For my own part, being just lately returned from a long expedition, my muscles were like steel; I felt that I should never weary. Steadily onward we pressed, past the mouths of several small streams whose names I did not know, past headland after headland of red clay or pallid plaster rock. As the tide fell, we were driven far out into the bay, till sometimes there was a mile of oozy red flats parting us from the edge of the green. But as the tide rose again, we accompanied its seething vanguard, till at last we were again close in shore. A breeze soon after mid-day springing up behind us, we made excellent progress. But soon after sunset a mist arose, which made our journey too perilous to be continued. I turned into a narrow cove between high banks, where the brawling of a shallow brook promised us fresh water. And there, in a thicket of young fir trees growing at the foot of a steep bank, I set up the canoe on edge, laid some poles and branches against it, and had a secluded shelter for my lady. She looked at it with a gratified admiration and could never be done with thanking me.
Being now near the Shubenacadie mouth, I durst not light a fire, but we uncomplainingly ate our black bread; and then I said:
"We will start at first gray, comrade. You will need all the sleep you can win. Good night, and kindly dreams."
"Good night, Monsieur," she said softly, and disappeared. Then going down to the water's side, I threw off my clothes, and took a swift plunge which steadied and refreshed me mightily. Swimming in the misty and murmurous darkness, my venture and my strange fellowship seemed more like a dream to me than ever, and I could scarce believe myself awake. But I was awake enough to feel it when, in stumbling ashore, I scraped my foot painfully on a jagged shell. However, that hurt was soon eased and staunched by holding it for a little under the chill gushing of the brook; after which I dressed myself, gathered a handful of ferns for a pillow, and laid myself down across the opening which led into the thicket.
Chapter XIV
My Comrade Shoots Excellently Well
From a medley of dreams, in which I saw Mizpah binding the Black Abbé with cords of her own hair—tight, tighter, till they ate into his flesh, and I trembled at the look of shaking horror in his face; in which then I saw the child chasing butterflies before the door of the Forge in the Forest, and heard Babin's hammer beating musically on his anvil, till the sound became the chiming of the Angelus over the roofs and walls of Quebec, where Mizpah and I walked hand fast together on the topmost bastion,—from such a fleeting and blending confusion as this, I woke to feel a hand laid softly on my face in the dark. I needed no seeing to tell me whose was the hand, so slim, so cool, so softly firm; and I had much ado to keep my lips from reverently kissing it.
"Monsieur, Monsieur," came the whisper, "what is that noise, that voice?"
"Pardon me, comrade, for sleeping so soundly," I murmured, sitting up, and taking her hand in mine with a rough freedom of goodwill, as merely to reassure her. "What is it you hear?"