golden halos glorified the heads of these marvellous messengers from Paradise. They stood for a time with arms upraised, while to the straining ears of a youth whose heart felt like a lump of ice came the subdued notes of a chant which, he knew full well, was music not of earthly origin. Presently the angels bent their heads together, as if in heavenly converse, while Juan cast a stealthy glance across the sun-red sands to see if Miquel Sanchez had roused himself from death to totter toward God’s envoys with an awful accusation upon his lips. When his eyes turned toward the west again, relieved to find the sailor still lying stark and still, Juan saw that the angels had gently uplifted the body of Julia de Aquilar, and, with stately grace, were bearing it away toward the twilight of the foot-hills. With his wet garments chilling the very marrow in his bones, the thief and murderer watched these celestial beings bearing his love away to Paradise. The grim mockery of the chattering prayer that he breathed he could not comprehend. He paid the homage of furtive worship to angels whose searching glance, he feared, might seek him out behind his sandy lurking-place.

The red-fringed twilight had lost its glow, and the zenith had pinned a star upon its breast before Juan Rodriquez, still trembling at the miracle that he had seen, found courage to slink westward along the shore. Behind him dead men seemed to stalk, following his footsteps with grim persistence, while somewhere from the hills upon his right the eyes of angels searched his very soul. On across the beach he hurried, while the waters of the gulf turned black, and the dread silence of the night was broken only by the gossip of the waves, telling the sands a horrid secret that they had learned.

Alone with his thoughts, with the memory of dark crimes upon his soul, Juan strove through the long night to cast far behind him the haunted shore upon which angels came and went. The interplay of life and death had left him only this—the hope of wealth. Had he known that between him and the silver mines that he sought lay more than a thousand weary miles, he would have made a pillow of the sand in his despair.

CHAPTER X
IN WHICH THE CROSS IS CARRIED TO A CITY OF
IDOLATERS

“I have learned something of these proud pagans, Chatémuc. They are worshippers of fire; fruit ripe to pluck, to the greater glory of Mother Church.”

The Mohican grunted in acquiescence as he strode forward, a copper-colored giant by the side of the gray-garbed, undersized Franciscan.

Beneath budding trees and along a flower-haunted trail went de la Salle’s envoys to the children of the sun. It was high noon, and the god of the idolaters shone down upon those who would dethrone him as a deity with a kindly radiance behind which no malice lurked. Mayhap the warm-hearted luminary had grown weary of the human sacrifices offered up by his deluded worshippers, and was pleased to see the gentle Membré carrying a cross, symbol of a faith which demands for its altars no gifts but contrite hearts, toward a blood-stained city in which a savage cult still lay as a curse upon a race endowed by nature with many kindly traits.

Between Membré, the friar, and Chatémuc, the Mohican, had long existed a cordial friendship, based, in part, upon hardships and dangers shared together, but more especially upon the relationship existing between them of a missionary to a convert. Of the many native Americans who had become good children of Mother Church under the inspiring influence of the magnetic Franciscan none had been more faithful to his adopted religion than the stately Mohican, whose proud, reserved, but inherently enthusiastic temperament derived warmth and inspiration from the friar’s exalted soul. Of late years much of Zenobe Membré’s success as a proselyter had been due to long and earnest consultations held in the wilderness with Chatémuc, an Indian understanding Indians, and a Roman Catholic who spoke French.

Just in front of the Mohican and the Franciscan walked Katonah by the side of de Sancerre; a forest belle attended by a courtly swain. Used as he was to the startling contrasts which the exodus of Europeans to the New World had begotten in such abundance, the friar had been struck by the incongruity of this pair, who laughed and chatted just beyond him with a gayety born of the sunshine and the spring.

At the head of the little procession strode the soldierly Henri de Tonti, attended on either hand by a long-limbed child of the sun. The Italian veteran looked like a pygmy beside his tall, white-garbed, black-haired guides, who stalked along on his flanks with a stately grace which had aroused the enthusiastic admiration of de Sancerre, a cosmopolite who had in his time looked upon many well-formed warriors both in the Old World and the New.

“They worship fire, Chatémuc,” repeated the Franciscan, earnestly, after a moment’s silence. “Their god is the sun, and they have a priesthood whose duty it is to keep alive in their temple a blaze of logs, first lighted, generations back, by the sun itself.”

The Mohican turned and looked down at the friar with a gleam of mingled astonishment and inquiry in his melancholy eyes. The grunt to which he gave vent the Franciscan well understood.

“You are amazed at my knowledge of their customs, my Chatémuc,” remarked the Franciscan, smilingly. “But have I not heard many wild and horrid tales in the years through which I’ve borne the cross to outlands such as this? ’Tis strange, indeed, how rumor flies through forests, over lakes, and makes the mountains rear their tops in vain. ’Tis thus the saints work miracles for us, that we may bear the Word to savage lands. As feeble men, we could do naught, my son; but with the pioneers of Mother Church march all the hosts of heaven, and when the day is darkest and the heathen shout for joy, there comes a wonder, some marvel on the earth, some sudden splendor of the midnight sky, and the cross, triumphant, gains another tribe! Oh, Chatémuc, the glory of it all!”

The gray eyes of the Franciscan gazed upward at the set face of the seemingly stoical Indian, whose religious enthusiasm was rapidly rising to fever-heat under the intoxicating influence of the fanatical friar’s carefully-chosen words—words whose effect upon the devout Mohican Zenobe Membré was not now testing for the first time.

“But their fire, father? It always burns?” asked Chatémuc, presently, in a low voice.

“Day and night, year after year, from generation to generation, they keep alive this idolatrous blaze, a flame lighted in hell and carried to these pagans by Satan’s self. And while it burns, my Chatémuc, ’twill be impossible to lure their souls to Christ.”

The searching gaze of the friar scanned closely the phlegmatic face of the Mohican. Not a muscle in Chatémuc’s copper-colored countenance moved, but a dangerous gleam had begun to flash in his eyes as they rested now and again upon the white-robed sun-worshippers striding on ahead of him.

“They guard the fire by day and night?”

“’Tis never left alone, my son,” answered the Franciscan, fully satisfied with the effect that his words had had upon Chatémuc.

The native American is not a rash and impulsive being. Courageous Chatémuc was, beyond many of his race; but he was, nevertheless, an Indian, and inclined to attain his ends by craft and subtlety rather than by reckless daring. It was not until the French had introduced the native American to the civilizing influence of brandy that the latter abandoned, at times, in his warfare the methods of a snake, and fought, now and then, like a lion.

“How large a guard, my father, do they keep around their fire?” asked the Mohican, presently.

“That I do not know, my son. But bear this in mind, good Chatémuc: against a soldier fighting for the cross the powers of hell cannot prevail. Remember, Chatémuc, that unless that blaze is turned to ashes in their sight, my prayers and exhortations will be of no avail. We’ll leave them pagans as we found them, unless their sacred fire no longer burns.”

The vibrant notes in the friar’s rich voice rekindled the light in the Indian’s gloomy eyes.

“Either the fire or a Mohican shall die, my father!” exclaimed the warrior, in low, earnest tones. “Chatémuc, your son in Christ, has sworn an oath.”

Meanwhile the high spirits of Louis de Sancerre had cast their spell upon Katonah, a maiden whose ready smile seldom changed to laughter. But on this bright spring day, treading a flower-bedecked path by the side of a man whose delicately chiselled face was to her eyes a symbol of all the joy of life, it was not hard for the Mohican maiden to affect a gayety uncharacteristic of a race lacking in vivacity.

“They are splendid fellows,” remarked de Sancerre, gazing at the stalwart messengers from the Brother of the Sun. “With ten thousand men like these, Turenne could have marched around the world. But our mission to them is one of peace. I must teach them the steps of the menuet.”

“And what is that?” asked Katonah, glancing over her shoulder to see whether Chatémuc’s rebuking eye was fixed upon her. To her great satisfaction she discovered that her brother seemed to be absorbed in the words of the gray friar.

“The menuet, ma petite? ’Twas made for you. ’Tis a coupée, a high step and a balance. Your untrammelled grace, Katonah, would hurt the eyes of mesdames at Versailles.”

Little of this the Indian maiden understood, but she realized intuitively that her cavalier had been paying her an honest compliment. Her quick ear, more sensitive to the changes in his voice than to all other sounds, had learned to detect and dread a sarcastic note in his tones that often cut her to the heart. But on this gay noontide of a day at the close of what the sun-worshippers called the Moon of Strawberries, Louis de Sancerre was a joyous, frank, vivacious man who paid the beautiful savage at his side acceptable homage with his eyes and in whose words she could find nothing to wound her pride.

“When we reach this sun-baked centre of idolatry, ma petite,” remarked De Sancerre, presently, “we must make an effort to remain side by side. Though I should pass a thousand years in harems of the Turks, I could not forget the face of that old hag who came to haunt me by my lonely couch. ’Tis her you are to find—for the greater glory of our Mother Church. But bear this in mind, petite, that I must have some speech with her before the friar seizes on her tongue and makes her Spanish eloquent for Christ. I’d ask her of a miracle, before good Membré goes to work with his.”

For Katonah the glory of the day had passed. The gleam of happiness died slowly in her eyes, and the smile which lingered still upon her lips had lost its joyousness. Not only had the mocking echo returned to de Sancerre’s voice, but he had recalled to the girl’s mind the story that he had told her, earlier in the day, of a Spanish maiden whose name had come to him so strangely in the dark hours of the night. It was, then, the memory of a maiden over-sea which had led the Frenchman’s footsteps toward the city of the sun! The misery in Katonah’s heart crept into her voice.

“I’ll serve you as I can,” she said, gently, her eyes avoiding his. “But,” and she lowered her tones until her words became a warning made in whispers—“but I say to you, monsieur, beware of Chatémuc! Stay not by my side. I’ll serve you as I can, but leave me when we reach the town. Believe me when I say ’tis safer so.”

“Ma foi, ma petite,” exclaimed de Sancerre, petulantly, turning his head to cast a glance behind him at Chatémuc, “your warning, though well meant, was hardly fair to him! Your brother is too good a friend of Mother Church to harbor hatred of a Catholic like me, who only yesternight vowed three long candles to the Virgin-mother—after that ugly crone had left my side at last.”

“You smile, and speak light words,” murmured Katonah, deprecatingly. “But I say to you, beware of Chatémuc. He loves the faith, but hateth you, monsieur. I know not why. ’Tis strange!”

She gazed at the Frenchman’s face with a frank admiration which brought a self-conscious smile to the courtier’s lips. Flicking a multicolored insect from the tattered velvet of his sleeve, de Sancerre exclaimed:

“Ah, my Katonah! ’Tis those who know me best who love me best. Your brother is a stranger, who cannot read my heart. But, hark! what have we here?”

The noise of kettle-drums and the howling of a great throng arose in front of them. Their stately guides withdrew from de Tonti’s side and stalked sedately to the rear of the little group of strangers, leaving the Italian captain to lead his followers to the imminent outskirts of the town.

“Listen to the drums, petite!” exclaimed de Sancerre, gayly. “We’ll dance a menuet in yonder city, or I am not a moonbeam’s favorite son!”

CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH THE BROTHER OF THE SUN WELCOMES
THE CHILDREN OF THE MOON

The Brother of the Sun, overjoyed at the opportunity now before him to offer hospitality to guests upon whose white faces he gazed with mingled admiration and astonishment, had come in state to the confines of the forest to testify to the cordiality of a greeting that illuminated his well-cut, strong, and mobile countenance. The Great Sun, as he was called—his exact relationship to the orb of day being, to a large extent, a matter of conjecture—was an elderly man, fully six feet six inches in height, with a light-mahogany complexion, hair still jet-black, and brilliant, dark eyes gazing proudly forth upon a world which, from the hour of his birth, had paid abject homage to his exalted rank.

He was enthroned in a litter resembling a huge sedan-chair, which was carried upon the shoulders of eight stalwart men in white attire but bare-footed. The four long arms of the litter were painted red, and its body was decorated with embroidered deer-skins, leaves of the magnolia-tree, and garlands of red and white flowers. His head was ornamented by a diadem of white feathers. Inserted in the lobes of his shapely ears were rings of decorated bone. He wore a necklace made of the teeth of alligators, and against the background of his raven-black hair gayly colored beads shone in the sunlight.

Behind his litter marched a mighty army of three thousand stalwart men, bare-armed, bare-legged, in a uniform of flowing, white, plaited mulberry bark, relieved by dyed skins, striped with yellow, black, and red, thrown across their broad shoulders. They carried bows made of the acacia-wood, and arrows of reed tipped with bird-feathers. Gigantic, muscular, stern-faced warriors, the army of the sun-worshippers broke upon the gaze of the astonished Europeans with startling effect.

It has been asserted that the immediate ancestors of these children of the sun, angered at Montezuma, had joined Cortez in his victorious campaign against that unfortunate monarch. Later on, crushed and rebellious under Spanish tyranny, they had migrated toward the north and had found peaceful lands to their liking near the banks of the lower Mississippi. Whatever may be the truth of this, the fact remains that upon the afternoon which found Sieur de la Salle’s envoys the honored guests of the Brother of the Sun, the latter’s army defiled to the eastward of the city with ranks which begot in the eyes of the Count de Sancerre and the veteran de Tonti a gleam of mingled amazement and admiration. Not only were the warriors of the sun, individually, men suggesting prowess and endurance, but they, as a body, gave evidence of having learned, from sources beyond the reach of native Americans further to the northward, tactics indicating a European origin. If the sun-worshippers had, in fact, suffered from Spanish cruelty, they had also derived from their tyrannical allies valuable hints pertaining to the art of war. As he gazed at this army of athletes, Henri de Tonti, for the first time since he had left de la Salle’s camp, felt regret for the protest he had made against the expedition which his leader had decreed. Here before him stood a splendid band of soldiers who might be made, with some diplomacy, loyal friends to the on-pushing French.

To the mind of Zenobe Membré the martial array before him presented a magnificent collection of lost souls, well worthy, in outward seeming, of the saving grace of the cross. To snatch from the grasp of Satan so many glorious exponents of manly vigor would be, indeed, a triumph for Mother Church. Something of this he breathed into the ear of the motionless and silent Chatémuc, who stood with the friar upon a low hillock, overlooking the plain, viewing with amazement this imposing regiment, each member of which seemed to be taller by several inches than the stately Mohican.

“Look, Katonah!” cried de Sancerre, seizing the Indian maiden by the arm. “See, there, at the side of his dark-brown Majesty’s peripatetic flower-garden, stands my aged midnight prowler! Her old face is turned up to his. Can you see her, ma petite?”

Katonah stretched her shapely limbs to their utmost to look above the press in front of her, and presently her eyes lighted upon the shrivelled crone with whose discovery she had been intrusted by de la Salle.

“Go to your brother and keep the friar by his side until I return, Katonah,” whispered the Frenchman, excitedly. “I must have speech at once with this old hag.”

The sun-worshippers, pouring in throngs from their abandoned city—men, women, and children following and preceding the army in the fervor of their welcome to the white-faced children of the moon, who had come to them so mysteriously from the bosom of a wonder-working stream—impeded, by their respectful but exacting curiosity, the progress of de Sancerre toward the royal group. Women, scantily clad but gay with flowers and feathers, would put forth their brown hands to touch the tattered velvets of the Frenchman’s travel-stained but once gorgeous costume. Naked boys and girls squirmed toward him unabashed, marvelling at the pallor of his face and the splendor of the buckles upon his shoes.

“Peste!” muttered the annoyed courtier under his breath. “If they but knew how hard I have to strive to hold these outworn garments to my back, they’d keep their hands away. I’ll reach the royal presence as naked as a baby unless they grow more gentle with my garb.” And all the time he smiled and bowed, while men and women, boys and girls, cried out in wild approval of his courtly grace.

Henri de Tonti, who had lost much of his European polish through the long friction of camps and the wilderness, had reached the Great Sun’s flowery throne without winning the enthusiastic good-will of these impressionable adult children, who seemed to feel instinctively that the unbending, sallow, grim-faced Italian was less worthy, somehow, of their friendship than the fascinating, smiling Frenchman who followed gayly in the footsteps of the unmagnetic captain toward their king. In the presence of royalty the advantage in address possessed by de Sancerre over de Tonti was emphasized at once. With curt ceremony the Italian had saluted the smiling, black-eyed monarch, and had then stood silent, gazing helplessly upon the expectant throng pressing toward the litter, in the vain hope of finding some way to communicate with the royal sun-worshipper.

De Sancerre’s triumphal progress toward the throne had attracted the attention of the Brother of the Sun, and the plaudits of his subjects had led the latter to believe that the leading personage among his pale-faced guests was now before him. Falling gracefully upon one knee, the Frenchman kissed the out-stretched hand of the beaming King with a flourish and a fervor which aroused the admiring multitude to a fresh outburst of delighted shouts.