ight be attacked and destroyed. Cartier told those who
had the strength, to beat with sticks on the sides of their bunks, so
that prowling Indians might believe that the white men were busy at
work.

But the wild folk were both shrewder and more friendly than the French
believed. Their medicine-men told Cartier one day that they cured scurvy
by means of a drink made from the leaves and bark of an evergreen.
Squaws presently came with a birch-bark kettle of this brew and it
proved to have such virtues that the sick were cured of scurvy, and in
some cases of other diseases which they had had for years. Cartier
afterward wrote in his report that they boiled and drank within a week
all the foliage of a tree, which the Indians called aneda or tree of
life, as large as a full-grown oak.[3] Many had died before the remedy
was learned, and when the weather allowed the fleet to sail for home,
there were only men enough for two of the ships. The Indians had told of
other lands where gold and rubies were found, of a nation somewhere in
the interior, white like the French, of people with but one leg apiece.
But as it was, the country was a great country, and well worth the
attention of the King of France. Leaving the cross and the fleur-de-lis
to mark the place of their discovery, the expedition sailed for France,
and on July 16, 1536, anchored once more in the port of Saint Malo.

"And there is no Norumbega really?" asked little Margot rather
dolefully, when the story of the adventure had been told. "And your hair
is all gray, here, on the side."

"None the less I have gifts for thee, little queen, and such as no Queen
of France hath in her treasury." Maclou's smile, though a trifle grave,
had a singular charm as he opened his wallet. Margot nestled closer, her
eyes bright with excitement.

The first gift was a little pair of shoes of deer-skin dyed green and
embroidered with pearly white beads on a ground of black and red French
brocade. They had no heels and no heavy leather soles, and were lined
with soft white fur; and they fitted the little maid's foot exactly.

The second gift was a girdle of the same beads, purple and white, in a
pattern of queer stiff sprays. "That," said Alain Maclou, "is the Tree
of Life that cured us all of the sickness."

The third was a cluster of long slender crystals set in a fragment of
rock the color of a blush rose.[4]

"'Tis a magic stone, sweetheart. Keep it in the sunshine on thy
windo