"The drum-major suddenly stopped beating on his great sauce-pan. All the goblins halted and gave three yells, three frightful whoops, like the Indians give when they have danced that war-dance with which they always begin their bloody expeditions. The island was shaken to its foundation, the wolves, the bears, all the other wild beasts, and the demons of the northern mountains took up the cry, and the echoes repeated it till it was lost in the forests of the far-off Saguenay.
"My poor, late father thought that the end of the world had come, and the Day of Judgment.
"The tall devil with the sauce-pan struck three blows; and a silence most profound succeeded the hellish hubbub. He stretched out his arm toward my late father, and cried with a voice of thunder: 'Will you make haste, you lazy dog? will you make haste, you cur of a Christian, and ferry our friend across? We have only fourteen thousand four hundred times more to prance around the island before cock-crow. Are you going to make her lose the best of the fun?'
"'Go to the devil, where you all belong,' answered my late father, losing all patience.
"'Come, my dear Francis,' said La Corriveau, 'be a little more obliging. You are acting like a child about a mere trifle. Moreover, see how the time is flying. Come, now, one little effort!'
"'No, no, my wench of Satan,' said my late father. 'Would to Heaven you still had on the fine collar which the hangman put around your neck two years ago. You wouldn't have so clear a wind-pipe.'
"During this dialogue the goblins on the island resumed their chorus:
"'Here we go all round,
Hands all round,
Here we go all round.'"
"'My dear Francis,' said the witch, 'if your body and bones won't carry me over, I'm going to strangle you. I will straddle your soul and ride over to the festival.' With these words, she seized him by the throat and strangled him."
"What," exclaimed the young men, "she strangled your poor, late father, now dead?"