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"For poor wayfaring men to sleep." Master Jean's voice was clear and resonant as a church bell newly christened; and he sang the old boat-song with an energy that drew the crews of half-a-dozen other canoes into the wake of his music, all uniting in the stirring chorus: "Fringue! Fringue sur la riviere! Fringue! Fringue sur l'aviron!"
The night was so exquisitely beautiful, that Jeanie, instead of immediately directing her course towards the Lodge, stood looking after the boat as it again put off from the side, and rowed into the little bay, the dark figures of her companions growing less and less distinct as they diminished in the distance, and the jorram, or melancholy boat-song of the rowers, coming on the ear with softened and sweeter sound, until the boat rounded the headland, and was lost to her observation.
On the 23rd a Manono boat of the kind called taumualua dropped down the coast from Mataafa's camp, called in broad day at the German quarter of the town for guides, and proceeded to the reef. Here, diving with a rope, they got the gun aboard; and the night being then come, returned by the same route in the shallow water along shore, singing a boat-song.
Master Jean La Marche, after a few minutes' rest, made still more refreshing by a draught from a suspicious-looking flask, which, out of respect for the presence of his mistress, the Lady de Tilly, he said contained "milk," began a popular boat-song which every voyageur in New France knew as well as his prayers, and loved to his very finger-ends.
She was a long whale-boat painted white; a bit of an awning astern; a native pastor crouched on the wedge of the poop, steering; some four-and-twenty paddles flashing and dipping, true to the boat-song; and the missionary under the awning, in his white clothes, reading in a book, and set him up!
Now they glided along without using an oar, borne onward by the current; then they would take a spell at the paddles, while the beautiful Canadian boat-song could be heard as it came from the tiny craft, and the appropriate chorus "Row, brothers, row!" echoed from the adjacent shores. No part of their journey was more pleasant than while descending the romantic Elk.
We became flushed with success, and familiar with danger; and, yielding to the excitement of the occasion, broke forth into a Canadian boat-song. Singing, or rather shouting, we dashed along, and were, I believe, in the midst of the chorus, when the boat struck a concealed rock immediately at the foot of a fall, which whirled her over in an instant.
The night of our arrival was given to feasting and making merry. Next morning I was awakened by the voice of my man Gode, who appeared to be in high spirits, singing a snatch of a Canadian boat-song. "Ah, monsieur!" cried he, seeing me awake, "to-night aujourd'hui une grande fonction one bal vat le Mexicain he call fandango. Tres bien, monsieur.
To soothe us to slumber, they sang, in union with the motion of their oars, a native boat-song, and its sweet and plaintive air, though it could not entice us to sleep soundly, pacified the wearied nerves, and we lay in a Paradise of dreaming sensibility. These four men were each six feet in stature, and their philanthropy and good nature were as broad as their frames.
On the 23rd a Manono boat of the kind called taumualua dropped down the coast from Mataafa's camp, called in broad day at the German quarter of the town for guides, and proceeded to the reef. Here, diving with a rope, they got the gun aboard; and the night being then come, returned by the same route in the shallow water along shore, singing a boat-song.
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