“I am tired of the Guinea trade,” the youth repeated; “Cape Breton at any rate is not Spanish.”

“Not yet,” said Jean Parmentier with emphasis.

Thus it came about that when Aubert, in 1508, poked the prow of his little craft into open water to the west of the great island off which men fished for cod, there stood beside him a young man who had been learning navigation under his direction, and was now called Jean Verassen.  His real name was Giovanni Verrazzano, but nobody in Dieppe knew who the Florentine Verazzani might be, and during his apprenticeship there he had been known as Florin—­the Florentine.  In his boyhood the magnificent Medici, the merchant princes, had ruled Florence.  After the fall of Constantinople he had seen the mastery of the sea pass from Venice to Lisbon.  When he left Florence he followed the call of the sea-wind westward until now he had cast his lot with the seafarers of northern France, the only bit of the Continent that was outside the shadow of the mighty power of Spain.  That shadow was growing bigger and darker year by year.  The heir to the Spanish throne, Charles, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, would be emperor of Germany, ruler of the Netherlands, King of Aragon, Castile, Granada and Andalusia, and sovereign of all the Spanish discoveries in the West; and no one knew how far they might extend.  France might have to fight for her life.

Meanwhile Norman and Breton fishermen went scudding across the North Atlantic every year, like so many petrels.  Honfleur, Saint Malo, La Rochelle and Dieppe owed their modest prosperity to the cod.  Baccalao, codfish or stockfish, all its names referred to the beating of the fish while drying, with a stick, to make it more tender; it was cheaper and more plentiful than any other fish for the Lenten tables and fast-days of Europe.  The daring French captains found the fishing trade a hard life but a clean one.

From the fishermen Aubert and Verrazzano had learned something of the nature of the country.  Bears would come down to steal fish from under the noses of the men.  Walrus and seal and myriads of screaming sea-gulls greeted them every season.  The natives were barbarous and unfriendly.  North of Newfoundland were two small islands known as the Isles of Demons, where nobody ever went.  Veteran pilots told of hearing the unseen devils howling and shrieking in the air.  “Saint Michael! tintamarre terrible!” they said, crossing themselves.  The young Florentine listened and kept his thoughts to himself.  He had never seen any devils, but he had seen men go mad in the hot fever-mist of African swamps, thinking they saw them.

Aubert was not sure whether this was an inlet, a strait or a river behind the great barren island.  When he had sailed westward for eighty leagues the water was still salt.  The banks had drawn closer together and rude fortifications appeared on the heights.  Canoes put forth from the wooded shores and surrounded the sailing ship.  They were filled with copper-colored warriors of threatening aspect.