"Roberts, Charles G D - Jean Michaud's Little Ship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Charles G D)

reddening leafage, but a sombre black bulk loomed impressively above the chips,
daunting the squirrels for a few days with its strange shadow. By the time of
the moose-calling, when the rowan-berries hung in great scarlet bunches and half
the red leafage was turning brown, and the pale gold 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 doneЧ 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 counsels from the first, were Barbe Dieudonne,
his sweetheart, and Mich' Masson, his friend and ally:
Mich' MassonЧ 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 MinasЧ 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 LouisburgЧ 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 sell his cottage on the
outskirts of Annapolis town, his scrap of upland with its apple trees in full
bearing, his strip of rich dikeland by the riversideЧ secretly to build his
little ship for the forbidden trafficЧ and to settle under the walls of
Louisburg, where the flag he loved should always wave over his roof-tree. It was
Mich' Masson who had shown Jean how by this course he could quickly grow rich,
and make a home for Barbe which that somewhat disconcerting and incomprehensible
maiden would not scorn to accept. Mich' Masson loved his own honor. He loved
Jean. He hated the English. Jean's secret was safe with him.
Mademoiselle Barbe, under a disguise of indifference which sometimes reduced
Jean to the not unprofitable condition wherein hard work is the sole refuge from
despair, hid a passionate interest in her lover's undertaking. She, too, hated
the new domination. She, too, chafed to escape from Annapolis and take up life
anew under her old Flag of the Fleur-de-lis. Moreover, her restless and fiery
spirit could accept no contented tiller of green Acadian acres for a mate; and