The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-01-02
The GUNNER OF Perez ROCK.
BY GILBERT PARKER
Copyrighted, 1877, by Gilbert Parker

,lreds of yards into the Gulf At one point
it was pierced by an archway. It's sides
were almost sheer; its top was fiat and
level Upon the sides there was no verdi
ure: upon the top centuries had made
green fields. The wild geese as they flew
north myriad 1ocks of gulls gannets ana
cormorants, and all manner of fowl of the
sea had buided upon the top until it grew
rich with grass and shrub. The nations
of the air sent their legions here to biv-
ouac. The discord of a thousand Ian
guages might be heard far out TO sea or
far in upon the land. Millions of the feath-
cred race swarmed there; sometimes the
air above was darkened by clouds of them.
No fog bell on a rockbound coast might
warn mariners more ominously than these
battalons of Adventures on the Perez
Rock.
No human being had ever mounted to
this eyre, nor scaled the buIwarks of this
feathered Eden. Three hundred feet be-
low shipbuilders might toll and fishermen
hover, but the lofty home of the maraud-
ers of the air had not yet suffered the in
vasion of man. 1t was legend that this
mighty palsade had once been a bridge of
rock stretched across the gulf builded by
the gods of the land who smote with gram
lite arms and drove back defeated the APP
palling gods of the sea.
General tons of fishermen had looked
upon the yellowish, reddish limestone of
the Perce Rock with an adventuring eye,
but it would seem that not even the tiny,
cinging hoof of a chamois or of wild
goat might find a foothold upon the
straight sides of it. Three hundred feet
was a long way to climb hand over hand,
so for centuries the Perez Rock in the
wide ST. Lawrence Gulf remained solitary
and unconquered.
But there came day when man, the
spoiler, single-handed and alone, should
assan it.
This is the tale that is told of 1t: A
hundred years ago. when England was
fighting France the French squadron.
fresh from destroying the fishing stations
on the islands of st. Pierre and Miquelon,
was living off the coast of Gaspe, near to
this vast rock called Perez. just beyond,
in Nal Bale, was good shelter, but be
cause of the fishing posts at Perce, where
the commissariat could get fresh fish and
food. Richery, the French admiral chose
10 lie in the tideway before Perez Rock.
The master gunner of the admiraIs ship
was a Jerseyman, who being in St Malo'
had been pressed into service. In VAIN ne
had protested. There was his Norman ac-
cent. his captors said; that was evidence
enough, and if he was not citizen OF
France he should be, for French was his
language. So he was carried OIL IN the
Invncible and with her sailed the seas
looking for a British ship to fight.
His name was Antoine Robichon, ana he
6cbi called the
Charming Nancy, which sailed year after
year to this very port of Perez, bringing
Jersey fishermen, and carrying away
again the dried cod TO Europe. When he
was pressed into the French navy at St
NIalo his brother, who was first mate of
the Charming Nancy, took her on to
Gaspe on his brothers business Just the
same as if the brother himself were sail
ing her.
Meanwhile Antoine was waiting in the
tideway where he had come and gone for
ten years seeing on the shore the fishing
posts of the great company, where he had
so often eaten hard tack, drunk juniper
tea. and danced with the masters daugh-
tiers.
AS Antoine leaned on his great gun look
ing out to the shore, the first day the
squadron arrived off Perez, he wondered
# the daughters were there now; whether
Minos, the youngest-Minols, the mad
cap, Minois, the hunter, who shot deer
like a Mohican-was still there. 1t was
now two years since he had seen this bay
of Perez; she was seventeen then, she
was nineteen now-Minois Carnival, the
Masters youngest daughter. Antoine had
asked her for a kiss when he babe her
goodbye last, and she had laughed in his
face; but he also remembered that she
had waved her red kerchief from the
roof of the fishing-post as the Charming
Nancy sailed away, and that she re-
me- o11f ba DC 70 he Char
ing Nancy could be seen.
Was she still there? And if she was
what would she think of him--a gunner
now on a French ship! He might be or
dered to lombard the very house where she
lived, might indeed fire the shot which
should kill her! She was French, but She
was Canadian, and her country was now
England. Two generations had nearly
passed since Canada had been yielded up
to the English, and in that time Jersey
Normans more English than the English.
had chiefly occupied the district called
Gaspe.
Antoine studied the matter hard and
the more he thought of it the harder to
crack the nut seemed. His patriotism was
not of that sort which smiles at martyr
uom. He was of the easy-going kind who
do things because they are expected to
DO them from whom habit takes a load
OF responsibility. He was quite as we'll
treated in this French ship as he would be
lh an English ship, and he could be on
easier terms with his present comrades
because he spoke English badly; but these
sailors could understand his language and
ne theirs. He had stubbornly resisted be-
ing pressed but he had been Knocked on
me head-and there was an end of IT.
what was the good of being knocked on
the head again or being hung at the yard
arm, If one could help it! He was an ex-
pert gunner, for he had served four
Years with the artillery at Elizabeth Cas-
ne IN jersey. When he was drafted in
ne mad asked to become a gunner and
uld such excellent work against some
spanish privateers that the admiral, de-
nshted-for expert men were scarce-gave
nm gun, and presently, because of his
great skill, made him master gunner
ne grew fond of one great gun; he called
Ier ma couzaine," for everything that a
Jersey man comes to love he calls his
cousin. His comrades, like himself did not
nave much concern with questions of 10y
any or patriotism. They were ready TO
hSht, but that was because it was expect
60 OF them, and it would make little diff
ierence to them whether 1t was against
we English or against the Turks, or even