“All right, brother,” Cap said. “When you’re talking to us, don’t be so damned noisy about New Englanders, because that’s what we are. We don’t like noisy people, and when anybody gets noisy with us, he gets so much noise back that he’s most generally deef the rest of his life. You talk like you owned this country, but we know better. We been up in this Quebec country before: with Arnold. If we’d had half enough food then, we’d ’a’ been well fed! Nothing to eat for a month but squirrel-hair and rock-tripe! None of our folks did any running, brother! A few, maybe; but none to speak of. If there’s been any done since, I’ll bet you a bottle of rum to an eel skin it was started by Yorkers, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Donald Campbell of the New York line!”

“Say,” the Pennsylvanian admitted, “come to think of it, it was Campbell they were all cussing!”

Nason shouted at his middlemen. They dug in their paddles with such force that the water sucked and swirled. As Tom Bickford swung the craft into midstream with his steering-paddle, Nason spoke quietly to Cap Huff. “Drive your men! If we can’t reach Quebec, we’ve got to leave the river at St. John’s and get somewhere—and get there quick!”

XI

ST. JOHN’S is a sort of seaport in the middle of nowhere; for vessels can sail to it from Champlain; but beyond it there are falls and quick water, difficult for even canoes to pass. Montreal lies to the west, Sorel and the broad St. Lawrence to the north, and Albany to the south, so it is well situated for a prosperous trading town. Ordinarily it looks pleasant enough, with its broad fortified enclosure containing barracks and a shipyard and various small buildings on the westward bank, and a winding road along the river, with farms and a large house or two fronting on it; and on the eastern side a ridge of high land with more farms and an imposing manor house.

But when we ran our canoes toward the landing on that cold May afternoon, St. John’s might recently have suffered from a plague and an earthquake combined.

There was a half-finished skeleton of a vessel in a shipyard—a brig or schooner—and not a soul near it. The whole place looked dead. Shutters covered the windows of such houses as we could see, and boards were nailed across the fronts of warehouses and barracks, as if they had been gutted by a hurricane and hastily repaired.

The road that paralleled the landing was littered with rubbish. Amid the rubbish, around small fires, sat groups of men so dejected in appearance that they might have been beggars out of London slums.