Part 11 (1/2)

In the first watch of the night, Without a signal's sound, Out of the sea, mysteriously, The fleet of Death rose all around.

The moon and the evening star Were hanging in the shrouds; Every mast, as it pa.s.sed, Seemed to rake the pa.s.sing clouds.

They grappled with their prize, At midnight black and cold!

As of a rock was the shock; Heavily the ground-swell rolled.

Southward through day and dark, They drift in close embrace, With mist and rain, o'er the open main; Yet there seems no change of place.

Southward, forever southward, They drift through dark and day; And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream Sinking, vanish all away.

XVIII. GUARDIANS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE

For authorities for this tale see ”Voyages of Samuel de Champlain,”

translated by Charles Pomeroy Otis, Ph.D., with memoir by the Rev. E. F.

Slafter, A.M., Boston, 1880 (I. pp. 116, 289, II. p. 52). The incident of the disguised Indians occurred, however, to the earlier explorer, Jacques Cartier. (See my ”Larger History of the United States,” p. 112.)

XIX. ISLAND OF DEMONS

The tale of the Isle of Demons is founded on a story told first by Marguerite of Navarre in her ”Heptameron” (LXVII. Nouvelle), and then with much variation and amplification by the very untrustworthy traveller Thevet in his ”Cosmographie” (1571), Livre XXIII. c. vi. The only copy of the latter work known to me is in the Carter-Brown Library at Providence, R.I., and the pa.s.sage has been transcribed for me through the kindness of A. E. Wins.h.i.+p, Esq., librarian, who has also sent me a photograph of a woodcut representing the lonely woman shooting at a bear. A briefer abstract of the story is in Winsor's ”Narrative and Critical History” (IV.

p. 66, note), but it states, perhaps erroneously, that Thevet knew Marguerite only through the Princess of Navarre, whereas that author claims--though his claim is never worth much--that he had the story from the poor woman herself, ”_La pauvre femme estant arriuvee en France ...