victor takes up the unfinished work left by generations of men.
Your New World hero begins at the pristine task. I pray you, who are
born to the nobility of the New World, forget not the glory of your
heritage; for the place which God hath given you in the history of the
race is one which men must hold in envy when Roman patrician and Norman
conqueror and robber baron are as forgotten as the kingly lines of old
Egypt.

Fifty ton was our craft, with a crazy pitch to her prow like to take a
man's stomach out and the groaning of infernal fiends in her timbers.
Twelve men, our crew all told, half of them young gentlemen of fortune
from Quebec, with titles as long as a tilting lance and the fighting
blood of a Spanish don and the airs of a king's grand chamberlain.
Their seamanship you may guess. All of them spent the better part of
the first weeks at sea full length below deck. Of a calm day they
lolled disconsolate over the taffrail, with one eye alert for flight
down the companionway when the ship began to heave.

"What are you doing back there, La Chesnaye?" asks M. de Radisson, with
a quiet wink, not speaking loud enough for fo'castle hands to hear.

"Cursing myself for ever coming," growls that young gentleman, scarce
turning his head.

"In that case," smiles Sieur Radisson, "you might be better occupied
learning to take a hand at the helm."

"Sir," pleads La Chesnaye meekly, "'tis all I can do to ballast the
ship below stairs."

"'Tis laziness, La Chesnaye," vows Radisson. "Men are thrown overboard
for less!"

"A quick death were kindness, sir," groans La Chesnaye, scalloping in
blind zigzags for the stair. "May I be shot from that cannon, sir, if
I ever set foot on ship again!"

M. de Radisson laughs, and the place of the merchant prince is taken by
the marquis with a face the gray shade of old Tibbie's linen
a-bleaching on the green.

The Ste. Anne, under Groseillers--whom we called Mr. Gooseberry when he
wore his airs too mightily--was better manned, having able-bodied
seamen, who distinguished themselves by a mutiny.

Of which you shall hear anon.

But the spirits of our young gentlemen took a prodigious leap upward as
their bodies became used to the crazy pace of our ship, whose gait I
can compare only to the bouncings of loose timber in a heavy sea.
North of Newfoundland we were blanketed in a dirty fog. That gave our
fine gentlemen a chance to right end up.

"Every man of them a good seama