Seven ounces of pounded pease were now the daily food of each; and, at the end of May, even this failed. Men, women, and children betook themselves to the woods, gathering acorns and grubbing up roots. Those of the plant called Solomon's seal were most in request. Some joined the Hurons or the Algonquins; some wandered towards the Abenakis of Maine; some descended in a boat to Gaspe, trusting to meet a French fishing-vessel. There was scarcely one who would not have hailed the English as deliverers. But the English had sailed home with their booty, and the season was so late that there was little prospect of their return. Forgotten alike by friends and foes, Quebec was on the verge of extinction.
On the morning of the nineteenth of July, an Indian, renowned as a fisher of eels, who had built his hut on the St. Charles, hard by the new dwelling of the Jesuits, came, with his usual imperturbability of visage, to Champlain. He had just discovered three ships sailing up the south channel of Orleans. Champlain was alone. All his followers were absent, fishing or searching for roots. At about ten o'clock his servant appeared with four small bags of roots, and the tidings that he had seen the three ships a league off, behind Point Levi. As man after man hastened in, Champlain ordered the starved and ragged band, sixteen in all, to their posts, whence with hungry eyes, they watched the English vessels anchoring in the basin below, and a boat with a white flag moving towards the shore. A young officer landed with a summons to surrender. The terms of capitulation were at length settled. The French were to be conveyed to their own country, and each soldier was allowed to take with him his clothes, and, in addition, a coat of beaver-skin. On this some murmuring rose, several of those who had gone to the Hurons having lately returned with peltry of no small value. Their complaints were vain; and on the twentieth of July, amid the roar of cannon from the ships, Lewis Kirke, the Admiral's brother, landed at the head of his soldiers, and planted the cross of St. George where the followers of Wolfe again planted it a hundred and thirty years later. After inspecting the worthless fort, he repaired to the houses of the Recollets and Jesuits on the St. Charles. He treated the former with great courtesy, but displayed against the latter a violent aversion, expressing his regret that he could not have begun his operations by battering their house about their ears. The inhabitants had no cause to complain of him. He urged the widow and family of the settler Hebert, the patriarch, as he has been styled, of New France, to remain and enjoy the fruits of their industry under English allegiance; and, as beggary in France was the alternative, his offer was accepted.
Champlain, bereft of his command, grew restless, and begged to be sent to Tadoussac, where the Admiral, David Kirke, lay with his main squadron, having sent his brothers Lewis and Thomas to seize Quebec. Accordingly, Champlain, with the Jesuits, embarking with Thomas Kirke, descended the river. Off Mal Bay a strange sail was seen. As she approached, she proved to be a French ship, in fact, she was on her way to Quebec with supplies, which, if earlier sent, would have saved the place. She had passed the Admiral's squadron in a fog; but here her good fortune ceased. Thomas Kirke bore down on her, and the cannonade began. The fight was hot and doubtful; but at length the French struck, and Kirke sailed into Tadoussac with his prize. Here lay his brother, the Admiral, with five armed ships.
The Admiral's two voyages to Canada were private ventures; and though he had captured nineteen fishing-vessels, besides Roquemont's eighteen transports and other prizes, the result had not answered his hopes. His mood, therefore, was far from benign, especially as he feared, that, owing to the declaration of peace, he would be forced to disgorge a part of his booty; yet, excepting the Jesuits, he treated his captives with courtesy, and often amused himself with shooting larks on shore in company with Champlain. The Huguenots, however, of whom there were many in his ships, showed an exceeding bitterness against the Catholics. Chief among them was Michel, who had instigated and conducted the enterprise, the merchant admiral being but an indifferent seaman. Michel, whose skill was great, held a high command and the title of Rear-Admiral. He was a man of a sensitive temperament, easily piqued on the point of honor. His morbid and irritable nerves were wrought to the pitch of frenzy by the reproaches of treachery and perfidy with which the French prisoners assailed him, while, on the other hand, he was in a state of continual rage at the fancied neglect and contumely of his English associates. He raved against Kirke, who, as he declared, treated him with an insupportable arrogance. "I have left my country," he exclaimed, "for the service of foreigners; and they give me nothing but ingratitude and scorn." His fevered mind, acting on his diseased body, often excited him to transports of fury, in which he cursed indiscriminately the people of St. Malo, against whom he had a grudge, and the Jesuits, whom he detested. On one occasion, Kirke was conversing with some of the latter.
"Gentlemen," he said, "your business in Canada was to enjoy what belonged to M. de Caen, whom you dispossessed."
"Pardon me, sir," answered Brebeuf, "we came purely for the glory of God, and exposed ourselves to every kind of danger to convert the Indians."
Here Michel broke in: "Ay, ay, convert the Indians! You mean, convert the beaver!"
"That is false!" retorted Brebeuf.
Michel raised his fist, exclaiming, "But for the respect I owe the General, I would strike you for giving me the lie."
Brebeuf, a man of powerful frame and vehement passions, nevertheless regained his practised self-command, and replied: "You must excuse me. I did not mean to give you the lie. I should be very sorry to do so. The words I used are those we use in the schools when a doubtful question is advanced, and they mean no offence. Therefore I ask you to pardon me."
Despite the apology, Michel's frenzied brain harped the presumed insult, and he raved about it without ceasing.
"Bon Dieu!" said Champlain, "you swear well for a Reformer!"
"I know it," returned Michel; "I should be content if I had but struck that Jesuit who gave me the lie before my General."
At length, one of his transports of rage ended in a lethargy from which he never awoke. His funeral was conducted with a pomp suited to his rank; and, amid discharges of cannon whose dreary roar was echoed from the yawning gulf of the Saguenay, his body was borne to its rest under the rocks of Tadoussac. Good Catholics and good Frenchmen saw in his fate the immediate finger of Providence. "I do not doubt that his soul is in perdition," remarks Champlain, who, however, had endeavored to befriend the unfortunate man during the access of his frenzy.
Having finished their carousings, which were profuse, and their trade with the Indians, which was not lucrative, the English steered down the St. Lawrence. Kirke feared greatly a meeting with Razilly, a naval officer of distinction, who was to have sailed from France with a strong force to succor Quebec; but, peace having been proclaimed, the expedition had been limited to two ships under Captain Daniel. Thus Kirke, wilfully ignoring the treaty of peace, was left to pursue his depredations unmolested. Daniel, however, though too weak to cope with him, achieved a signal exploit. On the island of Cape Breton, near the site of Louisburg, he found an English fort, built two months before, under the auspices, doubtless, of Sir William Alexander. Daniel, regarding it as a bold encroachment on French territory, stormed it at the head of his pike-men, entered sword in hand, and took it with all its defenders.
Meanwhile, Kirke with his prisoners was crossing the Atlantic. His squadron at length reached Plymouth, whence Champlain set out for London. Here he had an interview with the French ambassador, who, at his instance, gained from the King a promise, that, in pursuance of the terms of the treaty concluded in the previous April, New France should be restored to the French Crown.
It long remained a mystery why Charles consented to a stipulation which pledged him to resign so important a conquest. The mystery is explained by the recent discovery of a letter from the King to Sir Isaac Wake, his ambassador at Paris. The promised dowry of Queen Henrietta Maria, amounting to eight hundred thousand crowns, had been but half paid by the French government, and Charles, then at issue with his Parliament, and in desperate need of money, instructs his ambassador, that, when he receives the balance due, and not before, he is to give up to the French both