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It was bang, bang, bang all the way to Canso, with Clancy swearing at Withrow and the Flamingo and Dave Warner and the girl in the case one after the other and sometimes all together. "Blast Withrow and that crazy fool Dave Warner, too. And why in the devil couldn't her folks stayed in Gloucester or in Halifax, at least.
The only settlement passed through has the promising name of River Inhabitants, but we could see little river and less inhabitants; country and people seem to belong to that commonplace order out of which the traveler can extract nothing amusing, instructive, or disagreeable; and it was a great relief when we came over the last hill and looked down upon the straggling village of Port Hawkesbury and the winding Gut of Canso.
At this point the narrative needs to flow into verse, but my comrade did not feel like another attempt at poetry so soon after that on the Gut of Canso. A man cannot always be keyed up to the pitch of production, though his emotions may be highly creditable to him. But poetry-making in these days is a good deal like the use of profane language, often without the least provocation.
Nevertheless, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts determined to make the attempt, and that the King might know the exact situation he sent to London, with a dispatch, an officer named Captain Ryal, who had been taken prisoner at Canso and afterwards released on parole. When the Duke of Newcastle, who was prime minister, read the dispatch, he exclaimed: "Oh, yes yes to be sure.
"Do so," said Claude, eagerly; "and see if you can't get him free, as you have managed for me; and if you can persuade him, or beg him for me, to sail around to Canso, and meet me there, all will be well. That is the very thing we want. If he will only promise to go there, I will push on to Canso myself, at all hazards." The priest now prepared to go.
By that time, if he is dead, he would already be buried; and if he is living, he would be conveyed by the Indians to some place of rest and shelter. "As long as I thought that Cazeneau was pursuing us," continued the priest, "I tried to advance as rapidly as possible, and intended to go to Canso, where I should be safe from him.
Hence our satisfaction can be imagined as we sped along the Labrador coast that day, the wind becoming a trifle easterly, so as to allow us to "start our sheets" and at the same time steadily increase our offing, getting such a weatherly position for Canso that the moment the expected change of direction began we promptly "tacked ship" and at the worst had a leading wind across.
Our imaginations were kindled by reading that the "most superb line of stages on the continent" ran from New Glasgow to the Gut of Canso. If the reader perfectly understands this programme, he has the advantage of the two travelers at the time they made it. It was a gray morning when we embarked from St.
Johns, Canso and elsewhere in or near the province of Nova Scotia and parts adjacent." Evidently the project was regarded as in some measure an experiment, for the contract provided, "the partnership shall continue certain for the space of one year and for such longer time as all the partys shall hereafter agree."
Our plan of campaign was briefly this: To take the steamboat at eight o'clock, Thursday morning, for Digby Gut and Annapolis; thence to go by rail through the poetical Acadia down to Halifax; to turn north and east by rail from Halifax to New Glasgow, and from thence to push on by stage to the Gut of Canso.
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