“A dragon whose poisonous breath tainted the food and caused a terrible plague.  They prayed to Saint Luke the Physician for help, and he appeared to them in a vision and said, ’I cannot do anything for you so long as you eat not good food.  God made man to live in a garden, not to fill himself with salt fish and salt meat and dry bread.’  But they could not plant a garden in the middle of winter, and they had to wait.  When the ship went back to France a gallant captain—­named Samuel de Champlain—­sent a letter to a friend of his in France, praying him to send a gardener with seeds, roots and cuttings that there might be good broths and tisanes and sauces to work magic against the dragon that he slay no more of their folk.  And, little Helene, I am filling a pair of paniers with those roots and those seeds, and I am going to be a gardener beyond the sunset.”

Helene looked grave.  To find her friend and playfellow suddenly dropped away from her into the middle of a fairy-tale was rather terrifying, but it was also thrilling.  She slipped down from the bench.

“You shall have cuttings from my very own rose-bushes,” said she; and at her direction Lescarbot took up very carefully small rose-shoots that had rooted themselves around the great bushes,—­bushes that bore roses white with a faint flush, white with a golden-creamy heart, pure snow-white, sunrise pink and deep glowing crimson with a purple shade.

If Lescarbot had been a superstitious man, he might have been inclined to gloom during his first sea-voyage, for the ship in which he and Poutrincourt set sail from Rochelle on the thirteenth of May, 1606, was called the Jonas.  But instead he joined in all the diversions possible in their two months’ voyage—­harpooning porpoises, fishing for cod off the Banks, or dancing on the deck in calm weather,—­and in his leisure kept a lively and entertaining journal of the adventure.  They ran into dense fog in which they could see nothing; they saw, when the mist cleared, a green and lovely shore, but before it fierce and dangerous rocks on which the breakers pounded.  Then a storm broke, with rolling thunder like a salute of cannon.  At last on July 27 they sailed into the narrow channel at the entrance of the harbor of Port Royal.

The flag of France, with its golden lilies on a white ground, gleamed in the noon sunlight as they came up the bay toward the little group of wooden buildings in the edge of the forest.  Not a man was to be seen on the silent shore; a birch canoe, with one old Indian in it, hovered near the landing.  A great fear gripped the hearts of Bienville de Poutrincourt and Marc Lescarbot.  Were Pontgrave and Champlain all dead with their people?  Had help come too late?

Then from the bastion of the rude fortifications a cannon barked salute, and a Frenchman with a gun in his hand came running down to the beach.  The ship’s guns returned the salute, and the trumpets sang loud greeting to whoever might be there to hear.