“I never heard tell that we were put here to get pleasure out of it,” said the old Puritan, shaking his head.  “The valley of the shadow of death don’t seem to me to be the kind o’ name one would give to a play-ground.  It is a trial and a chastening, that’s what it is, the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.  We’re bad from the beginning, like a stream that runs from a tamarack swamp, and we’ve enough to do to get ourselves to rights without any fool’s talk about pleasure.”

“It seems to me to be all mixed up,” said Amos. “like the fat and the lean in a bag of pemmican.  Look at that sun just pushing its edge over the trees, and see the pink flush on the clouds and the river like a rosy ribbon behind us.  It’s mighty pretty to our eyes, and very pleasing to us, and it wouldn’t be so to my mind if the Creator hadn’t wanted it to be.  Many a time when I have lain in the woods in the fall and smoked my pipe, and felt how good the tobacco was, and how bright the yellow maples were, and the purple ash, and the red tupelo blazing among the bushwood, I’ve felt that the real fool’s talk was with the man who could doubt that all this was meant to make the world happier for us.”

“You’ve been thinking too much in them woods,” said Ephraim Savage, gazing at him uneasily.  “Don’t let your sail be too great for your boat, lad, nor trust to your own wisdom.  Your father was from the Bay, and you were raised from a stock that cast the dust of England from their feet rather than bow down to Baal.  Keep a grip on the word and don’t think beyond it.  But what is the matter with the old man?  He don’t seem easy in his mind.”

The old merchant had been leaning over the bulwarks, looking back with a drawn face and weary eyes at the red curving track behind them which marked the path to Paris.  Adele had come up now, with not a thought to spare upon the dangers and troubles which lay in front of her as she chafed the old man’s thin cold hands, and whispered words of love and comfort into his ears.  But they had come to the point where the gentle still-flowing river began for the first time to throb to the beat of the sea.  The old man gazed forward with horror at the bowsprit as he saw it rise slowly upwards into the air, and clung frantically at the rail as it seemed to slip away from beneath him.

“We are always in the hollow of God’s hand,” he whispered, “but oh, Adele, it is a dreadful thing to feel His fingers moving under us.”

“Come with me, uncle,” said De Catinat, passing his arm under that of the old man.  “It is long since you have rested.  And you, Adele, I pray that you will go and sleep, my poor darling, for it has been a weary journey.  Go now, to please me, and when you wake, both France and your troubles will lie behind you.”

When father and daughter had left the deck, De Catinat made his way aft again to where Amos Green and the captain were standing.