“And I for Grand Pré,” said I doggedly.
I heard the ghost of a laugh flit from Marc’s lips.
“Good dog! Hold fast!” said he.
There was no gainsaying it. I was better. For perhaps an hour or two I slept like a baby, to awake deeply refreshed. A clear light came down the hatch, and there was a busy tramping of sailors overhead. It was high morning.
We were all awake, but silent. Sullen we might have seemed, and hopelessly submissive, but there was an alertness in the eyes flashing everywhere toward Marc and me, such as might have been warning to a folk less hardily indifferent than our captors. Two red-coated guards, taxed with the office of preventing conspiracy, paced up and down with their heads high and heeded us little. “What could these poor handcuffed wretches do, anyway?” was the palpable significance of their mien.
We desired indeed, at that time, to do nothing save eat the breakfast of weevilly biscuits just now served out to us, with good water still sweet from the wells of vanished Grand Pré. When one has hunger, there is rare relish in a weevilly biscuit; and I could have desired more of them than I got. With our fettered hands we ate like a colony of squirrels.
In the course of the morning it was not difficult, the guards being so heedless, to pass whispered word from one to another, so that soon all Marc’s plans were duly laid down. His was the devising and ordering head, while La Mouche, for all his subtlety, and long Philibert Trou, for all his craft, were but the wielded instruments. It was an unwonted part for me to be playing, this of blindly following another’s lead; but Marc had done well, seeing my heavy preoccupation, to make no great demand upon my wits. My arm, he knew, would be ready enough at need. I was not jealous. I wanted to fight the English; but I wanted to think—well, of just one thing on earth. Looking back now, I trust I would have been more useful to our cause that morning had not Marc’s capacity made wits of mine superfluous.
Throughout the morning we were all so quiet that the ship’s rats, lean and grey, came out and ate the few crumbs we had let drop. Nevertheless, ere an hour before noon every man knew the part he was to play in the venture of next night. Long Philibert and La Mouche, with two other Acadian woodsmen skilled in ambuscade, were to deal with the guard silently. Marc and I, with no stomach for aught but open warfare, were to lead the rush up through the hatchway, to an excellent chance of a bayonet through our gullets. I felt justified now, however, in considering as to whether I should be likely to find Yvonne still at Grand Pré, casting a ray of beauty on the ruins, or at Halifax, disturbing with her eyes the deliberations of the governor and his council.
I said—one hour before noon. About that time the speed of the ship sensibly slackened, and there seemed presently a confusion, an excitement of some sort upon deck. We heard hails and sharp orders. There was a sound as of people coming on board. And then, of a sudden, a strange trembling seized upon me. It was in every nerve and vein, and my heart shook merely, instead of beating. Such a feeling had come over me once before—when Yvonne’s eyes, turned upon me suddenly, seemed to say more than her lips would have permitted her to acknowledge. With a faint laugh at the very madness of it I could not but say to Marc:
“I think that is Yvonne coming!”