of Belle Isle and were filled with the spirit of that wild, tempestuous
world where the storm never sleeps and the cordage pipes on calmest day
and the beam seas break in the long, low, growling wash that warns the
coming hurricane.

But if you think we were a Noah's ark of solemn faces 'mid all that
warring desolation, you are much mistaken. I doubt if lamentations
ever did as much to lift mankind to victory as the naughty glee of the
shrieking fife. And of glee, we had a-plenty on all that voyage north.

La Chesnaye, son of the merchant prince who owned our ships, played
cock-o'-the-walk, took rank next to M. Radisson, and called himself
deputy-governor. Forêt, whose father had a stretch of barren shingle
on The Labrador, and who had himself received letters patent from His
Most Christian Majesty for a marquisate, swore he would be cursed if he
gave the _pas_ to La Chesnaye, or any other commoner. And M. de
Radisson was as great a stickler for fine points as any of the
new-fledged colonials. When he called a conference, he must needs
muster to the quarter-deck by beat of drum, with a tipstaff, having a
silver bauble of a stick, leading the way. This office fell to
Godefroy, the trader, a fellow with the figure of a slat and a scalp
tonsured bare as a billiard-ball by Indian hunting-knife. Spite of
many a thwack from the flat of M. de Radisson's sword, Godefroy would
carry the silver mace to the chant of a "diddle-dee-dee," which he was
always humming in a sand-papered voice wherever he went. At beat of
drum for conference we all came scrambling down the ratlines like
tumbling acrobats of a country fair, Godefroy grasps his silver stick.

"Fall in line, there, deputy-governor, diddle-dee-dee!"