The House of Armour

Marshall Saunders

Marshall Saunders

The House of Armour

CHAPTER I

SCOTLAND THE NEW

In the southeastern extremity of Canada, jutting out into the blue waters of the Atlantic, holding on to the great mainland of North America only by one narrow arm or isthmus, is the green and fertile little peninsula called Acadie, land of abundance, by the French and Indians, and Nova Scotia, New Scotland, by the baronet Sir William Alexander, when in 1621 it was ceded to him by his most worshipful majesty, King James the First of England.

Projected, pushed out from the mainland as it is, the province is pre-eminently a child of the sea. Her wealth comes from it; her traffic is over it; it keeps her warm in winter; it cools her in summer. Old Father Atlantic, savage, boisterous old parent that he is, dashing so often the dead bodies of her children against her rockbound coasts, is yet her chief guardian and protector, and the one who loves her most.

He is on all her sides, lapping her grassy shores, breaking against her frowning cliffs, and running away up into the land, wide, blue tongues of water, where foreign ships can ride at anchor and give to lovely Nova Scotia their fairest merchandise.

Among all the harbors, among all the bays—and they are long and numerous—can none be found to eclipse the chief and prince of them all, glorious old Chebucto, which hundreds of years ago Indians paddled over and called the greatest of waters. It lies almost midway between the two ends of the peninsula and sends up between smiling shores a long, wide, crystal expanse of water, that is curved like a slightly bent arm and is six whole miles in length. Clear and shining it comes in from the sea, washing around its guardian forts, and with a strong, full tide floating the most ponderous leviathans of the deep right up to the wharves of the capital town of the province, built along its shores.

At all times white-winged ships sail over its waters. Farther north the bays skim over and harbors freeze. Here the waters are always blue and open, and tired ships, bruised and buffeted by the angry winter winds of the Northern Atlantic, can always steal in and find a safe and pleasant anchorage. The shores are gently sloping, the hills are wooded, only the softest breezes blow here. Boreas and all his gang must lurk outside the harbor mouth.

It is with one of these ships that we have to do. Steadily day by day plowing the ocean track that leads from England to the little maritime province, a large passenger steamer had come. Soon she would sight the harbor lights, would make her way to the desired haven.

The evening was cold and still; the time was early December. A brilliant moon in a sky of lovely steely blue was in mid-heaven, staring down at the lighted, busy town, the silent country, the glistening line of the harbor, and the crystal sea beyond.

The hull of the steamer sat on the waters a large, black mass. Its decks were white and as bright as day in the moonlight. The captain stood on the bridge, occasionally speaking, but mostly by signs and gestures making known his wishes. A few sailors were hurrying about the decks and officers were directing preparations made for entering port.

The most of the passengers had gone forward and stood in a group at the bow of the ship, eagerly straining their eyes to catch the first glimpse of the town they were approaching. A few lingered behind. Among them were two people, a man of a straight, military figure, and a young girl with a dark, brilliant face.

The man observed attentively his youthful companion, making, man of the world that he was, amused comments on her badly suppressed girlish enthusiasm at being again within sight of her native land.

It was absolutely necessary for her to talk and it charmed him to listen to her sweet, half-foreign voice. At first she had seemed to him to be thoroughly French. Then he had found grafted on her extreme Frenchiness manners and ways so entirely English that she made at the same time an interesting and an amusing combination to him.

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