to reeve new lines, make repairs, get the canvas up again; but for the moment she was well nigh helpless. And the three enemy ships closed in upon her murderously.
So near were they that musketry flashed and banged, balls showering the decks. Yells of hatred were exchanged. But Bacqueville, ordering the Canadian sharpshooters, poured in a vicious fire, picking off the English helmsmen; a fortunate squall came hurtling down with a flurry of snow, and on its wings the Pelican worked out to the clear and was off.
Not undamaged, alow and aloft. Her decks were freezing crimson now; and Fitzmaurice of Kerry was shriving the dying and helping to carry wounded men below. With woman's thought, Bess Adams had gone to get a mug of hot soup; she brought it to Iberville, and he took it with quick gratitude. But as he took it, he saw the scarlet trickle coming from her sleeve and spreading between her fingers.
"What, lad? Hurt?"
"Oh, no, monsieur! A man was hit beside me—it is his blood."
She lied, and joyed in the lie. A bullet through the flesh of the arm was no great hurt; and there was small need of bandages here. Wounds froze almost at once in this icy blast of air.
"Good," said he. "Stand ready with the charts. I'll need them again."
No doubt of that; those veteran English commanders who knew by heart every fathom of the treacherous shoals, now had the audacious Frenchman where they wanted him. He was far outmatched, with no chance of escape from the lee shore, with shallows reaching out miles and miles; they had only to outsail him, force him back on the shoals, and pound him into surrender or shipwreck.
During three and a half hours they strove stubbornly to do it.
Again and again they drove him almost upon the shallows—almost, but not quite. Wearing and tacking is ever a losing proposition; hence must a square-rigger shiver her canvas to lose some way, before turning on her heel. With plenty of searoom and deep water under his forefoot, Iberville might not have worried, but with shoals beneath his lee, he was constantly on the brink of disaster.
After each tack and wear the Pelican lost some way, and once she started turning, she had to be kept going around fast. But Iberville knew his vessel, and he knew seamanship; more important than all else, he knew exactly where those shoals and shallows lay, and had shore bearings on all passages. Always he tacked and wore abruptly, the bleeding hands of his seamen laboring with the icy brails, lifts and sheets, while the other men worked the guns like mad.
Always he managed to keep the weather-gauge, by maneuvering which was a miracle to behold. He took their blasts of shot and bullets as he slipped past, and his own guns roared hearty answer. Their constant endeavor was to cripple him; time after time, grape screamed through the rigging, but fast as shroud or stay was shot away it was repaired, and fresh men took the places of those who fell from aloft.
So the Pelican evaded the long shoals by a hairbreadth, with an uncanny knowledge of depths and passages, leading an eerie dance of death by wind and tide, until the cursing English cried that
