French and English by Evelyn Everett Green

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French and English:
A Story of the Struggle in America
by Evelyn Everett-Green.

CONTENTS

BOOK 1: BORDER WARFARE.
Chapter 1: A Western Settler.
Chapter 2: Friends In Need.
Chapter 3: Philadelphia.
Chapter 4: An Exciting Struggle.

BOOK 2: ROGER'S RANGERS.
Chapter 1: A Day Of Vengeance.
Chapter 2: Robert Rogers.
Chapter 3: The Life Of Adventure.
Chapter 4: Vengeance And Disaster.

BOOK 3: DISASTER.
Chapter 1: A Tale Of Woe.
Chapter 2: Escape.
Chapter 3: Albany.
Chapter 4: Ticonderoga.

BOOK 4: WOLFE.
Chapter 1: A Soldier At Home.
Chapter 2: Louisbourg.
Chapter 3: Victory.
Chapter 4: The Fruits Of Victory.

BOOK 5: WITHIN QUEBEC.
Chapter 1: The Impregnable City.
Chapter 2: The Defences Of Quebec.
Chapter 3: Mariners Of The Deep.
Chapter 4: Hostilities.

BOOK 6: WITHOUT QUEBEC.
Chapter 1: In Sight Of His Goal.
Chapter 2: Days Of Waiting.
Chapter 3: A Daring Design.
Chapter 4: In The Hour Of Victory.

BOOK 7: ENGLISH VICTORS.
Chapter 1: A Panic-Stricken City.
Chapter 2: Surrender.
Chapter 3: Friendly Foes.
Chapter 4: The Last.

Book 1: Border Warfare

Chapter 1: A Western Settler.

Humphrey Angell came swinging along through the silent aisles of
the vast primeval forest, his gun in the hollow of his arm, a heavy
bag of venison meat hanging from his shoulders.

A strange, wild figure, in the midst of a strange, wild scene: his
clothes, originally of some homespun cloth, now patched so freely
with dressed deerskin as to leave little of the original material;
moccasins on his feet, a beaver cap upon his head, his leather belt
stuck round with hunting knives, and the pistol to be used at close
quarters should any emergency arise.

He was a stalwart fellow, as these sons of the forest had need to
be--standing over six feet, and with a muscular development to
match his stately height. His tawny hair had been darkened by
exposure to hot suns, and his handsome face was deeply imbrowned
from the influences of weather in all seasons. His blue eyes had
that direct yet far-away look which comes to men who live face to
face with nature, and learn to know her in all her moods, and to
study her caprices in the earning of their daily bread.

Humphrey Angell was not more than twenty years of age, and he had
lived ten years in the forest. He had come there as a child with
his father, who had emigrated in his young life from England to the
settlement of Pennsylvania, and had afterwards become one of the
scattered settlers on the debatable ground between the French and
English borders, establishing himself in the heart of the boundless
forest, and setting to work with the utmost zeal and industry to
gather round himself a little farmstead where he could pass his own
later years in peace, and leave it for an inheritance to his two
sons.

Humphrey could remember Pennsylvania a little, although the life in
the small democratic township seemed now like a dream to him. All
his interests centred in the free forest, where he had grown to
manhood. Now and again a longing would come upon him to see
something of the great, tumultuous, seething world of whose
existence he was dimly aware. There were times in the long winter
evenings when he and his brother, the old father, and the brother's
wife would sit round the stove after the children had been put to
bed, talking of the past and the future. Then old Angell would tell
his sons of the life he had once led in far-away England, before
the spirit of adventure drove him forth to seek his fortune in the
New World; and at such times Humphrey would listen with eager
attention, feeling the stirrings of a like spirit within him, and
wondering whether the vast walls of the giant forest would for ever
shut him in, or whether it would be his lot some day to cross the
heaving, mysterious, ever-moving ocean of which his father often
spoke, and visit the country of which he was still proud to call
himself a son.

Yet he loved his forest home and the free, wild life he led. Nor
was the element of peril lacking to the daily lot--peril which had
not found them yet, but which might spring upon them unawares at
any moment. For after years of peace and apparent goodwill on the
part of the Indians of the Five Nations, as this tract of debatable
land had come to be called, a spirit of ill will and ferocity was
arising again; and settlers who had for years lived in peace and
quietness in their lonely homes had been swooped down upon, scalped,
their houses burnt, their wives and children tomahawked--the raid
being so swift and sudden that defence and resistance had alike
been futile.

What gave an added horror to this sudden change of policy on the
part of the Indians was the growing conviction throughout the
settlement that it was due to the agency of white men.

France, not content with the undisputed possession of Canada, and
of vast tracts of territory in the west and south which she had no
means of populating, was bitterly jealous of the English colony in
the east, and, above all; of any attempts which it might make to
extend its western border.

Fighting there had been already. Humphrey had heard rumours of
disasters to the English arms farther away to the south. He had
heard of Braddock's army having been cut to pieces in its attempt
to reach and capture the French Fort Duquesne, and a vague
uneasiness was penetrating to these scattered settlers, who had
hitherto lived in quietness and peace.

Perhaps had they known more of the spirit of parties beyond their
limited horizon, they would have been more uneasy still. But habit
is an enormous power in a man's life. Humphrey had gone forth into
the forest to kill meat for the family larder three or four days in
the week, in all seasons when the farm work was not specially
pressing. He came back day by day to the low-browed log house, with
its patches of Indian corn and other crops, its pleasant sounds of
life, the welcome from the children, the approval of father and
brother if the day had been successful, and the smiles of the
housewife when he displayed the contents of his bag. It was almost
impossible to remember from day to day that peril from the silent,
mysterious forest threatened them. They had lived there for ten
years unmolested and at peace; who would care to molest them now?

And yet Humphrey, who knew the forest so well--its mysterious,
interminable depths, its trackless, boundless extent, rolling over
hill and valley in endless billows--he knew well how silently, how
suddenly an ambushed foe might approach, spring out from the thick,
tangled shelter to do some murderous deed, and in the maze of giant
timber be at once swallowed up beyond all danger of pursuit.

In the open plains the Indian raids were terrible enough, but the
horrors of uncertainty and ignorance which enveloped the settlers
in the forests might well cause the stoutest heart to quail when
once it became known that the Indians had become their enemies, and
that there was another enemy stirring up the strife, and bribing
the fierce and greedy savages to carry desolation and death into
the settlements of the English colonists.

Whispers--rumours--had just begun to penetrate into these leafy
solitudes; but communication with the outside world was so rare
that the Angell family, who had long been self-supporting, and able
to live without the products of the mother colony away to the east,
had scarcely realized the change that was creeping over the
country. The old man had never seen anything of Indian warfare, and
his sons had had little more experience. They had been peaceful
denizens of the woods, and bore arms for purposes of the chase
rather than for self-preservation from human foes, as did the bulk
of those dwellers in the woods that fringed the western border of
the English-speaking colony.

"We have no enemies; why should we fear?" asked Charles, the elder
brother, a man of placable temperament, a fine worker with the axe
or plough, a man of indomitable industry, endurance, and patience,
but one who had never shown any desire after adventure or the
chances of warfare. He was ten years older than Humphrey; and the
brothers had two sisters now married and settled in the colony. The
younger brother sometimes talked of visiting the sisters, and
bringing back news of them to the father at home; but Charles never
desired to leave the homestead. He was a singularly affectionate
husband and father, and had been an excellent son to the fine old
man, who now had his time of ease by the hearth in the winter
weather, though during a great part of the year he toiled in the
fields with a right good will, and with much of his old fire and
energy.

Humphrey was nearing home now, and started whistling a favourite
air which generally heralded his approach, and brought the children
tumbling out to meet him in a rush of merry welcome. But there was
no answering hubbub to be heard from the direction of the house, no
patter of little feet, no lowing of kine.

Humphrey stopped suddenly short in his whistling, and bent his ear
forward as though to listen. A faint, muffled, strangled cry seemed
to be borne to his ears. Under his bronze his face suddenly grew
white. He flung the heavy bag from off his back, and grasping his
gun more firmly in his hands, he rushed through the narrow pathway;
and came out upon the clearing around the little farmstead.

In the morning he had left it, smiling in the autumn sunshine, a
peaceful, prosperous-looking place, homely, quaint, and bright. Now
his eyes rested upon a heap of smoking ruins, trampled crops, empty
sheds; and upon a still more horrible sight--the remains of mangled
corpses tied to the group of trees which sheltered the porch. It
was enough to curdle the blood of the stoutest hearted, and freeze
with horror the bravest warrior.

Humphrey was no warrior, but a strong-limbed, tender-hearted youth;
and as he looked at the awful scene before him, a blood-red mist
seemed to swim before his eyes. He gasped, and clutched at the
nearest tree trunk for support. Surely, surely it was some fever
dream which had come upon him. It could not, it should not be a
terrible reality.

"Humphrey, Humphrey! help, help!"

It was the strangled, muffled cry again. The sound woke the young
man from his trance of horror and amazement. He uttered a hoarse
cry, which he scarcely knew for his own, and dashed blindly
onwards.

"Here, here! This way. By the barn! Quick!"

No need to hasten Humphrey's flying feet. He rushed through the
trampled fields. He gained the clearing about the house and its
buildings. He reached the spot indicated, and saw a sight he would
never forget.

His brother Charles was tightly, cruelly bound to the stump of a
tree which had been often used for tethering animals at milking
time just outside the barn. His clothes were half torn from off his
back, and several gaping, bleeding wounds told of the fight which
had ended in his capture. Most significant of all was the long
semicircular red line round the brow, where the scalping knife had
plainly passed.

Humphrey's stout knife was cutting through the cruel cords, even
while his horrified eyes were taking in these details.

When his brother was released, he seemed to collapse for a moment,
and fell face downwards upon the ground, a quiver running through
all his limbs, such as Humphrey had seen many a time in some wild
creature stricken with its death wound.

He uttered a sharp cry of terror and anguish, and averting his eyes
from the awful sights with which the place abounded, he dashed to
the well, and bringing back a supply of pure cold water, flung it
over his brother's prostrate form, laving his face and hands, and
holding a small vessel to his parched and swollen lips so that the
draught could trickle into his mouth.

There was an effort to swallow, a quiver and a struggle, and the
wounded man opened his eyes and sat up.

"Where am I--what is it?" he gasped, draining the cup again and
again, like one who has been near to perish with thirst. "O
Humphrey, I have had such an awful dream!"

Humphrey had so placed his brother that he should not see on
opening his eyes that ghastly sight which turned the younger man
sick with horror each time his eyes wandered that way.

Charles saw the familiar outline of the forest, and his brother's
face bending over him. He had for a moment a vague impression of
something unspeakably awful and horrible, but at that moment he
believed that some mischance had befallen himself alone, and that
he had imagined some black, nameless horror in a fevered dream.

A shiver ran through Humphrey's frame. His blue eyes were dazed and
dilated. What answer could he make? He busied himself with dressing
the wounds upon his brother's chest and shoulders, from which the
blood still oozed slowly.

"What is it?" asked Charles once again; "how did I come to be
hurt?"

Humphrey made no reply, but a groan burst unawares from his lips.
The sound seemed to startle Charles from his momentary calm. He
suddenly put up his hand to his brow, felt the smart of the
significant red line left by the scalping knife, and the next
moment he had sprung to his feet with a sharp, low cry of
unspeakable anguish.

He faced round then--and looked!

Humphrey stood beside him shoulder to shoulder, with his arm about
his brother, lest physical weakness should again overpower him. But
Charles seemed like one turned to stone.

For perhaps three long minutes he stood thus--speechless,
motionless; then a wild cry burst from his lips, accompanied by a
torrent of the wildest, fiercest invective--appeals to Heaven for
vengeance, threats of undying hatred, undying hostility to those
savage murderers whose raid had made this fair spot into a
desolation so awful.

Humphrey stood still and silent the while, like one spellbound. He
scarcely knew his brother in this moment of passionate despair and
fury. Charles had been a silent, placable man all his life through.
Born and bred in the Quaker settlement, till he had taken to the
life of the forest he had been a man of quiet industry and toil
rather than a fighter or a talker. A peaceful creed had been his,
and he had perhaps never before raised a hand in anger against a
fellow creature.

This made the sudden wild and passionate outburst the more strange
and awful to Humphrey. It was almost as though Charles was no
longer the brother he had known all these years, but had been
transformed into a different being by the swift and fearful
calamity which had swept down upon them during these past few
hours.

"I will avenge--I swear it! As they have done, so shall it be done
unto them. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life--is not that
written in the Scriptures? The avenger of blood shall follow and
overtake. His hand shall not spare, neither his eye pity. The
evildoer shall be rooted out of the land. His place shall be no
more found. Even as they have done, so shall it be done unto them."

He stopped, and suddenly raised his clasped hands to heaven. A
torrent of words broke from his lips.

"O God, Thou hast seen, Thine eyes have beheld. If it had been an
open enemy that had done this thing, then could I perchance have
borne it. If it had been the untutored savage, in his ignorant
ferocity, then would I have left Thee, O Lord, to deal with him--to
avenge! But the white brother has risen up against his own flesh
and blood. The white man has stood by to see. He has hounded on the
savages! He has disgraced his humanity! O Lord God, give him into
my hands! let me avenge me of mine adversary. Let the ignorant
Indian escape if Thou wilt, but grant unto me to slay and slay and
slay amid the ranks of the white man, who has sold his soul for
gain, and has become more treacherous and cruel than the Indian
ally whose aid he has invoked. Judge Thou betwixt us, O Lord; look
upon this scene! Strengthen Thou mine arm to the battle, for here I
vow that I will henceforth give my life to this work. I will till
the fields no more. I will beat my pruning hook into a sword. I
will slay, and spare not, and Thou, O God of battles, shalt be with
me. Thou shalt strengthen mine arm; Thou shalt give unto me the
victory. Thou shalt deliver mine enemy into mine hand. I know it, I
see it! For Thou art God, and I am Thy servant, and I will avenge
upon him who has defied Thee this hideous crime upon which Thine
eyes have looked!"

Humphrey stood by silent and awed. An answering thrill was in his
own heart. He had averted his eyes from the ghastly spectacle of
those charred and mangled corpses; but they turned upon them once
more at this moment, and he could not marvel at his brother's
words. He, too, had been trained to peaceable thoughts and ways. He
had hoped that there would soon be an end of these rumours of wars.
His immediate forefathers had been men of peace, and he had never
known the craving after the excitement of battle.

Yet as his brother spoke there came upon him a new feeling. He felt
his arm tingling; he felt the hot blood surging through his veins.
He was conscious that were an enemy to show face at that moment
between the trees of the forest, he would be ready to spring upon
him like a wild beast, and rend him limb from limb without pity and
without remorse.

But the Indians had made off as silently and as swiftly as they
appeared. Not a vestige of the band remained behind. And there was
work for the brothers at that moment of a different sort, and work
which left its lasting mark upon the memory and even upon the
nature of Humphrey Angell.

Together the brothers dug a deep grave. Reverently they deposited
in it all that was left of the mortal remains of those whom they
had loved so tenderly and well: the kindly house mother, to whose
industry and thrift so much of their comfort had been due; the
little, innocent, prattling children and brave little lads, who
were already learning to be useful to father and mother. None of
them spared--no pity shown to sex or age. All ruthlessly murdered;
husband and father forced to watch the horrid spectacle, himself a
helpless prisoner, waiting for his doom.

Humphrey had not hitherto dared to ask the question which had been
exercising him all the while--how it was that his brother's life
had been spared. He also wanted to know where the old man their
father was; for the corpses they had laid in the grave were those
of Charles's wife and children.

Charles noted his questioning glance around when the grave had
received its victims, and he pointed to the smoking ruins of the
house.

"He lies there. They bound him in his chair. They tied the babe
down in his cradle. They set fire to the house. Heaven send that
the reek choked them before the fire touched them! They lie yonder
beneath the funeral pyre--our venerable sire and my bonny, laughing
babe!"

He stopped short, choked by a sudden rush of tears; and Humphrey,
flinging down his spade, threw himself along the ground in a
paroxysm of unspeakable anguish, choking sobs breaking from him,
the unaccustomed tears raining down his cheeks.

The brothers wept together. Perhaps those tears saved Charles from
some severe fever of the brain. He wept till he was perfectly
exhausted, and at last his condition of prostration so far aroused
Humphrey that he was forced into action.

He half lifted, half dragged his brother into one of the empty
barns, where he laid him down upon some straw. He rolled up his own
coat for a pillow, and after hastily finishing the filling in of
the grave, he went back into the forest for his game bag, and
having kindled a fire, cooked some of the meat, and forced his
brother to eat and drink. It was growing dark by that time, and the
blackness of the forest seemed to be swallowing them up.

A faint red glow still came from the direction of the burning
homestead, where the fire still smouldered amid the smoking ruins.
Humphrey closed the door of the barn, to shut out the sight and
also the chill freshness of the autumn night.

He lay down upon the straw beside his brother, worn out in body and
mind. But there could be no thought of sleep for either man that
night; the horror was too pressing and ever present, and anguish
lay like a physical load upon their hearts.

The silence was full of horror for both; in self defence Humphrey
began to speak.

"When was it, Charles? I was in the forest all day, and I saw and
heard nothing. The silence was never broken save by the accustomed
sounds of the wild creatures of the wood. No war party came my way.
When was it?"

"At the noontide meal. We had all gathered within doors. There was
none to give warning of danger. Suddenly and silently as ghosts
they must have filed from out the forest. We were already
surrounded and helpless before the first wild war whoop broke upon
our ears!"

Charles put up his hands as though to shut out that awful yell, the
echoes of which rang so long in the ears of those who had heard it.
Humphrey shivered, and his hands clinched themselves nervously
together.

"Why was I not here to fight and to die?"

"Better to live--and to avenge their blood!" answered Charles, with
a gleam lighting his sunken eyes. He was silent awhile, and then
went on with his narrative.

"It was not a fight; it was only a slaughter! The children rushed
screaming from the house, escaping the first rush of the painted
savages when they burst in upon us. But there were others outside,
who hacked and slashed them as they passed. I had only my hunting
knife in my belt. I stood before Ellen, and I fought like ten
demons! God is witness that I did all that one man could. But what
avail against scores of such foes? Three corpses were heaped at my
threshold. I saw them carrying away many others dead or wounded,
Our father fought too; and Ellen backed into the corner where the
gun stood, and with her own hands she shot down two of the savages.

"Would to heaven she had shot at the white one, who was tenfold
more of a fiend! But he shall not escape--he shall not escape! I
shall know his face when I see it next. And I will not go down to
the grave till he and I have stood face to face once more, when I
am not bound and helpless, but a free man with weapons in my hand.
That day will come; I read it in the book of fate. The Lord God,
unto whom vengeance belongeth, He will cause it to come to pass!"

Humphrey was afraid of these wild outbursts, as likely to bring on
fever; and yet he could not but desire to know more.

"A white man? Nay, brother; that is scarce to be believed. A white
man to league himself to such deeds as these!"

"A white man--a Frenchman. For I called upon him in our tongue, and
he answered me in the same, but with that halting accent which I
know belongs to the sons of France. Moreover, he made no secret of
it. He called us dogs of English, who were robbers of the soil
where none had right to penetrate save the subjects of his royal
master. He swore that they would make an end of us, root and
branch; and he laughed when he saw the Indians cutting down the
little ones, and covering their tender bodies with cruel wounds;
nor had he any pity upon the one white woman; and when I raved upon
him and cursed him, he laughed back, and said he had no power to
allay the fury of the savages. Those who would preserve themselves
safe should retire within the bounds of the colony to which they
belong. France would have an end of encroachment, and the Indians
were her friends, and would help her to drive out the common foe!"

Humphrey set his teeth and clinched his hands. The old instinctive
hatred of centuries between French and English, never really dead,
now leaped into life in his breast. He had heard plenty of talk
during his boyhood of France's boundless pretensions with regard to
the great New World of the West, and how she sought, by the simple
process of declaring territory to be hers, to extend her power over
millions of miles of the untrodden plains and forests, which she
could never hope to populate. He had laughed with others at these
claims, and had thought little enough of them when with father and
brother he set out for the western frontier.

There was then peace between the nations. Nor had it entered into
the calculations of the settlers that their white brethren would
stir up the friendly Indians against them, and bring havoc and
destruction to their scattered dwellings. That was a method of
warfare undreamed of a few years back; but it was now becoming a
terrible reality.

"But your life was spared?" said Humphrey at last; "and yet the
scalping-knife came very close to doing its horrid work."

"Yes: they spared me--he spared me--when he had made me suffer what
was tenfold worse than death; yet I wot well he only thought to
leave me to a lingering death of anguish, more terrible than that
of the scalping knife! They knew not that I had any to come to my
succour. When he drew off the howling Indians and left me bound to
the stump, he thought he left me to perish of starvation and
burning thirst. It was no mercy that he showed me--rather a
refinement of cruelty. I begged him to make an end of my wretched
life; but he smiled, and bid me a mocking farewell.

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