Chapter III: Part 3

Now Tonty had an artificial iron hand to take the place of one he had lost in battle. He was clever, almost uncanny, in the use of it. The bad Indians whom he slapped with it and the good Indians whom he directed by its metal point regarded it equally with fearsome rolling eyes as very big medicine.

Tonty had also an iron will. Every Frenchman felt it. Few could go against it. His mandates were obeyed; the fort improved.

The Rock was a fine spot for such a defense. It rose out of a plain high above all other landmarks. Over a hundred feet up in the air its almost flat top spread out in an acre of ground with a running spring hidden in its shrubbery. On the north the Illinois River flowed past its base. Three sides dropped sheer to the plain. The fourth had a difficult almost perpendicular path.

A few men could hold it against many.

Ever since the destruction of Crevecoeur the Sieur La Salle had wanted to set a fort upon the Mississippi midway between north and south to be the center of the fur trade. He had found here on the tributary Illinois a natural fortress easily defended and already surrounded by loyal Indian towns. Upon his return from the mouth of the Mississippi he had built the stockade. For the present he would make it answer for his central headquarters. It was christened Fort Saint Louis.

The crisp spring air was ideal for industry and Tonty was determined to get the buildings in perfect order. To do this it was necessary to bring various materials from the plain. The end in view was good. Anthony knew that; but he decided as his gang of workmen reached the heights, threw down their loads and panted for breath, that they had done enough for the present.

He winked at a really handsome young Indian standing near him and knew by a single exchange of glances that this fellow was of the same opinion. He had loved the savage and had coaxed him into fagging for his white brother ever since the day of their first meeting in the fall. For Anthony was apt to give his light-hearted affections to any chum who promised to be full of fun.

As Tonty stood ready with his next order he faced Anthony's way. That naughty Frenchman with his team-mate beside him paused abruptly in the act of mopping his brow and fixed his eyes, popping with amazement, on a tree near him where hopped two robins. All the Indians round about followed his stare and watched the robins. Even busy Tonty looked. One bird chirped at the workers; the other bird turned his head on one side and said to the first bird in perfectly good Illinois dialect, with a thin little trilling robin voice, "Squaws work."

The Indians stood petrified. Tonty, ill-pleased at the interruption, waved his hand impatiently and the robin said again, "Squaws work." That magic hand! Every Indian saw it make the bird talk. What would it do next? With an impulse for safety they turned as one man and went scrambling, sliding and falling to the bottom of the hill.

Tonty was provoked. "Oh, Tony, that was such an untimely thing for you to do when I need the workers. Such an old, old trick, too--so childish!"

"It is all the better for being ancient and simple if it succeeds," grinned the unrepentant Anthony; "and besides, _I_ did not do it. I couldn't. It is much harder than singing a tune."

"Didn't the sounds come through those crooked teeth of yours?"

Anthony shook his head and crossed his heart. His chum stood innocently aloof. "Give us an hour, dear Tonty, to rest our muscles in a ball game. At your signal I will bring them all here again to work at double speed," and away he ran to play.

Tonty, heavy with care, went to the Sieur La Salle with the list of his needs. The fort was nearly repaired. Quantities of stores, enough for a siege, were arriving on the backs of squaws every hour in the day. Bales and bales of furs by the same pack beasts were also coming up.

As the two leaders stood side by side and gazed down on the lovely fertile plain, the happy towns and the rollicking ball game, they talked of how best to hold the Great River valley from this vantage point. A town of some six thousand Illinois lay just across the river. In another direction, also within reach of the refuge of the fort, was a village of Miamis almost as large. Of Shawnees, Weas, and half a dozen others in much smaller tribes there were enough to make perhaps some twenty thousand souls.

These were allies. Also they were dependents. They expected the Sieur La Salle to give them French goods in exchange for furs and to help provide them with food if their crops failed. First of all, his soldiers and his steel weapons must protect them from their ferocious enemies, the Iroquois.

He had claimed all this land with their consent. In return he must save their constantly threatened lives. Until he could get a line of ships coming through the Gulf to his new-found port, Fort Saint Louis must be supplied from Canada by that route through the Great Lakes which he had struggled over back and forth in so many heartbreaking journeys of winter hardships.

On the Atlantic seaboard English towns were rooting themselves through settlers who owned and cultivated their homesteads and meant to keep them forever. Along the Pacific coast Spanish priests drilling the heathen into civilized farmers owned the gardens where the adobe missions were building, and stood ready to defend them. In the Mississippi Valley between the two the little Rock of the Illinois, a pinpoint on the map, a speck on the horizon, by the right of its twenty armed Frenchmen held the whole vast region of the Great River for France.

And the twenty Frenchmen, every one as careless, gay, and irresponsible as Anthony, were playing ball while Fort Saint Louis stood empty and neglected.

Tonty was justified in his anxiety as he listened to the Sieur La Salle say: "The present governor of Canada is not like our former friend, Frontenac. This commandant is an old man and a greedy politician from Paris. He knows nothing of Indian warfare and does not see the importance of this post. He will not send the men we need to defend these towns nor will he give us the munitions and goods that we have paid for in the furs already forwarded to him."

"There are less than a hundred pounds of powder--" interrupted Tonty, "and the Iroquois are threatening even now--"

"Look!" cried La Salle, "look! Something has happened among the ball players."

The dots of Indians, far below, had massed in a crowd at the center of their field and as suddenly separated again with shrill wails, each player going at swiftest pace in a different direction.

"Bad news! Prepare yourself for a deluge. As fast as the warning spreads they will come here by villages. Put a good face on it," and the nobleman made ready to receive his tenants. He was their overlord; and he was at his best when dangers assailed him. His whole life was spent in defying one tragedy after another. "There are stores enough to feed them for several days--"

"When the powder gives out we can use bows and arrows, stones and logs--"

The bearer of evil tidings had fallen exhausted at the base of the Rock. Anthony was the first to come over the rim with the one word message, "Iroquois."

Within the memory of these Illinois their valley had been conquered by the unspeakable Iroquois, the Huns of this continent. Towns had been destroyed, men killed, women tortured, children scalped, prisoners burned. Then they had had no refuge. Now they flew to Sieur La Salle and the Fort Saint Louis.

To the Rock they came pouring in such a horde as only fear can drive, red bodies striving--contorted--palpitating--feathers awry--clothes discarded--paint running in sweating streams. Hundreds of galloping moccasined feet pounded out such a series of steps up that steep trail as shovels could not have done in a whole season.

Sieur La Salle met them. His proud, domineering face showed that he had no fear of anything. Tonty's sensitive Italian lips, quivering with responsive excitement, answered their wild demands for the protective medicine of his magic hand with all sorts of impossible promises.

As one means of restoring quiet, the missionary Father prayed as loud as his big outdoor voice could shout. And Anthony attended by his faithful shadow went about among them with that quirk of a smile they all liked. His words were happily calm. He was a much better worker in a panic than he was in a ditching gang. Together they reminded the quaking ones that any man who could make a bird speak could surely save them from the Iroquois. And who had not already heard of that talking bird of a few hours ago?

A red sunset, a yellow rising moon has seldom looked upon a spot more filled with human stress. The very air above the plateau quivered with hurried breath as though a furnace stirred it. Every hour of that awful night added to the number climbing the stair. At dawn they were still coming. Peeping over the stockade and from perilous overhanging lookouts they watched the plain. Without rest, without sleep, they surged back and forth, quelled to a semblance of sanity by the white men.

Peep o' dawn, a rising sun, a day of light showed a deserted vale. No Iroquois! Their enemies had passed on some other trail. This was the power of the iron hand. Let all evildoers beware!

The Illinois pledged fealty afresh to the commander who had for his servant such a captain as Tonty. They scurried back to their homes.

This event had made the Illinois as stable as an Indian settlement can ever be. It was not a town such as La Salle wanted, but it answered his purpose. In his enthusiasm for the extension of France he saw so far into the future that some of the things he planned could not be carried out for a long, long time.

It was not until the year 1764 that his central city for the Mississippi was founded and given the name of his choice, Saint Louis. _Coureurs de bois_ began it. Indians were treated justly there. Noble Pontiac, pathetic in his defeated old age, was given a home within its stockade gates. A tablet to his memory hangs now in one of its finest buildings.

La Fayette was one of the city's guests. Thomas Benton, a statesman, lived there. From its trade depots the canvas-topped argosies were fitted out for the gold-fields of the forties. It fought buccaneers, land-grabbers, cholera, cyclones, floods, and renegades, and in each trial came out victorious.

Spain at one time, England at another, tried to hold it without success. But when it became American, it remained American. The French choice of location gave it commercial success. Father Membre's shaven crown would go high in pride could he see the churches, schools, and hospitals it has to-day. Its parks, boulevards, and buildings would delight Tonty's Parisian taste.

It was this vision of their Saint Louis to come that held these men to the dangerous Rock.

Sieur La Salle knew that the peace of the valley might be broken at any time. Men and munitions he must have. He left Tonty in command and started again over the trail to Montreal to get by personal demands the supplies that otherwise would not be given him.

In the false security which so often deceives the unprepared, the villages went through the summer and into the fall under the fort in which they had such superstitious faith.

Then again came the cry of, "Wolf, wolf!" Again the panic; again the crowded Rock; again the night of horror. No magic availed. The day revealed the Iroquois pack surrounding the hill. They sat on their haunches and yelped as though they had come to stay. All day, all night, the next day, the next night, three, four, five days and nights they besieged the Illinois.

They did not attack. The one narrow cannon-swept path would rake off their warriors as they climbed in single file. They meant to let the Illinois make the next move in this dreadful game.

"If they find out how low our powder is--" began Tonty. He would not mention even to himself the possibility of such a thing as actually happened many years afterward on this very Rock when a warrior tribe of Illinois was besieged by Pottawottomies and perished so miserably that the place has ever since been called Starvation Rock.

The Father confessor of the flock was thinking of another danger. "If the smallpox should break out here--"

Anthony laid a friendly hand on Tonty's arm. "Once you saved the Illinois because you were brave enough to go into their camp alone."

Tonty shook his head. "No, it was because I did _not_ wear ear-rings!"

"It is my turn now to do what I can," and Anthony took his chum by the hand. "Open the gates for us," he demanded.

When the guarded gates swung apart the two crept through and disappeared down the incline toward the twinkling Iroquois camp.

Little owls--the forest was always full of them--hooted now here and now there, calling back and forth in wavering minor notes. Tonty's ear could not tell the difference between an owl's voice and a white man's imitation of it, but any Indian could easily do so. The Illinois whom Tonty asked to listen to the sounds was sure that part were made by Anthony, but neither he nor any one else could say whether birds or Anthony's companion made the rest.

These two mimics, half in joy over the adventure and half in fear of its outcome, slipped nearer and nearer to the hostile camp. They peeped at one place and then another to find the best spot in which to let the Iroquois capture them.

At last they saw a tiny fire where sentinels were putting their weapons in order. And in the shadow, quite like a page of a child's picture-book, sat four little owls all a-row on a limb. It was the stage setting that they wanted for their vaudeville act. Whether it should turn out a comedy or a tragedy the endangered Illinois nation would soon be able to tell.

A delicate, indefinite "oo-oo-oo-" did not attract special notice from the sentinels. But when Anthony's heavier voice and very human "hoo-oot" sounded close to them they jumped to attention, pounced upon the pair and jerked them into the firelight for inspection as though they had been a couple of rag dolls. In any surprising event there is always a half-minute when even the most active will pause to decide upon the next movement. A few seconds' inspection of their captives were necessary before the sentinels would raise the alarm, "White man!"

On some such brief interval Anthony had built his plans. He pointed at the owls and gazed open-mouthed and intent. It is a trick that never fails. All the sentinels followed his glance. Not one of them looked at the lips of the Illinois Indian standing beside Anthony. One of the little owls blinking in the firelight shifted his feet, opened his beak and whined in Iroquois, "Answer me--answer me."

Anthony reproachfully declared in the same language, "I _did_ answer you; I _did_." Indeed every Iroquois had heard the boyish hoot.

One of the sentinels threw himself on the ground and rolled out of sight into the dark. His personal safety was his one instinct. Another ran to the chief speechless with alarm. But a third, who was not possessed of an excitable temperament, clutched his prisoners with fingers like steel and bade a paralyzed Iroquois bind their wrists.

Thus they were escorted toward a whooping band who were already running to meet them. They were roughly handled, their clothes torn, their faces scratched.

Yet the story of the owl as it traveled had its effect in putting the two prisoners in a different class from the handful of Illinois captives who were already bound both hands and feet. Anthony in particular they examined with a dreadfully intimate curiosity, sticking their fingers in his mouth to try the edges of his four unusual teeth and picking at his ears. If he had had a beard--but no, his chin and lips were smooth! Had there been rings in his ears--not even holes were drilled in them! That is, had he been a whiskered, ear-ringed Spaniard they would have killed him then and there. But since he was so plainly French they hesitated as they had once done with Tonty, of whose magic fingers they were much afraid.

They had various treaties with the French which they sometimes kept and oftener broke. They never quite dared to murder a Frenchman offhand. They generally tortured him and let him go.

So Anthony as he was dumped into a brush heap by the chief's fire tried to tell his Illinois chum that they were safe enough and their business in the enemies' camp successfully begun. If, as the night grew cold and his bonds cut painfully and his captors looked more and more like the red demons they were, his courage thinned and he shed a few tears of weariness and self-pity, no one knew it.

It was easy enough to be brave at midnight when all the warriors were still awake and baiting him, but his spirits were at low ebb in the hour before dawn.

"Perhaps the chief, after a week's unsuccessful siege, may also feel discouraged. This is the time to try him," thought Anthony as he gazed in every direction, but saw no owl to help him. The brighter eyes of his Illinois at his side showed him where to look and indicated that he was ready to help.

The long, shivering cry of the owl woke the jaded chieftain, and Anthony's echoing answer brought half a dozen chilled warriors to their feet.

Anthony was sitting up and shaking his head at the owl. The Illinois seemed to be asleep.

The owl said, "Answer me, answer me."

"Wait until the iron hand comes," replied Anthony with apparent secrecy in a very audible whisper, "then _he_ will give bad medicine."

The owl laughed--yes--_laughed_!

Anthony hastily set his finger on his lips as a signal to the owl to be silent. The owl obeyed. Anthony _pretended_ to _pretend_ to go to sleep!

The dismayed chiefs laid their ruffled feathers together. They did not like the prospect of a visit from Tonty, who had more than once puzzled and defeated them. His bad medicine was bitter to their taste.

Without stopping to call a powwow they summoned all hands to arms. They released the Illinois prisoners and drove them out of camp. They roused Anthony and his chum and bade them leave.

"But we don't want to go," protested Anthony. "We like to wait with you."

The listening chiefs were overwrought. They dared not kill him, nor keep him, nor send him back. They set some sentries over him, not to prevent his escape, but to hold him so that he could not follow them! For they were now bent on running away before Tonty's hand should strike at them. Of armed force they were not afraid, but before black magic they fled in panic.

Break o' day saw them going over the horizon.

Night in a far-away camp found the Iroquois breathing more easily. The chief was still so nervous that a little owl above him disturbed him. To his horror Anthony's voice in a poor imitation of the bird's call came through the woods.

"Hoo-oo-oot!"

He clutched at his braves. They huddled round him. What an unwelcome sight was Anthony as he came toward their hiding-place!

"How has the magician escaped his guards? Why does he follow me?" The great dignitary gave way to his real feelings and with a howl of fear ran still farther through the forest. All his braves trailed hot-foot after him. Anthony trotted along in not too close pursuit.

On the morning of the seventh day Tonty looked down upon the deserted plain. The enemy had left in the night. He wrote in his journal, "The Iroquois retired discomfited."

Toward night the Illinois prisoners who had been released began to straggle into the fort. Some were badly singed; others full of nasty cuts; all were scared. They could not tell why the Iroquois had freed them.

It was not until evening of the tenth day that Anthony and the Illinois came back. They were ragged and tired. The Illinois was as solemn as any screech-owl could be, but Anthony was full of laughter.

When all the tribes crowded round the two to thank them for driving the besiegers away and rejoicing in their escape, he said in great glee: "We did not _escape_. They ran from _us_!"

VII

JOLLY ROGER

Guarding the Port of the Mississippi beside the Buccaneer Pilot,
Lawrence de Graaf--A Queer Flag at the Mast

THE _Badine_ was the name of a ship dancing over the Atlantic to her port at Santo Domingo of the West Indies. Behind her came her sister ship, the _Marine_, a small frigate. In their wake, wavering gull-like in the sunshine, sailed a couple of store vessels.

The commander of the fleet was the Sieur de Iberville, a Canadian, lately the hero of the battle of Hudson Bay. With the sweep and dash of some North Sea Viking, he had plunged with his ship, the _Pelican_, into the frost and fog of that Arctic harbor. He fell upon those ancient rivals of the French, the English traders, and took them by surprise. To their man-of-war he gave a slashing fight and sank it. Two consort ships were captured. Fort Nelson could not hold out against his impetuous onslaught. It was taken and renamed Fort Bourbon.

For this maritime conquest France hailed him as a brilliant genius. The court fêted and idolized him. The king gave him a patent, two hundred colonists, and supplies enough to found a colony at the mouth of the Great River.

The first fleet sent from the mother country to the sea entrance of the Mississippi had over-sailed the estuary and had been wrecked upon the coast of Texas. The brave La Salle, leader of the expedition, had perished tragically while going back overland to search for what was called his "fatal river."

The Sieur de Iberville's fleet had crossed the ocean safely. The decks of the _Badine_ and _Marine_ were crowded with folks in their best array. Land had been sighted. They longed for a view of that New World which was to be their home.

One of the commander's retinue, an adventurer of France, Anthony Auguelle, the Picard du Gay, set his scarlet heels upon the boards where his buckles glittered finely. His hair was parted in the middle and hung in heavy curls on his shoulders. In those days he who had good hair wore it thus; he who had it not bought a wig and achieved the same effect. A plumed hat adorned the curls. This was the fashion of that Paris Anthony had so lately quitted for the Spanish Main. His velvet coat which concealed a shirt of mail, his laces and ruffles, his knee breeches and sword were exactly as they should be. He was proud of himself.

Yet all of this elegance was forgotten when the lookout called: "A sail! A sail!"

The colonists strained their eyes on the horizon where one by one each gradually made out three low-lying craft of speed, sloops of ten guns each. They flew no flag. But when upon closer approach the pilot of the _Badine_ hailed them with some cabalistic word, they set up such a shout as none of the listeners had ever heard. As they passed at quarters perilously close the dullest eye could see--all ready to raise as it lay at the foot of the mast in the foremost boat--the black flag of piracy!

On the _Badine_ and the _Marine_ and on both the other ships every gun was manned, every soldier stood in readiness. But the sloops gave them a cheer and a great laugh. Nothing else!

The officers looked to the Sieur de Iberville for explanation. He looked to his pilot. Now this pilot's name was Lawrence de Graaf and he was a buccaneer upon occasion. Every one on board knew that. But a ship must have a pilot, even though he be a person with a history. And a buccaneer is to a pirate as a tadpole to a frog. Until he is fully developed he is more interesting than repulsive. So de Graaf answered, quite simply, "They wait for bigger game."

After an uneasy interval of suspense and guessing they found that he was right, for they saw a far-away dot which on coming nearer and nearer proved to be that most magnificent pageant of the coral seas, a Spanish galleon with all sail spread.

As this splendid treasure ship went past them on the wings of the trade wind the _Badine_ shouted a warning to her, "Beware the sloops!"

The other ships from France repeated the hail, "Beware the sloops!" She dipped an ensign in a salute of thanks. How gallant she was!

"Shall we turn about and go to her assistance?" asked the Sieur de Bienville, younger brother to the commandant. This was his first sight of pirates, and he was as full of fight as a cockerel.

The Sieur de Iberville shook his head. "The sloops are Spanish, the galleon is Spanish, too; they might combine against us and amuse themselves by making us walk Spanish before they fought it out between them."

"Will there be pirates at the mouth of the Mississippi?" queried de Bienville, hopefully.

"If we begin a successful colony they will raid it. All good towns will be looted. You will have your fill of defending the weak in days to come. When you grow too strong to be robbed you can then buy of the sea-rovers all the stuff they have taken from some one else."

"And you won't stop now to interfere in Spanish family quarrels?" asked Anthony in a tone filled with regret.

The Sieur de Iberville shook his head, and the fleet went on to anchor at Cape Haytien. At that place they met the _La Françoise_, a fifty-gun war-ship, sent to join them and to act as escort past the lanes of piracy.

By de Graaf's advice they stopped also at the island of Tortugas, where they could get a stock of meat much cheaper than at Santo Domingo. Cut prices were possible, for the men of Tortugas stole the cattle from the planters of Santo Domingo. They dried the meat by a process called buchanning. While fitting out any ship with meat these buchanners, or buccaneers, examined it to see whether it was armed or not and whether it was worth a chase.

The Sieur de Iberville's fleet was not afraid of them. From the superior height of the quarter-deck, and the elevated sense of clean mind, decent body, and elegant clothes, Anthony looked down upon the unkempt men who loaded the meat.

These fellows had rough hair braided into queues tied back with bandanas. Their chests and arms and feet were bare. Bright sashes bound round their rags held pistols of every size and shape. Wherever a knife could be stuck, behind ears, in pockets, up trousers legs, there it gleamed. When one of them carried a blade between his teeth how reckless he looked! How any man could degrade himself to the level of one of these foul robbers Anthony could not imagine.

One yellow-fanged beef-handler had a scar across his mouth from some blow which had knocked out his lower front teeth. He was whistling through this handy opening a curiously wild and melodious air. Leaning over the rail, Anthony puckered his lips around the impish gap in his own handsome teeth and repeated the tune with an echo's mockery.

The man glanced up. If he had not fancied Anthony's look it was an even chance that he had gone black with hate and thrown a knife. Like most people at whom Anthony smiled he softened into friendliness. "Ha, comrade," he called, for the ship was moving out, "we will meet again. How do they call you?" His words were English.

Tickled at making the acquaintance of a buccaneer so easily, Anthony replied in French: "I am the Picard du Gay at your service. Thank you for the tune."

"Good-by, du Gay, good-by!"

"Good-by, brother, good-by," and Anthony laughed as he waved his hand.

All this looked like playing with fire to the Sieur de Bienville. He was young; much younger than Anthony now was. But Anthony still looked so boyish and was so fresh at heart that the two had become cronies on the long voyage. With one mind they now fell to talking of the Gulf pirates. What could they do if their colony was attacked and the skull and cross-bones flaunted in their faces?

They were therefore much dismayed, upon reaching Pensacola, to find that they themselves were objects of suspicion. Their fleet was forbidden to enter the harbor. Pensacola was a Spanish colony. The officers of the port were polite but firm in their refusal. Behind them lay a Spanish war-ship even bigger than the _La Françoise_. The French fleet moved on.

De Bienville fumed, "They treat us as though we were robbers." But after he had followed de Graaf's significant look at the fifty guns of their escort, he demanded of his brother, "If our war-ship had been the best armed would you have gone in by force?" and when the commandant did not reply he and Anthony put their heads together and went over the whole matter again. "I think our patent allows us to use our judgment about how to hold and _extend_ the king's dominion." And he made round eyes as who should ask, "How far can a man go in the pursuit of such duties?"

Westward then moved these French ships. Cautiously they wound among the islands which make a barrier between the rough waters of the Gulf and the northern coast. In the quieter channel thus formed they came to anchor and chose Ship Island for their first stopping-place. Here the war-ship left them: here the colonists built the first huts to shelter themselves.

The mouth of the Mississippi must be near at hand, but they did not know exactly where. Not wishing to risk his all as the unfortunate La Salle had done, the Sieur de Iberville left most of his colonists and his ocean-going ships at the island. Taking forty-eight men in two open boats he rowed westward still further along the coast.

The sky and sea were as blue as blue could be. The beach sands and the clouds were white as spray. The live-oaks and the pines marked the mainland with lines of beauty. In the channel porpoises at play stood up on their tails to make bows of welcome inviting the Frenchmen to follow them.

It was a pleasant thing to be sweeping along through this balmy air. Anthony's barytone began to mark the time for the oarsmen with the tune he had picked up at Tortugas. The new melody seemed oddly suited to the time and place.

"Teach him the words," cried de Graaf, and the sailors who knew a little of that difficult language called English were soon singing in chorus with Anthony the words of the song once so popular:

"My name was Captain Kidd as I sailed, as I sailed,
My name was Captain Kidd as I sailed.
God's laws I did forbid and right wickedly I did
As I sailed!"

For two rollicking days they rang endless changes on this fascinating theme. On the third a storm overtook them. Not daring to put into the waters of the Gulf, the Sieur de Iberville decided to risk landing on the rocky coast.

Nobody, then, knew how big the world was. Longitude was not understood. Sailors had to guess at distances east and west. La Salle had thus gone past the Mississippi's mouth whose latitude he knew. The accident had brought his colony to a miserable end at the unfavorable place where they finally landed.

By a lucky chance, since there was no way to reckon the right spot, the Sieur de Iberville went straight into the Great River half hidden behind the outlying palisades. He saved his boats: he found his port. The place of landing he named Mardi Gras for the day, Tuesday, March 3, 1699.

It was a good beginning. After that all the adventurers were eager to go upon exploring parties, to make friends with the Indians, and to build a town. The colonists were ready to set their homes almost any place upon the borders of this summer sea. So the city of the port of the Great River was begun, settled, and stockaded as the Sieur La Salle had prophesied that some day it would be.

It was better not to have all his resources in one place to tempt a buccaneer attack, and so Sieur de Iberville built another fort on Ship Island and one at Biloxi inlet on the north coast.

Ship Island was an ideal secret refuge, and when it was abandoned by the French colonists for larger quarters on shore it became a rendezvous for pirates of the Gulf. Its silver sand has buried many treasures of gold and gems and it has been dyed with the blood of captured crews. To-day a government station stands upon it and its wicked years are almost forgotten by the honest boats with respectable mariners now sailing tamely past it.

On the bay at Biloxi, the Sieur de Iberville's bastioned fort held a dozen cannon. Later still another fort was built in Mobile Bay. All were intended to guard the coming city at the mouth of the Mississippi and her immense domain. Anthony was one of many to work on these defenses against sea-robbers, or Indians, or rival nations.

One day, while he and the boyish de Bienville and a few armed followers were floating down the Mississippi from one of their numerous scouting trips, what should they see but a full-rigged ship coming to meet them.

Their surprise was mixed with fear. For the ship was English and she carried sixteen guns. And, as they presently learned, a sister ship quite as strong lay off the mouth of the Great River. What if this commander turned those guns on their tiny new town? What if he captured these Frenchmen and took this smaller open boat with its four little cannon?

The stripling de Bienville was a master of men. He promised his crew that they should not be taken. Then he sent a friendly hail to the ruddy captain of the English and beamed confidently at his fellows when it was politely returned. Anthony, who loved courtesy, forgot how scared he was as he listened to the formal speech in which the two leaders conversed.

They used English, but he was able to understand that the Englishman was Captain Barr and that he had come at the command of his king and queen to take possession of the Mississippi!

Anthony's heart sank like lead. After all that Frenchmen had done and suffered to explore this river valley it seemed dreadful to lose it now by so unequal a battle as this would be if their little boat had to fight it out with the English ship. But de Bienville's boyish face showed the friendliest interest in the Englishman's plans.

He assured Captain Barr that there _was_ a Mississippi river. "I am _sure_ of that," he stated positively in his frank young way, "for I've often heard the Indians speak of it. If you continue to sail along the coast line you will surely find some splendid stream. _This_ river, of course, belongs to the French; there is one of our colonies on it; but there are other rivers, enough for all of us. You have our best wishes to take with you as you go in search of a Mississippi for _your_ empire."

So this English Captain Barr turned his big ship about and, leaving the little French boat in control, sailed away never to return.

Quoth the wise de Bienville: "When we cannot win by force of arms, strategy is the thing. My dear du Gay, as you stood and nodded your head to confirm the stories I told, I have a fancy that you involved yourself in international intrigue. It is just possible that you and I may look like doubtful characters to Captain Barr's superior officers since we pulled a kingdom from his grasp. Men have walked the plank for less than we have done this day!"

Many captains of every nation were watched with suspicion in those days, for the riches of the New World sailing homeward toward the Old were a constant temptation to travelers, and many privateers became pirates because it was such an easy way to make money. Not only Ship Island, but almost any dot of land would do for a harbor to a band of smugglers or marooners. For a full century after the settlement of its mouth they flourished in the neighboring channels and bayous of the Great River.

All kings were alike to a pirate. He openly defied French, English, and Spanish rule. But when in the time of the War of 1812, "old Andy Jackson" came down to New Orleans to make a stand for democracy against the British red-coats, the smugglers and outlaws of the north coast, those ruffian Baratarians, with their strong sentiment for personal freedom and self-government, offered themselves to him. They were glad to fight for his cause.

Under the notorious Lafitte they came bringing all the ferocity of hand-forged guns and home-made knives and filibustered ammunition. They threw the whole of their buccaneering energy into the cause of the first republic of the continent. In that long struggle, when hope was almost gone, they helped to turn the scale for freedom and were one of the picturesque units who made possible the famous victory of New Orleans.

In de Bienville's time Captain Barr's was the earliest ship to threaten French rights. Whether it was his turning back which displeased his government into challenging the Sieur de Iberville or whether there were commands from France to strike any rival before she struck them, Anthony as a subordinate couldn't find out, but there came a day when the commandant ordered the _Badine_ and the _Marine_ into action, and leaving de Bienville behind to look after the colonists, he sailed away to the island of Nevis and, taking it by surprise, captured it without trouble.

St. Christopher also belonged to England, and that the French meant to get on the same cruise. On its coral strand the tiny hamlet of thatched huts, palm grove, brilliant birds, and huge flowers seemed an easy little Noah's ark sort of town to pick up.

But alack-a-day! Its men were all at home. They proved to be, not timid natives under one domineering white man, but a very hornets' nest of recruiting buccaneers. And the Sieur de Iberville's soldiers, for all their vaunted military training, were hard pressed to subdue the town.

Now Anthony was not a soldier. He was attached to the Iberville expedition as an envoy to the Mississippi Indians. But when he saw the need of another sword arm, he hurriedly braided his hair and tied it back out of the way with his kerchief, loosened his collar for more air, rolled up his sleeves, tightened his sash, snatched his pistol, and threw himself against the enemy.

The military formation of the ranks had been broken almost as soon as it touched the shore. The battle was not organized--it was a running fight--each Frenchman against the nearest buccaneer, hand to hand, up and down, back and forth, over the one long street of the toy village. Going at one another like a lot of fiends, they cut and hacked--shot and clubbed--guns were emptied--swords broken--teeth and nails used--any weapon to keep the next man off.

The buccaneers were disappearing. Victory seemed to be with the French. They paused for breath. Through the lull came the alarm: "The ship! The ship!"

The English had run for the harbor by a back way and were attacking the flag-ship! They scaled the swinging ladders. Repelling the owners like boarders, the rogues forced the French to fight madly for their own _Badine_. If the buccaneers could once get a ship like this they could sail the Gulf and river as full-fledged pirates. What a truly fine joke it would be if the men of St. Christopher should turn the French ship against the French port! It was one of the tricks of the Spanish Main to do such things.

Anthony fought like a man of twice his size. He struggled for his own life, for the life of the Mississippi port, for the life of New France. He banged away as though Joliet, Accau, Tonty, and La Salle were at his back. His hand never faltered. Over the rail into the bow he went headlong. A man was at the mast. The rascal all ready to pull down the French colors whipped out his own pennant--a white skull and cross-bones on a black field.

Anthony flung against him with all the force of desperation. Together they went down and rolled over and over the swaying deck; with the buccaneer on top they bumped into the rail.

One great hand with claws like knives had already torn Anthony's shoulder into slits; the other fastened on his throat; it was ready to tighten its strangle-hold. The vanquished one glared wildly at his would-be murderer. Then he began to laugh with his eyes. Who knew better than Anthony how to make merry with one glance? The buccaneer stared in wonder. His hold relaxed. Anthony's lips parted in as friendly a smile as ever a man could give. His assailant hung over him in perplexity. Anthony puckered his lips and whistled one bar. The buccaneer replied with that toothless grin of far-away Tortugas. Recognition had come to him. "Ho, brother," he laughed, "ho, ho! I didn't know ye."

Anthony began to chuckle contagiously, flapped his old friend on the back and fell to laughing heartily and long. The fearsome strangler, like a huge bear diverted by a taste of honey, forgot the fight now raging in the stern and joined in a hoarse "Ha, ha, ha!"

Who can tell where a battle turns? Suppose the French flag had come down and the black flag had gone up! The sight of such an exchange would have encouraged the pirates to fiercer efforts. England might have wrested this little fleet from France. The control of the Mississippi would then have passed to another king.

With their leader so cunningly beguiled by Anthony that he was quite out of their sight and forgetting to strike where his hand was needed most, the pirates weakened. The desperate Frenchmen succeeded in pitching them into the sea. Dejected they swam ashore.

The Sieur de Iberville towered above them as they crawled upon the reef. His pistols were ready, his powder dry, all the advantage was on his side. He demanded their surrender.

They acknowledged his victory and gave up St. Christopher.

Anthony's sensitive ears had followed this last part of the foray as he sat huddled in the bow. The noisy laugher did not bother to notice anything. Anthony took a peep and pointed out to his friend that the buccaneers were already in irons. He whispered: "I don't want our soldiers to capture _you_. Take this plank, drop over the side, float further down the beach and get away in safety."

"Keep the flag," mumbled the buccaneer; "show it to de Graaf. If ever you steal this ship I'll join your crew," and he disappeared over the rail.

When the _Badine_ finally put out into the Gulf Anthony went to de Iberville's cabin to report. There he confronted himself in the mirror of its fine furnishings. His rough hair was braided into a queue and tied back with a bandana. His naked chest and arms were dirty, his clothes were in rags bound round with a sash. His stockings had been ripped away. His feet were bare. He looked at the uncouth figure that he presented. Where had he seen such another? His smile was gone. His voice was dull with misery.

"Tell me," he demanded, "what I am. Am I a patriot or am I a pirate?" With a pair of dreadful blood-stained hands he unfurled the black flag of such shocking design.

The Sieur de Iberville was also much disheveled, but he answered with the dignity of a victor. "The courts of all civilized nations are now busy with the problem: 'When is it right for men to fight on the high seas?' and until that is decided, if it ever can be, you and I must obey our superior officers." He laid a soothing hand on Anthony's wounded shoulder. "We have been in very bad company this morning, du Gay. Lest we get into worse, let me advise you to tie a piece of lead in that captured rag and drop it overboard. Many a man no worse than you and I has been hanged because he carried the Jolly Roger!"

VIII

BROKEN POTS

Swashbucklers of Spain Duel for the Food of Pierre Le Moyne de
Iberville--Hunger Seasons Sagimity

ANTHONY knelt before a jar which held perhaps two gallons. It was of red hand-made pottery open at the top and it had a bail of withes. Low on one side was a hole leading into the vessel between its flat bottom and another ventilated over-bottom to create a draught. The jar was filled with fat pine shavings and dry cones. He struck his flint and after several trials lighted some dry grass which fired the resin in the pine. Then the tiny clay stove began to roar cheerfully. Setting another crock upon it and mixing in that a very little corn with too much water the Picard du Gay tried to tell himself that he was getting breakfast.

Provisions had run short at this fort of Biloxi, and Anthony, one of the twenty men left here to guard the Great River's mouth, had missed more meals than he liked to count. The stockade on the Mississippi itself was no better furnished with men or food than this one. The main body of the colony had been moved several times in hope of better picking and was now at a third fort on Mobile Bay. Like all new settlements from the beginning of time until to-morrow, this one had not been able to fit itself to the country about it without making mistakes. One error after another in handling foodstuffs had brought about the catastrophe of famine.

The sea was alive with delicious fare. There were beds of oysters, runs of shrimp, and school after school of fish. The colonists had feasted on these as on a banquet without end. But they suddenly learned that each had its season. When one day they wanted more none were to be had. School was out as far as fish were concerned. Shrimp had run some place else. In warm weather oysters made the colonists sick.

The woods were full of deer, the prairies of buffalo, the glades of turkeys, the bayous of waterfowl, more meat than the French could eat in a lifetime. They did not bother to jerk any of these. Why should they work to dry flesh when there was so much that was fresh at their very doors? The Indians prepared some, it is true, but Indians themselves often take a chance on the future, and their not too provident example went unnoticed by the colonists. The climate felt much the same to the French as that of their own Languedoc; Languedoc with a garden added like the Paradise where Adam and Eve gathered their daily bread from bushes.

The deer followed the spring northward for croppings of new leaves, the buffalo trotted away on paths which a lifetime of migration told them led to cool green grass. Game left for Canada. Even alligators dropped below reach into the mud. (Eating baked alligator tails is never a treat; it means that one is very hungry indeed.)

Once whole fields were glutted with wild strawberries and blackberries. Groves of mulberries and plums abounded. Luscious grapes clambered every hill. Nobody dried or preserved them. It seemed absurd to do so when there fell to the ground every day more than all France could have eaten. So the time of these fruits came and went and nothing remained to take their place.

Some of the finest foods can be made to grow in the sandy soil of the country back of Biloxi beach if one knows how, but the colonists didn't bother to inquire, and the only things that were now thriving under the July sun were clouds of mosquitoes.

Anthony sipped his gruel and gazed over toward Deer Island. The rising sun made the channel look so much like milk that poor du Gay was tempted to walk down and take a taste of it. The pines were black against the burning sky and a soldier coming out on the long narrow point beyond them was silhouetted distinctly. As he went forward over the low sand reef he had the effect of walking on the water. His reflection in the white Gulf was as clear-cut as himself. Soldier and shadow moved along grotesquely, and Anthony thought the whole thing must be a mirage. But when the soldier staggered and fell with a very real splashing of water, the Picard jumped into his canoe and rowed across to see what was the matter.

The soldier was a Frenchman from the Mississippi stockade. Anthony knew him, picked him up and supported him, gently bathing his drawn face and questioning him.

"See all this pottery," cried the soldier, throwing out expressive hands, "smashed to bits! Do you suppose these bowls had corn in them when they were whole? I have followed a line of them out here to see if anything to eat had been left in them."

"How are the other soldiers at the stockade?" asked Anthony, to take his mind from this illusion of food caused by the sight of the scattered dump of Indian bowls.

"Our stores are almost gone; we are on rations. We are drinking river water." The soldier began to weep childishly. "I want a drink from our hillside spring in France. I need my breakfast!"

With promises which he was by no means sure he could keep, Anthony put the canoe in tow and helped the soldier into his own boat to take him to the fort. He had been sent from the stockade to beg for stores at Biloxi. Hunger-weary he had mistaken Deer Island for the beach and had run his felucca ashore there. If Anthony had not happened to see him he might have perished and the remaining soldiers at the stockade have waited in vain for the return of their messenger.

It was with a grave face that Anthony sailed the soldier's boat into Biloxi Bay and with a still heavier heart that he answered the hail of another coastwise sailing-vessel which was coming to meet him from the east. This second man was also a Frenchman, one of the colonists at Mobile. A glance at his yellow skin, sunken cheeks, and burning eyes told his whole story to Anthony. He, too, had been sent to beg for stores. There were women and little children, some old priests and helpless slaves in Mobile.

"We have eaten up our goats and our pigs; only the cows are left," was the report of the Mobile colonist as he and the Mississippi soldier were brought into the fort and presented to the Biloxi commandant by Anthony. "The Sieur de Iberville sent some of our men to live among the Indians who have a little but not much more than we ourselves. He sailed some time ago for France to send provisions back to us with the greatest possible haste. Until they come will you share with us?"

They had nothing to share. The few men still at Dauphin Island and Ship Island were in equal straits. From these pitiful beggars before the commandant Anthony turned and looked out of a loophole over the waste where his own and the other settlers' gardens should have been in toothsome bearing. Nothing was growing.

"I did not come to the New World to raise cabbages," he thought, resentfully. "I could have done that in Picardy without going out of my own gate. I came to seek my fortune, to carry home a galleon of gold." He smiled ruefully to think that if he could go back now to France he could take little besides his own bones.