The captain shook his grizzled head, and answered sadly: "Recall not that day of our triumph. Then were we five good men. Now George, our brother, lies on the Windy Arm, and friend Woodfield is no more, and young Geoffrey has gone out into a strange country. Only you and I remain, and my arm now lacks its former strength." In the meantime Madeleine had run for her protector; and before the day was done both Penfold and the Puritan knew of their error, and had joined hands once again with men from their native land. When Silas Upcliff learnt that he stood upon the perilous Nova Scotian coast, he felt more shame than fear--shame to hear that the land was mastered by the French. Had not those bold sea-brothers of England the Cabots discovered it over a century earlier, and had not James the First conferred his crown patent of the whole of Canada upon Sir William Alexander, his Scottish favourite? The honest skipper well knew that the magnanimous Charles had confirmed the bestowal of that prodigious gift, acting, it must be assumed, under surprising ignorance, seeing that the land was no more his to give than were the New Netherlands or Peru. And at that time, when Roussilac held the St. Lawrence and La Salle the priest ruled Acadie, the Scottish peer, who was nominal lord of all the land, was peacefully engaged in writing mediocre poetry in his castle of Stirling! Between the ostensible and actual ownership spread a vast gulf of difference, as the men upon that shore were to learn to their cost. Silas Upcliff gave his compatriots a sailor's hearty handshake, and the men who knew the land and its occupants rendered the new-comers what assistance they might, while Hough lost no time in begging them to join in an attack upon Acadie. To that Upcliff could only make the reply: "My services are bought, my ship is armed for defence only, and my men are sworn to run rather than to fight." Then Madeleine offered her services as housewife to the crew, and when the men knew that she loved an English lad, that she was a Huguenot, and had formerly trodden the streets and lanes of Somerset and Devon, that she even knew the familiar names above merchants' doors in Bristol and Plymouth, and could quote them with a pretty accent, they fell in love with her forthwith, from Upcliff himself to the rogue of a boy before the mast. From that time forth she ruled them with a velvet discipline, joining the workers engaged in repairing the ship's injuries, and helping them by her happiness and approval. "Hurry! hurry!" she would cry. "Ah, but you talk too much. She shall float to-morrow. Then to break the ice and flee away!" "Art in such hurry to lose us, lass?" said Upcliff on the second day after the snow.