"De Pontbriand may still live," said Charles. "Mdlle. de Roberval may still live, and I must restore them to France, or make sure that they are dead. If I find them not, God help De Roberval!"
"God help him in any case!" said Cartier to himself. "Your spirit will never rest till it has spilt the little tyrant's blood. But when," he added, "do you expect to start for the New World?"
"At once."
"Nay, that's impossible. You would have some difficulty in getting sailors to venture out on the Atlantic at this season."
"If I cannot get men to accompany me," said Charles, "Etienne and I will go alone;" and as he spoke, Etienne, who was standing by in Cartier's orchard, where the conversation took place, nodded assent, and muttered a determined "Ay, that we will!" He, too, was thinking of his fair young mistress, who had always seemed to him like one of the blessed saints; and when he pictured her pining for her home through the dreary autumn and torturing winter in Canada, he would gladly have risked the voyage single-handed.
It was no easy matter to get a vessel. Roberval had returned, and Charles had no longer his former excuse. It was rumoured at court that the lovers had been punished for flaunting immorality; and to tell why he wanted the ship would be to drag the names of Claude and Marguerite through the mire. This he would not do. He would not even let himself think of what De Roberval had told him. It was not—it could not be true! It was true that he had awakened from his dream; he knew that he could never win Marguerite. What he had learned from Etienne and from her uncle had banished that wild hope; and all the little circumstances in their lives, which had before passed unnoticed, now rose before him to show him how blind and foolish he had been. But he loved her none the less—rather the more. And when he thought of what she and her lover must have endured on that desolate island, in the great northern ocean, his brain beat and his heart throbbed till he thought he must surely go mad. To save himself, he felt he must start on his journey as soon as possible.
But there were difficulties in the way. Cartier had disposed of his ships, and taken up his permanent residence at Limoilou. To purchase a new vessel would cost money; and Charles, ever prodigal, had but small means that he could call his own. On Cartier he depended for help; but that shrewd seaman knew how the enterprise must end, and instead of putting his hand into his money-bag, he did his utmost to dissuade La Pommeraye from his purpose.
Finding, however, that his friend had determined on the journey, he at length got several St Malo merchants to join with him in fitting out a small craft of fifty tons, ostensibly for the fur trade. The vessel was an old one, but had several times weathered the Atlantic, and a number of her old crew expressed themselves willing to join La Pommeraye if he would offer them a sufficient wage. He had hard work, however, in getting together six trusty fellows, who, with Etienne and himself, would undertake the winter journey. But by the beginning of December all was ready, and the little vessel, amid shaking of heads and prophecies of misfortune from the knowing ones, steered away for the Channel, and out towards the Atlantic, where even then a storm was raging.
But they were to meet with disappointment at the very beginning of their voyage. The masts creaked and groaned; the planks quivered; the oakum became loose in the seams; and on the second day out it was found that the vessel had sprung a leak. Pump as they would, they could not lessen the water in the hold; and though La Pommeraye would fain have held on his way, discretion compelled him to turn his vessel's head about, and run for the port he had just left.