’Twas midsummer before his busy flittings between Acadia and Quebec brought us to Isle Percee, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence.  Here Chouart Groseillers (his brother-in-law) lay with two of the craziest craft that ever rocked anchor.  I scarce had time to note the bulging hulls, stout at stem and stern with deep sinking of the waist, before M. Radisson had climbed the ship’s ladder and scattered quick commands that sent sailors shinning up masts, for all the world like so many monkeys.  The St. Pierre, our ship was called, in honour of Pierre Radisson; for admiral and captain and trader, all in one, was Sieur Radisson, himself.  Indeed, he could reef a sail as handily as any old tar.  I have seen him take the wheel and hurl Allemand head-foremost from the pilot-house when that sponge-soaked rascal had imbibed more gin than was safe for the weathering of rocky coasts.

Call him gamester, liar, cheat—­what you will!  He had his faults, which dogged him down to poverty and ruin; but deeds are proof of the inner man.  And look you that judge Pierre Radisson whether your own deeds ring as mettle and true.

The ironwood capstan bars clanked to that seaman’s music of running sailors.  A clattering of the pawls—­the anchor came away.  The St. Pierre shook out her bellying sails and the white sheets drew to a full beam wind.  Long foam lines crisped away from the prow.  Green shores slipped to haze of distance.  With her larboard lipping low and that long break of swishing waters against her ports which is as a croon to the seaman’s ear, the St. Pierre dipped and rose and sank again to the swell of the billowing sea.  Behind, crowding every stitch of canvas and staggering not a little as she got under weigh, ploughed the Ste. Anne.  And all about, heaving and falling like the deep breathings of a slumbering monster, were the wide wastes of the sea.

And how I wish that I could take you back with me and show you the two miserable old gallipots which M. de Radisson rode into the roaring forties!  ’Twas as if those gods of chance that had held riotous sway over all that watery desolation now first discovered one greater than themselves—­a rebel ’mid their warring elements whose will they might harry but could not crush—­Man, the king undaunted, coming to his own!  Children oft get closer to the essences of truth than older folk grown foolish with too much learning.  As a child I used to think what a wonderful moment that was when Man, the master, first appeared on face of earth.  How did the beasts and the seas and the winds feel about it, I asked.  Did they laugh at this fellow, the most helpless of all things, setting out to conquer all things?  Did the beasts pursue him till he made bow and arrow and the seas defy him till he rafted their waters and the winds blow his house down till he dovetailed his timbers?  That was the child’s way of asking a very old question—­Was Man the sport of the elements, the plaything of all the cruel, blind gods of chance?