The Survivor Read Online Free PDF Page B

a sailor from His Majesty’s fleet. No matter, with autumn and winter ahead, he had no choice but to find work.
    His canoe gave him great mobility. How wise had been the Chief who had organized its making and giving. So should he return to the Micmac band? No, he needed money to become a full-fledged farmer landowner and farmer, his only goal.
    Rounded billows of cumulus hung above the blue bay, and above them, a thin stratum of mackerel clouds spread out motionless. Mid-grey gulls wheeled past, and further out a flight of gannets sped low in formation over the waters, heading toward Gaspé. On board ship, he’d passed their breeding grounds on an island off Percé, a hamlet with its curious offshore rock shaped somewhat like the prow of a ship with two holes in it. Someday, he would explore the rest of what he now thought of as “his” coastline. What a fine land! How rich in possibilities! The slap of the waves, the sweep of the paddle over the blue endless bay lulled him into a false sense of security. Indeed, what in the Old Country could ever match this? There, the sky was often so uniformly grey, laden with rain, and any rearing thunderclouds were swathed in mist. He placed his paddle athwart the bow and felt among his belongings for the last of his smoked trout. His water gourd had been filled at M. Blanquart’s rain barrel. He ate quietly and drank his rainwater, first offering plentiful thanks to His Maker above.
    Here he was, chewing on smoked trout, far from land, no ship visible, only himself alone with the gulls, and in the depths below, more riches than could ever be harvested: herring and mackerel, and along the bottom, flounders, mussels, and codfish. All his for the taking, if he worked long and hard.
    He spotted New Carlisle on a rise ahead, above a point of meadows, and began to grow nervous. No doubt that warrant for his arrest lay still hidden in the files of the Justice Department. One slip-up might give him away, and before the Admiralty could be contacted, he’d be punished mercilessly. And what if his reprieve had been an ad hoc affair, brought on by the kindly Captain, but not really sanctioned by London?
    Well, nothing he could do now but be very careful, and of course, change his name. He certainly sported a different appearance: his tousled sun-blonded hair and rough beard being so different from the well-groomed clean-shaven Midshipman who swam ashore one stormy dawn two and a half years ago. And he remembered grasping for another name to use that summer he had visited the Garretts. He should assume that. James, yes, that was the name he had chosen then on the spur of the moment, it being the King under whom his Bible had been translated. And Allmen, or Oldham, perhaps even Alford he had chosen. Yes, that’s the name he decided he must use here in this haven of British loyalty. James Alford. Why not? He must remember that. Even though all his instincts told him to say, Thomas Manning, at your service. Now it would be James Alford, delighted to make your acquaintance, or some such polite rubbish. When he had plunged off the good ship Bellerophon after all those years in His Majesty’s Service, surviving war, disease, rats, and boredom — that too was a jump taken on the spur of the moment. But that escape had been long wished for. From then on, he could not attribute his finding the Shegouac brook to luck alone. He must first of all acknowledge the guidance of His Maker. He lifted his eyes to the skies, noticing at the same time the clouds building, and offered up a good dose of his daily quota of thanks: for his survival, for this wonderful beginning, for his magnificent (though by no means anything more than humble) home here in the uncharted wilderness of the Gaspé Coast. And especially, that start on a permanent farmhouse he one day hoped to complete.
    He reached the dock, and moored his canoe. Beyond the sloping public lands, dotted with cattle and a few sheep like the commons of the