"False!" cried Madeleine, with a scream of laughter. "Is the sun false when the clouds will not let him shine? Why, I would slap your wicked face, and cook you no supper to-night, if I believed that you spoke in faith."
She ran away, kicking up the dusty snow, and throwing back a laugh which filled the winter air with the breath of spring.
Each calm morning the boats of the deep-sea fishermen put out from Acadie, and returned before evening with their frozen freight. The Englishmen stifled their fires and stilled their voices when these boats drew near. Their shelter was well hidden among the pines; the snowed-up brigantine resembled nothing so much as a rock bearing a few dead and stripped firs. Every night the sailors laughed at danger; but each morning found them on the watch.
A week passed without event, until the evening of the eighth day arrived and found the sailors packed within their log-hut at the back of the ice-bound bay awaiting the call to supper. The three adventurers were also present as the skipper's guests. The cabin was warm and well lighted, equipped by the men's handiness with nautical furniture from their ship. From the region beyond a curtain, which divided the interior, came the smell of cookery and the joyful roaring of a fire. A feeling of security was upon the company, because snow-clouds were rolling up outside and the gulf was filled with fog. As night drew on these grey clouds appeared to melt into feathers innumerable, and the pines became snow-steeples, and the rocks huge beds of down. The brigantine was locked within a sheet of ice, and that mysterious silence which had so terrified Cabot the pioneer held all the land in thrall. But the Englishmen cared for none of these things. They knew that the colony of Acadie was being buried in the snow; the unknown coast had no terrors; nor did they fear the black winter sea which southwards groaned and tossed. So they gave each other good cheer, and listened to Upcliff, who beguiled them with reminiscences of his seafaring life until his throat was dry. Then he paused to refresh himself with a rolled tobacco-leaf, and his sailors broke the silence which ensued by singing melodiously a soft musical chanty, which recalled to the mind of each his free and happy life upon the main and the rollicking days ashore. This song also stirred into activity a memory which lay latent in the skipper's mind.
"I saw the man who made that verse," he said, leaning over the circle, and putting out his hand for silence. "Will tell you where I saw him. 'Twas on London street beside Globe Theatre, coming by Blackfriars, and he stood with another honest gentleman watching us wild fellows roll past. We were singing like boys on the road from school and making the fat watchmen run. London town was a brave place for us young sailors up from the West Country, and we were bent on having our pleasure, though we had to pay for it before my Lord Mayor."
"What was the name of master?" asked one of the men.
"A comely gentleman," went on the captain, disregarding the questioner. "Though methinks as pale as any wench who had lost her lover. Not a wrinkle on the face of him, and the forehead of him wide and smooth, ay, and as cold looking as any slab of stone from Portland cliff. But the eyes of man! I caught the look of them, and they seemed to pass through my brain learning in one glance more about me than ever I knew myself. And the smile of man! Can see it now as he turned to his fellow and said: 'The sailor is the man to drive our care away, good Burbage.' And then he said softly those words you have now been singing, 'One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.' A Christian gentleman, they told me. A great actor, and a poet who made money, they told me. Should watch his 'Tempest' played. Would make you feel on shipboard, and hold on to a pillar of the pit to steady your feet withal."
"He loved a mariner," said a voice. "The Englishman smells of salt water, say they in France. 'Tis better, so honest Will did say, than to smell of civet."
"How goes the weather?" demanded the captain suddenly.
"Snowing. Our little barque is but a drift."