Explore "The Star Woman" by H. Bedford-Jones on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the late afternoon, five men sat about a fire on the hillside north of Bay de Verde. Below them was a scene of destruction; the settlers having broken their parole, Iberville was laying waste the little place. Canadians, hardly to be told from Indians, were driving sheep and cattle to slaughter on the beach; the score of log-houses were being pillaged, and already two of the farther buildings were burning fiercely. The hapless settlers, such of them as had not already escaped to Carbonear Island, were being herded into fishing-sloops for transportation to Placentia. Lying at anchor offshore was a goodly bark of over sixty tons, just from England; she was laden deep with stores, and by the gleam of her canvas and the scarcely battered paint, was brand new. She was schooner rigged.
The five men who had gathered about their fire, trees closing them in on three sides, had obviously participated in the sack of the place. Portions of a butchered sheep were cooking at the fire. Four of the men, busy replacing filthy rags with looted garments, were shaggy of hair and beard, pinched and starving of countenance, and had something the air of wild beasts as they pawed over heaps of stolen articles.