But I did not move. I looked at him squarely and some one took the pin away from him; then he went below.
It was plain to see, none the less, that the situation of the French and the Spanish had changed. Here were we, many leagues upon the ocean, at the mercy of the winds and seas; while the Spaniards, our deadliest enemies, outnumbering us two to one, were ashore, and but two days’ march from all we had in New France—all the most of us had anywhere upon the face of the earth!
Would we never come to land again? And, Mademoiselle!
I dared not think!
[CHAPTER X.]
THE HERICANO.
We were sailing toward the shore again, but the wind had gone down and the Trinity moved sluggishly enough through the heavy swells, making scarce a league an hour. But this was a humor of the elements and meant nothing—or everything. In those latitudes a ship-master should ever be in a plague and torment.
It was three weeks that we had been upon the sea, when one night, at the beginning of October, four of the ships still being in company, there broke a storm, the equal of which I have never had the ill-fortune to behold. And it was afterwards told me by Indians of Emola that never had there been known such a tempest upon that coast.
The Lieutenant Bachasse had the watch on deck. I was standing by his side. Suddenly far down on the starboard quarter we heard a roaring like that of the surf upon the shore; only it was a hundred times greater and had in it something more ominous and terrible. The sky was black as soot in that direction, and though we peered through the darkness we could see nothing there. More and more distinct it grew, and then we could make out a line of white growing more plain with each second. Bachasse was giving some hoarse orders to have the sails and yards lowered, when the Admiral rushed from his cabin clad only in shirt and breeches.