Even Bob laughed good-naturedly at the interruption, and then resumed his story.
“He had some dealings with the Indians there at the bay of Gaspé, and one of the chiefs was so taken with Cartier that he gave him permission to take his two sons back to France with him on the condition that he would bring them back in the following year.”
“Whose two sons? Cartier’s?” inquired Bert.
“No, the Indian chief’s. Of course the Frenchman promised; but before he left he planted another wooden cross there, and put on it a shield with the arms of the French king, and the words, Vive le roi de France.”
“How the king must have felt to have his arms left there,” murmured Bert.
“Cartier soon after set sail, and after doubling the point of Anticosti found himself in a channel and sailed a little way up what was really a branch of the St. Lawrence, though he didn’t know then, of course, that there was any such river.”
“He’d found the St. Lawrence and didn’t know it?” inquired Jock.
“Yes.”