CHAPTER II.

PIERRE VISITS THE ENGLISH LINES.


The ships were a mile from shore, and the shore nearly a league from
the doomed village. When that column of smoke and flame rolled up over
their beloved church the unhappy Acadian villagers knew, too late,
the character of the man with whom they had to deal. It was no time
for them to look to the ships for help. They began with trembling haste
to pack their movables, while Le Loutre and a few of his supporters
went from house to house with great coolness, deaf to all entreaties,
and behind the feet of each sprang up a flame. A few of the more stolid
or more courageous of the villagers still held out, refusing to move
even at the threat of the firebrand; but these gave way when the Indians
came up, yelling and brandishing their tomahawks. Le Loutre proclaimed
that anyone refusing to cross the lines and take refuge at Beausejour
should be scalped. The rest, he said, might retain possession of just
so much of their stuff as they could rescue from the general conflagration.
The English, he swore, should find nothing of Beaubassin except its ashes.

Presently the thin procession of teams, winding its gloomy way across
the plains of the Missaguash toward Beausejour, became a hurrying throng
of astonished and wailing villagers, each one carrying with him on his
back or in his rude ox cart the most precious of his movable possessions;
while the women, with loud sobbing, dragged along by their hands the
frightened and reluctant little ones. By another road, leading into