Through all the green and blue and golden Acadian summer he had toiled joyously at bending the thin planks and riveting them soundly to the ribs, the stem and the sternpost. It was hot work, but white and savory, the clean spruce planks that he wrought with breathing sweet scents to his lungs as adze and chisel and saw set free the tonic spirit of their fibres. His chips soon spread a yellow carpet over the mossy sward and the tree-roots. The yellow sides of his graceful craft presently arose high among the green kissing branches of the water-ash and Indian pear. The tawny golden shimmering current of the creek lipped up at high tide close under the stern of the little ship and set afloat the lowest layers of the chips; while at ebb a gleaming abyss of red mud with walls sloping sharply to a mere rivulet at their foot seemed to tempt the structure to a premature launching and a wild swooping rush to oozy doom. Very secluded, far apart from beaten highway or forest byway, and quite aside from all the river traffic, was the place of Jean Michaud's shipbuilding. And so it came about that the clear ringing blows of his adze, the sharp staccato of his diligent hammer and the strident crying of his saw brought no answer but the chatter of the striped chipmunks among the near tree-roots, or the scolding of the garrulous and inquisitive red squirrels from the branches overhead. At the quiet of the noon hour, while Jean lay in the shade contemplating his handiwork, and weaving his many-colored dreams, and munching his brown-bread cakes and pale cheese, the clucking partridge hen would lead her brood out to investigate the edges of the chip-strewn open, where insects gathered in the heat. And afterward, when once more Jean's hammering set up its brisk and cheerful echoes, the big golden-wing woodpeckers would promptly accept the sound as a challenge, and begin an emulous rat-tat-tat-tat-ting on the resonant sound-board of a dead beech not far off.
By the time the partridge brood had taken to whirring up into the maple branches when alarmed, instead of scurrying to cover in the underbrush, the hull was completed; and a smell of smoking pitch drowned the woodsy odors as Jean calked the seams. Then the pale yellow of the timbers no more shone through the reddening leafage, but a sombre black bulk loomed impressively above the chips, daunting the squirrels for a few days with its strange shadow. By the time of the moose-calling, when the rowan-berries hung in great scarlet bunches and half the red leafage was turning brown, and the pale gold birch leaves fell in fluttering showers at every gust, two slim masts had raised their tops above the trees, and a white bowsprit was thrusting its nose into the branches of the nearest red maple. Under the bowsprit glittered a carved and gilded Madonna, the most auspicious figurehead to which, in Jean's eyes, he could intrust the fortunes of his handiwork. A few days more and the ship was done—so nearly complete that three or four hours of work would make her ready for sea. Being so small, it was feasible to launch her in this advanced state of equipment; and the conditions under which she had been built made it necessary that she should be prepared to hurry straight from the greased ways of the launching to the security of the open sea. The tidal creek in which she would first take water could give her no safe harborage; and once out of the creek she would have to make all speed, under cover of night, till Port Royal River and the sodded ramparts of Annapolis town should be left many miles astern.
Having made his preparations and gathered his materials far ahead, and devised his precautions with subtlety, and accustomed his neighbors to the idea that he was an erratic youth, given to long absences and futile schemes, not worth gossip, Jean had succeeded in keeping his enterprise a secret from all but two persons. These two, deep in his counsel's from the first, were Barbe Dieudonné, his sweetheart, and Mich' Masson, his friend and ally.
Mich' Masson—whose home, which served him best as a place to stay away from, was in the village of Grand Pré, far up on the Basin of Minas—had been Jean's close friend since early boyhood, in the days before Port Royal town had been captured by the English and found its name changed to Annapolis. He was a daring adventurer, hunter, woods-ranger, an implacable partisan of the French cause, and just now deeply interested in the traffic between Acadie and the new French fortress city of Louisburg—a traffic which the English Governor was angrily determined to break up. Mich' Masson could sail a ship as well as set a dead-fall or lay an ambush. He had kept bright in Jean's heart the flame of hatred against the English conquerors of Acadie. It was he who had come to the aid of Jean's shipbuilding from time to time, when timbers had to be put in place which were too heavy for one pair of hands to work with. It was, indeed, at his suggestion that Jean had finally decided to sell his cottage on the outskirts of Annapolis town, his scrap of upland with its apple trees in full bearing, his strip of rich dike-land with its apple trees in full bearing, his strip of rich dike-forbidden traffic—and to settle under the walls of Louisburg, where the flag he loved should always wave over his roof-tree. It was Mich' Masson who had shown Jean how by this course he could quickly grow rich, and make a home for Barbe which that somewhat disconcerting and incomprehensible maiden would not scorn to accept. Mich' Masson loved his own honor. He loved Jean. He hated the English. Jean's secret was safe with him.
Mademoiselle Barbe, under a disguise of indifference which sometimes reduced Jean to the not unprofitable condition wherein hard work is the sole refuge from despair, hid a passionate interest in her lover's undertaking. She, too, hated the new domination. She, too, chafed to escape from Annapolis and take up life anew under her old Flag of the Fleur-de-lis. Moreover, her restless and fiery spirit could accept no contented tiller of green Acadian acres for a mate; and she was resolved that Jean's courageous heart and stirring dreams should translate themselves into action. She would have him not only the daring dreamer but the daring doer—the successful smuggler, the shrewd foiler of the English watch-dogs, the admired and consulted partisan leader. That he had it in him to be all these things she felt utterly convinced; but she proposed that the debilitating effects of too much happiness should have no chance of postponing his success. Her keen watchfulness detected every weak spot in Jean's enterprise, every unguarded point in his secret; and her two-edged mockery, which seemed as careless and inconsequent as the wind, at once accomplished the effects she had in view. Her fickleness of mood, her bewildering caprice, were the iridescent foam-bubbles veiling a deep and steady current. She knew that she loved Jean's love for her, of which she felt as certain as dawn does of the sunrise. She had a suspicion in the deep of her heart that she might be in love with Jean himself; but of this she was in no haste to be assured. She was loyal in every fibre. And Jean's secret was safe with her.
Thus the wonder came to pass that Jean's secret, though known to three people, yet remained so long a secret. Had the English Governor, behind his sodded ramparts overlooking the tide, got wind of it, never would Jean Michaud's little ship have sailed the open, save with an English captain and an English crew. It would have been confiscated, on the not unreasonable presumption that it was intended for the forbidden trade.
Early in the afternoon, on a day of mid-October, Jean stepped down the ladder which leaned against the starboard bow of his ship, and contemplated with satisfaction the name, "Mon Rêve," which he had just painted in strong, gold lettering. The exultation in his eyes became a passion of love and worship, as he turned to the slim girl who lay curled up luxuriously on a sweet-smelling pile of dried ferns and marsh-grass, watching him.
"Since you won't let me name her directly after you, that is the nearest I can come to it, Barbe," he said. "You can't find fault with that. You are my dream—and all else besides."
For a moment she watched him in silence. Her figure was of a childish slenderness, and there was a childish abandon in her attitude. The small hands crossed idly in her lap were very dark and thin and long-fingered, with rosy nails. She was dressed in skirt and bodice of the creamy Acadian homespun linen, the skirt reaching not quite to her slim ankles. Her mouth was full and red, half sorrowful, half mocking. Her face, small and rather thin, was tanned to a clear, dark brown, and of a type that suggested a strain of the ancient blood of the Basques. The thick black masses of her hair, with a rebel wave in them, and here and there a glint of flame, half covered her little ears and were gathered into a knot at the back of her neck. The brim of her low-crowned hat of quilted linen was tilted far down to shade her face; and her eyes, very green and clear and large, made a bewildering brilliance in the shadow.
The light in her eyes softened presently, and she said in a low voice: