"'Tis laziness, La Chesnaye," vows Radisson. "Men are thrown overboard
for less!"

"A quick death were kindness, sir," groans La Chesnaye, scalloping in
blind zigzags for the stair. "May I be shot from that cannon, sir, if
I ever set foot on ship again!"

M. de Radisson laughs, and the place of the merchant prince is taken by
the marquis with a face the gray shade of old Tibbie's linen
a-bleaching on the green.

The Ste. Anne, under Groseillers--whom we called Mr. Gooseberry when he
wore his airs too mightily--was better manned, having able-bodied
seamen, who distinguished themselves by a mutiny.

Of which you shall hear anon.

But the spirits of our young gentlemen took a prodigious leap upward as
their bodies became used to the crazy pace of our ship, whose gait I
can compare only to the bouncings of loose timber in a heavy sea.
North of Newfoundland we were blanketed in a dirty fog. That gave our
fine gentlemen a chance to right end up.

"Every man of them a good seaman in calm weather," Sieur Radisson
observed; and he put them through marine drill all that week. La
Chesnaye so far recovered that he sometimes kept me company at the
bowsprit, where we watched the clumsy gambols of the porpoise, racing
and leaping and turning somersets in mid-air about the ship. Once, I
mind the St. Pierre gave a tremor as if her keel had grated a reef; and