"Trust my credit with de Ramezay for that. It is something the Black Abbe has not reckoned upon!" said I, with assurance, stuffing my pipe contentedly with the right Virginia leaf. Marc, being well tired with all that he had undergone that day, laid his head on the cuddy and was presently sound asleep. In a low voice, not to disturb the slumberer, I talked with Tamin, and learned how he had chanced to come so pat upon me in my bonds. He had been on the way up to the Forge, coming not by the trail, but straight through the forest, when he caught a view of the Indians, and took alarm at the stealth of their approach. He had tracked them with a cunning beyond their own, and so achieved to outdo them with their own weapons. The moon now swam clear in the naked sky, the clouds lying far below. By the broad light I could see very well to read the letter. It was but brief, and ran thus:-- _To my good Friend and trusted Helper Monsieur Marc de Mer_:-- DEAR SIR,--As touching the affair which you have so prudently carried through, and my gratitude for your so good help, permit the enclosed order on Master Apthorp to speak for me. If I might hope that you would find it in your heart and within your convenience to put me under yet weightier obligations, I would be so bold as to desire an exact account of the forces at Chignecto, and of the enterprize upon which Monsieur de Ramezay is purposing to employ them. Believe me to be, my dear Sir, yours with high esteem and consideration, PAUL MASCARENE. With a wonder of indignation I read it through, and then again aloud to Tamin, who cursed the author with such ingenious Acadian oaths as made me presently smile. "It is right shrewdly devised," said I, "but the deviser knew little of the blunt English Governor, or never would he have made him write with such courtly circumlocutions. De Ramezay, very like, will have seen communications of Mascarene's before now, and will scarce fail to note the disagreement." "The fox has been known to file his tongue too smooth," said Tamin, sententiously. By this we were come over against the huge black front of Blomidon, but our course lay far outside the shadow of his frown, in the silvery run of the seas. The moon floated high over the great Cape, yellow as gold, and the bare sky was like an unruffled lake. Far behind us opened the mouth of the Piziquid stream, a bright gap in the dark but vague shore-line. On our right the waters unrolled without obstruction till they mixed pallidly with the sky in the mouth of Cobequid Bay. Five miles ahead rose the lofty shore which formed the northern wall of Minas Channel,--grim and forbidding enough by day; but now, in such fashion did the moonlight fall along it, wearing a face of fairyland, and hinting of fountained palaces in its glens and high hollows. After I had filled my heart with the fairness and the wonder of it, I lay down upon a thwart and fell asleep. Chapter V In the Run of the Seas