"Newman, Peter C. - Company of Adventures 03 - Merchant Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Peter C)

say something, there was little hcad-nodding for emphasis and nary a quiver
in his meticulously trimmed beard. He lacked any flash of wit or mischief
and left the task of abusing his enemies to underlings.
His solemn mimner and demand for unquestioning obedience had their roots in
instincts Smith acquired during his sojourn in Labrador. It was there that
he learned to husband his energies and ration his emotions; survival often
required both. Compliance with orders was equally important because
dereliction of duty, however minor, could place human life at risk. The
stern code of behaviour implanted during those formative years never left
him. Work, to Smith, was less an occupation than a compulsion; his
operational code was the maxim: `16 rest is to rust."

THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING Donald Alexander Smith is the Scottishness of the
rnan-Scottish to the marrow of his soul, despite his English airs and Cana-
dian domicile. Like all good Scots, he knew how to maximize the authority of
pursed lips and disapproving glances, how to p.irlay endurance into
salvation, and, above all, how to fight.
 16 LABRADOR SMITH

The Scottish clans had always been fighters-against the Romans, the
Anglo-Saxons, the Danes, the AngloNormans, the English-and, when there was
no one else to fight, one another.* Scottish soldiers served as mercenaries
of French kings, German princes and Scandinavian knights, and provided the
human cannon fodder used in the defence of the wilder margins of the
British Empire. "Scotland's history," the noted military writerjohn Keegan
has observed, "is bloody with battles ... and her national heroes ... are
men of the sword. The military ingredient of Scottish life goes deeper than
that. For to the Scots ... war has been something of a national industry."
That bellicose nature was a useful trait Smith and his fellow Highlanders
enlisted in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. Sparse of speech but
swift in action, they had temperaments perfectly suited to the fur
trade-the meld of perseverance and selfsufficiency, of endurance and
courage that Donald Smith epitomized so perfectly. It was their gravity of
demeanour and curiously rolling gait, their gloomv cast of countenance and
habit of being close with money and emotions-their determination that even
moments of pleasure or splendour must appear accidental-that was the
Scottish way.f Scotsmen like Smith embraced

*Of the Scottish clan wars, Andrew Strome CarmichaelGalloway, Bannerman to
the 30th Chief of the name, has noted that there were MacDonalds and
Campbells who hated one another in the west; Armstrongs and Carmichaels who
hated one another in the south; Mackays and Gunns who hated one another in
the north; Lindsays and Ogilvies who hated one another in the east;
MacGregors in the centre whom everybody hated, and Douglases who hated
evervbody everywhere.

t "The Scots," observed R.B. Cunninghame Graham, one of their wittier
essayists, "fornicate gravely but without conviction."
 THE MAN WHO BECAME A COUNTRY 17
the burden of hard work as Calvinism's earthly path to salvation. They were