Some while after, as in my passing to and fro I went by the cabin for the fiftieth time, my expectation came true: the door opened, and Yvonne, close wrapped in her great cloak, stood beside me. I drew her under the lee of the cabin, where the bitter wind blew less witheringly. The first of dawn was just creeping bleakly up the sky, and the ship was under way.
“You are cold, dear,” exclaimed Yvonne beneath her breath, catching my hand in her two little warm ones; and, faith! I was, though I had not had time to notice it till she bade me. The next moment, careless of the eyes of La Mouche, who stood by the rail not ten paces off, she opened her cloak, flung the folds of it about my neck, and drew my face down, in that enchanted darkness, to the sweet warmth of hers.
There were no words. What could those vain things avail in such a moment, when our pulses beat together, and our souls met at the lips, and 280in silence was plighted that great troth which shall last, it is my faith, through other lives than this? Then she drew softly away, and, with eyes cast down, left me, and went back into her cabin.
I lifted my head. La Mouche stood by the rail, looking off across the faintly lightening water. As I passed near him he turned and grasped my hand hard.
“I am most glad for you, my captain!” he said quietly. But I saw that my joy was an emphasis to his own sorrow, and his very lips were grey for remembrance of the woman who had stricken him.
When it was full daylight we could see the other ship, a white speck on the horizon far ahead. Long before noon she was out of sight. The wind favouring us all day, before sunset we arrived off the grim portal through which the great river of St. John, named by Champlain, empties forth its floods into the sea. The rocky ridges that fence the haven were crested gloriously with rose and gold, and toward this inviting harbourage we steered—not without misgivings, however, for we knew not the channel or the current. In this strait we received unlooked-for aid. Captain Eliphalet, excited by some error in the course which we were shaping, and all in a tremble lest his loved ship fall upon a reef, offered his services as pilot. They were at once accepted. We knew he was 281as incapable of a treachery as his situation was of turning a treachery to profit. Himself he took the wheel; and on the slack of tide he steered us up to a windless anchorage at the very head of the harbour, beside the ruins of an old fort. The only sign of life was the huts of a few Acadian fishermen, so miserable as to have been quite overlooked by the doom that had descended on their race.
Our plan was to scatter the greater part of our company among the small Acadian settlements up the river—at Jemseg, Pointe Ste. Anne, and Medoctec; while the rest of us, the trained men who would be needed in New France, accompanied by a half dozen women with daring and vitality for such a journey, would make our way on sledges and snow-shoes northward, over the Height of Land, down into the St. Lawrence valley, and thence to Quebec.
The two carronades on the deck of our ship we dropped into the harbour. We helped ourselves to all the arms and ammunition, with tools for the building of our sledges, and such clothing as our prisoners could well spare. Of the ship’s stores we left enough to carry the ship safely to Boston. Yvonne gave Lieutenant Shafto a letter for her father and mother, which he undertook to forward to Halifax at the earliest opportunity. Then, three days after our arrival in the St. John, we loosed our captives every one, bade Captain Eliphalet a 282less eventful remainder to his voyage, and turned our back upon the huts of the fishermen. We crossed the Kennebeccasis River on the ice, where it joins the St. John, ............