But Foret would not be beaten. He thrust an ironwood
bar across the gaping jaws. The shark tore the wood to splinters.
There was a rip that snapped the cable with the report of a pistol, and
the great fish was over deck and away in the sea.
By this, you may know, we had all left our landsmen's fears far south
of Belle Isle and were filled with the spirit of that wild, tempestuous
world where the storm never sleeps and the cordage pipes on calmest day
and the beam seas break in the long, low, growling wash that warns the
coming hurricane.
But if you think we were a Noah's ark of solemn faces 'mid all that
warring desolation, you are much mistaken. I doubt if lamentations
ever did as much to lift mankind to victory as the naughty glee of the
shrieking fife. And of glee, we had a-plenty on all that voyage north.
La Chesnaye, son of the merchant prince who owned our ships, played
cock-o'-the-walk, took rank next to M. Radisson, and called himself
deputy-governor. Foret, whose father had a stretch of barren shingle
on The Labrador, and who had himself received letters patent from His
Most Christian Majesty for a marquisate, swore he would be cursed if he
gave the _pas_ to La Chesnaye, or any other commoner. And M. de
Radisson was as great a stickler for fine points as any of the
new-fledged colonials.
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