When it was full daylight we could see the other ship, a white speck on the horizon far ahead. Long before noon she was out of sight. The wind favouring us all day, before sunset we arrived off the grim portal through which the great river of St. John, named by Champlain, empties forth its floods into the sea. The rocky ridges that fence the haven were crested gloriously with rose and gold, and toward this inviting harbourage we steered—not without misgivings, however, for we knew not the channel or the current. In this strait we received unlooked-for aid. Captain Eliphalet, excited by some error in the course which we were shaping, and all in a tremble lest his loved ship fall upon a reef, offered his services as pilot. They were at once accepted. We knew he was as incapable of a treachery as his situation was of turning a treachery to profit. Himself he took the wheel; and on the slack of tide he steered us up to a windless anchorage at the very head of the harbour, beside the ruins of an old fort. The only sign of life was the huts of a few Acadian fishermen, so miserable as to have been quite overlooked by the doom that had descended on their race. Our plan was to scatter the greater part of our company among the small Acadian settlements up the river—at Jemseg, Pointe Ste. Anne, and Medoctec; while the rest of us, the trained men who would be needed in New France, accompanied by a half dozen women with daring and vitality for such a journey, would make our way on sledges and snow-shoes northward, over the Height of Land, down into the St. Lawrence valley, and thence to Quebec. The two carronades on the deck of our ship we dropped into the harbour. We helped ourselves to all the arms and ammunition, with tools for the building of our sledges, and such clothing as our prisoners could well spare. Of the ship’s stores we left enough to carry the ship safely to Boston. Yvonne gave Lieutenant Shafto a letter for her father and mother, which he undertook to forward to Halifax at the earliest opportunity. Then, three days after our arrival in the St. John, we loosed our captives every one, bade Captain Eliphalet a less eventful remainder to his voyage, and turned our back upon the huts of the fishermen. We crossed the Kennebeccasis River on the ice, where it joins the St. John, just back of the ridge which forms the northern rampart of the harbour. Thence we pushed straight up the main river, keeping close along the eastern shore. The rough sledges which we had hastily thrown together were piled with our stores. They carried also such of the women and children as were not capable of enduring the march. The sledges ran easily on the level way afforded by the river, which was now frozen to the depth of a foot. In spots the ice was covered by a thin, hard-packed layer of snow; but for the most part it had been swept clean by the wind.