"What's plain to me now," interrupted Tamin, with some anxiety in his voice, "is that they're gaining on us fast. They've put down leeboards; an' with leeboards down a Micmac canoe's hard to beat."
"Oh!" I exclaimed bitterly, "if we had but our muskets! Fool that I was, thus to think to save time and not go back for our weapons! Trust me, lad, it's the first time that Jean de Mer has had that particular kind of folly to repent of!"
"But there was nought else for it, Father," said Marc. "And if, as seems most possible, we come to close quarters presently, we are not so naked as we might be. Here's your two pistols, my good whinger, and Tamin's fishy dirk. And Tamin's gaff here will make a pretty lance. It is borne in upon me that some of the good Abbé's lambs will bleat for their shepherd before this night's work be done!"
There was a steady light in his eyes that rejoiced me much, and his voice rose and fell as if fain to break into a war song; and I said to myself, "The boy is a fighter, and the fire is in his blood, for all his scholar's prating of peace!" Yet he straightway turned his back upon the enemy and with great indifference went to filling his pipe.
"Ay, an' there be a right good gun in the cuddy!" grunted Tamin, after a second or two of silence.
"The saints be praised!" said I. And Marc's long arm reached in to capture it. It was a huge weapon, and my heart beat high at sight of it. Marc caressed it for an instant, then reluctantly passed it to me, with the powder-horn.
"I can shoot, a little, myself," said he, "but I would be presumptuous to boast when you were by, Father!"
"Ay, vraiment," said Tamin, sharply; "don't think you can shoot with the Sieur de Briart yet!"
"I don't," replied Marc, simply, as he handed me out a pouch of bullets and a pouch of slugs.
The pursuing canoes were by this come within fair range. There came a strident hail from the foremost:—