oon knot after knot, there sped two English ships out into the
open seaway. Before long they began to toss restlessly and to pull
eagerly at the helm as the scent of the salt seas came in. Yet neither
knew fully the destination of the other, and neither knew that upon the
deck of that other there was full solution of those questions which now
sat so heavily upon these human hearts. Thus, silently, slowly,
steadily, the two drew outward and apart, and before that morn was done,
both were tossing widely upon the swell of that sea beyond which there
lay so much of fate and mystery.

BOOK II

AMERICA

CHAPTER I

THE DOOR OF THE WEST

"Nearly a league farther, Du Mesne, and the sun but an hour high. Come,
let us hasten!"

"You are right, Monsieur L'as," replied the one addressed, as the first
speaker seated himself on the thwart of the boat in whose bow he had
been standing. "Bend to it, _mes amis_!"

John Law turned about on the seat, gazing back over the length of the
little ship which had brought him and his comrades thus far on the
wildest journey he had ever undertaken. Six paddlers there were for this
great _canot du Nord_, and steadily enough they sent the thin-shelled
craft along over the curling blue waves of the great inland sea. And now
their voices in one accord fell into the cadences of an ancient
boat-song of New France:

"_En roulant ma loule, roulant,
Roulant, rouler, ma boule roulant_."

The ictus of the measure marked time for the sweeping paddles, and
under the added impetus the paper shell, reinforced as it was by
close-laid splints of cedar, and braced by the fiber-fastened thwarts,
fairly yielded to the rush of the waves as the stalwart paddlers sent it
flying forward. A tiny blur of white showed about the bows, and now and
again a splash of spray came inboard, as some little curling white cap
was divided by the rush of the swiftly moving prow.

"We shall not arrive too soon, my friend," rejoined the captain of the
_voyageurs_, casting an eye back across the great lake, which lay black
and ominous under a threatening sky, the sweep and swirl of its white
caps ever racing hard after the frail craft, as though eager to break
through its paper sides and tear away the human beings who thus fled on
so lightly.

This boat, mysteriously appearing as though it were some spirit craft
railed from the ancient deeps, was far from the beginning of its wild
journey. Wide as the