"Trois cavaliers bien montés—"
"Trois cavaliers bien montés—"
chanted the leader again.
"L'un à cheval et l'autre à pied—"
came the response; and then the chorus:
"Lon, lon laridon daine—
Lon, lon laridon dai!"
The great boat began to move ahead steadily and more swiftly, and bend after bend of the river was rounded by the rushing prow. None knew this country, nor wist how far the journey might carry him. None knew as of certainty that he would ever in this way reach the great Messasebe; or even if he thought that such would be the case, did any one know how far that Messasebe still might be. Yet there came a time in the afternoon of that day, even as the chant of the voyageurs still echoed on the wooded bluffs, and even as the great birch-bark ship still responded swiftly to their gaiety, when, on a sudden turn in the arm of the river, there appeared wide before them a scene for which they had not been prepared. There, rippling and rolling under the breeze, as though itself the arm of some great sea, they saw a majestic flood, whose real nature and whose name each man there knew on the instant and instinctively.
"Messasebe! Messasebe!" broke out the voices of the paddlers.
"Stop the paddles!" cried Du Mesne. "Voilà!"