That pledge was never forgotten, and through all the dangers and misadventures that befell them, amid the virgin, trackless forests and the rivers and great lakes of North America, it was never broken.
Thus the voyage continued, with calm seas and fair winds, for more than a week, but the journey to the Gulf was not destined to be entirely without excitement, for one afternoon, when the wind had freshened a bit from the south-east, they were all startled by a sudden cry from the watch aloft of--
"Where away?" called the officer of the watch.
After a careful examination the sail was made out to be nothing less than an English cruiser, on the watch-out for the enemy’s ships, and Captain Alexandre, feeling that after his recent fight he was in no fit condition to meet such a foe, crowded on all sail and stood away N.N.W. with the cruiser in full chase.
All the afternoon the chase continued, and the cruiser was slowly but surely gaining, and had it not been that towards evening the frigate ran into a fog off the Banks of Newfoundland, there is little doubt but that she would soon have been overhauled and compelled to fight, and would in all probability have been captured.
All night the Frenchman kept on, changing his course several times to dodge his pursuer, and next morning, although the fog had lifted, the English cruiser was nowhere to be seen.
Two days afterwards they entered the Gulf; leaving Louisburg and the Ile Royale on their left they stretched across that vast inland sea, and in another four days entered the St. Lawrence River.
The lads were charmed by the wonderful scenery which bordered the river. The bold cliffs and headlands, and the forest-lined banks, the same which Jacques Cartier and his brave little band of voyagers beheld for the first time in 1535, when through every inlet in this great continent they sought a way to the spicy groves of the East Indies, and the far-famed and wondrous, but distant, Cathay, which they fondly imagined lay beyond this new continent, as in truth it really did.
While the frigate was working her way up the St. Lawrence, an incident occurred that was destined to have important consequences on the after-life of our two heroes.