The whole valley was now as it were one seething lake of smoke and flame, the high, half-shrouded spire of the chapel rising impregnable on the further brink. The conflagration was fiercest now along the eastern half of the main street, toward the water side. Even at this distance we heard the great-lunged roar of it. High over the chaos, like a vaulted roof upheld by the Gaspereau Ridge, arched an almost stationary covering of smoke-cloud, impenetrable, and red as blood along its under side. The smoke of the burning was carried off toward the Habitants and Canard—where there was nothing left to burn. Between the red stillness above and the red turbulence below, apart and safe on their high slope, gleamed the cottages of the Colony of Compromise. With what eyes, I wondered, does my beloved look out upon this horror? Do they strain sadly after the departing ships—or does the Englishman stand by and comfort her? As I got clumsily down the ladder the last thing I saw—and the picture bit its lines in strange fashion on my memory—was the other ship, a league behind us, black-winged against the flame. Then the hatch closed down. By the glimmer of a swinging lanthorn we groped our way to a space where we two could lie down side by side. Marc wanted to talk, but I could not. There was a throbbing in my head, a great numbness on my heart. In my ears the voice of the Minas waves assailing the ship’s timbers seemed to whisper of the end of things. Grand Pré was gone. I was being carried, sick and in chains, to some far-off land of strangers. My beloved was cared for by another. “No!” said I in my heart (I thought at first I had spoken it aloud, but Marc did not stir), “when my foot touches land my face shall turn back to seek her face again, though it be from the ends of earth. It is vain, but I will not give her up. I am not dead yet—though hope is!” As I thought the words there came humming through my brain that foolish saying of Mother Pêche’s. Again I saw her on that spring evening bending over my palm and murmuring—“_Your heart’s desire is near your death of hope_!” “Here is my death of hope, mother,” said I to myself. “But where is my heart’s desire?” And with that I laughed harshly—aloud. It was an ill sound in that place of bitterness, and heads were raised to look at me. Marc asked, with a trace of apprehension in his voice: “What’s the matter, Paul? Anything to laugh at?” “Myself!” I muttered. “The humour of the subject is not obvious,” said he curtly. Chapter XXX A Woman’s Privilege I did not sleep that night—not one eye-wink—in the hold of the New England ship. Neither could I think, nor even greatly suffer. Rather I lay as it were numbly weltering in my despair. What if I had known all that was going on meanwhile in that other ship, a league behind us, sailing under the lurid sky!