And, little Helene, I am filling a pair of
paniers with those roots and those seeds, and I am going to be a
gardener beyond the sunset."
Helene looked grave. To find her friend and playfellow suddenly dropped
away from her into the middle of a fairy-tale was rather terrifying, but
it was also thrilling. She slipped down from the bench.
"You shall have cuttings from my very own rose-bushes," said she; and at
her direction Lescarbot took up very carefully small rose-shoots that
had rooted themselves around the great bushes,--bushes that bore roses
white with a faint flush, white with a golden-creamy heart, pure
snow-white, sunrise pink and deep glowing crimson with a purple shade.
If Lescarbot had been a superstitious man, he might have been inclined
to gloom during his first sea-voyage, for the ship in which he and
Poutrincourt set sail from Rochelle on the thirteenth of May, 1606, was
called the _Jonas_. But instead he joined in all the diversions possible
in their two months' voyage--harpooning porpoises, fishing for cod off
the Banks, or dancing on the deck in calm weather,--and in his leisure
kept a lively and entertaining journal of the adventure. They ran into
dense fog in which they could see nothing; they saw, when the mist
cleared, a green and lovely shore, but before it fierce and dangerous
rocks on which the breakers pounded.
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