e was. The captain regarded Bennie
with indifference, if not disrespect, grunted, and ascending to the
pilot house blew the whistle. Quebec, with its teeming wharves and
crowded shipping, overlooked by the cliffs that made Wolfe famous,
slowly fell behind. Off their leeward bow the Isle of Orleans swung
nearer and swept past, its neat homesteads inviting the weary traveller
to pastoral repose. The river cleared. Low, farm-clad shores began to
slip by. The few tourists and returning habitans settled themselves in
the bow and made ready for their voyage.

There would have been much to interest the ordinary American traveller
in this comparatively unfrequented corner of his native continent; but
our salmon fisherman, having conveniently disposed of his baggage,
immediately retired to his stateroom and, intent on saving time,
proceeded, wholly oblivious of the _Druro_, to read passionately several
exceedingly uninviting looking books which he produced from his valise.
The _Druro_, quite as oblivious to Professor Hooker, proceeded on her
accustomed way, passed by Tadousac, and made her first stop at the
Godbout. Bennie, finding the boat no longer in motion, reappeared on
deck under the mistaken impression that they had reached the end of the
voyage, for he was unfamiliar with the topography of the St. Lawrence,
and in fact had very vague ideas as to distances and the time required
to traverse them by rail or boat.

At the Godbout the _Druro_ dropped a habitan or two, a few boatloads of
steel rods, crates of crockery and tobacco, and then thrust her bow out
into the stream and steered down river, rounding at length the Pointe
des Monts and winding in behind the Isles des Oeufs to the River
Pentecoute, where she deposited some more habitans, including a priest
in a black soutane, who somewhat incongruously was smoking a large
cigar. Then, nosing through a fog bank and breaking out at last into
sunlight again, she steamed across and put in past the Carousel, that
picturesque and rocky headland, into Seven Islands Bay. Here she
anchored, and, having discharged cargo, steamed out by the Grand Boule,
where eighteen miles beyond the islands Bennie saw the pilot house of
the old _St. Olaf_, of unhappy memory, just lifting above the water.

He had emerged from the retirement of his stateroom only on being asked
by the steward for his ticket and learning that the _Druro_ was nearing
the end of her journey. For nearly two days he had