d birch leaves fell in
fluttering showers at every gust, two slim masts had raised their tops
above the trees, and a white bowsprit was thrusting its nose into the
branches of the nearest red maple. Under the bowsprit glittered a
carved and gilded Madonna, the most auspicious figurehead to which, in
Jean's eyes, he could intrust the fortunes of his handiwork. A few
days more and the ship was done--so nearly complete that three or four
hours of work would make her ready for sea. Being so small, it was
feasible to launch her in this advanced state of equipment; and the
conditions under which she had been built made it necessary that she
should be prepared to hurry straight from the greased ways of the
launching to the security of the open sea. The tidal creek in which
she would first take water could give her no safe harborage; and once
out of the creek she would have to make all speed, under cover of
night, till Port Royal River and the sodded ramparts of Annapolis town
should be left many miles astern.

Having made his preparations and gathered his materials far ahead, and
devised his precautions with subtlety, and accustomed his neighbors to
the idea that he was an erratic youth, given to long absences and
futile schemes, not worth gossip, Jean had succeeded in keeping his
enterprise a secret from all but two persons. These two, deep in his
counsel's from the first, were Barbe Dieudonne, his sweetheart, and
Mich' Masson, his friend and ally.

Mich' Masson--whose home, which served him best as a place to stay away
from, was in the village of Grand Pre, far up on the Basin of
Minas--had been Jean's close friend since early boyhood, in the days
before Port Royal town had been captured by the English and found its
name changed to Annapolis. He was a daring adventurer, hunter,
woods-ranger, an implacable partisan of the French cause, and just now
deeply interested in the traffic between Acadie and the new French
fortress city of Louisburg--a traffic which the English Governor was
angrily determined to break up. Mich' Masson could sail a ship as well
as set a dead-fall or lay an ambush. He had kept bright in Jean's
heart the flame of hatred against the English conquerors of Acadie. It
was he who had come to the aid of Jean's shipbuilding from time to
time, when timbers had to be put in place which were too heavy for one
pair of hands to work with. It was, indeed, at his suggestion that
Jean had finally decided to