Presently came two sounds—­a swish of seas at our stern and the booming of surf against coast rocks.  Then M. de Radisson did the maddest thing that ever I have seen.  Both sounds told of the coming tempest.  The veering wind settled to a driving nor’easter, and M. de Radisson was steering straight as a bullet to the mark for that rock wall.

But I did not know that coast.  When our ship was but three lengths from destruction the St. Pierre answered to the helm.  Her prow rounded a sharp rock.  Then the wind caught her, whirling her right about; but in she went, stern foremost, like a fish, between the narrow walls of a fiord to the quiet shelter of a land-locked lagoon.  Pierre Radisson had taken refuge in what the sailors call “a hole in the wall.”

There we lay close reefed, both anchors out, while the hurricane held high carnival on the outer sea.

After we had put the St. Pierre ship-shape, M. Radisson stationed Jean and me fore and aft with muskets levelled, and bade us shoot any man but himself who appeared above the hatch.  Arming himself with his short, curved hanger—­oh, I warrant there would have been a carving below decks had any one resisted him that day!—­down he went to the mutineers of the dim-lighted forehold.

Perhaps the storm had quelled the spirit of rebellion; but up came M. de Radisson, followed by the entire crew—­one fellow’s head in white cotton where it had struck the floor, and every man jumping keen to answer his captain’s word.

I must not forget a curious thing that happened as we lay at anchor.  The storm had scarce abated when a strange ship poked her jib-boom across the entrance to the lagoon, followed by queer-rigged black sails.

“A pirate!” said Jean.

But Sieur de Radisson only puckered his brows, shifted position so that the St. Pierre could give a broadside, and said nothing.

Then came the strangest part of it.  Another ship poked her nose across the other side of the entrance.  This was white-rigged.

“Two ships, and they have us cooped!” exclaimed Jean.

“One sporting different sails,” said M. de Radisson contemptuously.

“What do you think we should do, sir?” asked Jean.

“Think?” demanded Radisson.  “I have stopped thinking!  I act!  My thoughts are acts.”

But all the same his thought at that moment was to let go a broadside that sent the stranger scudding.  Judging it unwise to keep a half-mutinous crew too near pirate ships, M. Radisson ordered anchor up.  With a deck-mop fastened in defiance to our prow, the St. Pierre slipped out of the harbour through the half-dark of those northern summer nights, and gave the heel to any highwayman waiting to attack as she passed.

The rest of the voyage was a ploughing through brash ice in the straits, with an occasional disembarking at the edge of some great ice-field; but one morning we were all awakened from the heavy sleep of hard-worked seamen by the screaming of a multitude of birds.  The air was odorous with the crisp smell of woods.  When we came on deck, ’twas to see the St. Pierre anchored in the cove of a river that raced to meet the bay.