In the meantime Madeleine had run for her protector; and before the day was done both Penfold and the Puritan knew of their error, and had joined hands once again with men from their native land.
When Silas Upcliff learnt that he stood upon the perilous Nova Scotian coast, he felt more shame than fear—shame to hear that the land was mastered by the French. Had not those bold sea-brothers of England the Cabots discovered it over a century earlier, and had not James the First conferred his crown patent of the whole of Canada upon Sir William Alexander, his Scottish favourite? The honest skipper well knew that the magnanimous Charles had confirmed the bestowal of that prodigious gift, acting, it must be assumed, under surprising ignorance, seeing that the land was no more his to give than were the New Netherlands or Peru. And at that time, when Roussilac held the St. Lawrence and La Salle the priest ruled Acadie, the Scottish peer, who was nominal lord of all the land, was peacefully engaged in writing mediocre poetry in his castle of Stirling! Between the ostensible and actual ownership spread a vast gulf of difference, as the men upon that shore were to learn to their cost.
Silas Upcliff gave his compatriots a sailor's hearty handshake, and the men who knew the land and its occupants rendered the new-comers what assistance they might, while Hough lost no time in begging them to join in an attack upon Acadie. To that Upcliff could only make the reply: "My services are bought, my ship is armed for defence only, and my men are sworn to run rather than to fight."
Then Madeleine offered her services as housewife to the crew, and when the men knew that she loved an English lad, that she was a Huguenot, and had formerly trodden the streets and lanes of Somerset and Devon, that she even knew the familiar names above merchants' doors in Bristol and Plymouth, and could quote them with a pretty accent, they fell in love with her forthwith, from Upcliff himself to the rogue of a boy before the mast. From that time forth she ruled them with a velvet discipline, joining the workers engaged in repairing the ship's injuries, and helping them by her happiness and approval.
"Hurry! hurry!" she would cry. "Ah, but you talk too much. She shall float to-morrow. Then to break the ice and flee away!"
"Art in such hurry to lose us, lass?" said Upcliff on the second day after the snow.
"But I shall not lose you," cried Madeleine. "I am going to sail away with you. I shall bring good fortune and favouring winds; and if any man be sick I will nurse him back to strength. None ever die whom I watch over. The sick are ashamed even to think of death when they see me so full of life. You will take me to my Geoffrey, in the land of the free?"
"Ay, and to England if you will," cried the hearty skipper, who had already heard her story. "But, my lass, your Geoffrey may be on his way back, and you may but get south to find him gone."
"No," replied Madeleine, shaking her head decidedly. "He is not on his way back. I think he is in trouble. I cannot understand, but I feel that he is being punished for what he has not done, and I know that I can help him. No one can help a man like the woman who loves him. Geoffrey wants me, and I must go."
"You shall go, girl," promised the sea-dog; and, turning half aside, muttered: "If the boy have played her false, I shall have it in my mind to run out a line from the cross-tree and see him hanged."