We were all awake, but silent. Sullen we might have seemed, and hopelessly submissive, but there was an alertness in the eyes flashing everywhere toward Marc and me, such as might have been warning to a folk less hardily indifferent than our captors. Two red-coated guards, taxed with the office of preventing conspiracy, paced up and down with their heads high and heeded us little. “What could these poor handcuffed wretches do, anyway?” was the palpable significance of their mien. We desired indeed, at that time, to do nothing save eat the breakfast of weevilly biscuits just now served out to us, with good water still sweet from the wells of vanished Grand Pré. When one has hunger, there is rare relish in a weevilly biscuit; and I could have desired more of them than I got. With our fettered hands we ate like a colony of squirrels. In the course of the morning it was not difficult, the guards being so heedless, to pass whispered word from one to another, so that soon all Marc’s plans were duly laid down. His was the devising and ordering head, while La Mouche, for all his subtlety, and long Philibert Trou, for all his craft, were but the wielded instruments. It was an unwonted part for me to be playing, this of blindly following another’s lead; but Marc had done well, seeing my heavy preoccupation, to make no great demand upon my wits. My arm, he knew, would be ready enough at need. I was not jealous. I wanted to fight the English; but I wanted to think—well, of just one thing on earth. Looking back now, I trust I would have been more useful to our cause that morning had not Marc’s capacity made wits of mine superfluous. Throughout the morning we were all so quiet that the ship’s rats, lean and grey, came out and ate the few crumbs we had let drop. Nevertheless, ere an hour before noon every man knew the part he was to play in the venture of next night. Long Philibert and La Mouche, with two other Acadian woodsmen skilled in ambuscade, were to deal with the guard silently. Marc and I, with no stomach for aught but open warfare, were to lead the rush up through the hatchway, to an excellent chance of a bayonet through our gullets. I felt justified now, however, in considering as to whether I should be likely to find Yvonne still at Grand Pré, casting a ray of beauty on the ruins, or at Halifax, disturbing with her eyes the deliberations of the governor and his council.