The St. Lawrence widened like a funnel with the water pouring through it in the wrong direction, and they steamed along the northern curve of the shore between Anticosti Island and the mainland, through the narrow Belle Isle Strait and out into the broad Atlantic. And Madden’s engines had not given a single moment’s cause for alarm—except to Madden himself, who looked upon even the smoothness of their working as an evil omen, a sinister design on the part of that ill-favoured machinery to lull him into a false sense of security before springing the trap. “It’s not going to last,” he confided to Mr. Loder. “It’s all going a sight too easily. But we’re not home yet, not by a long chalk. There’ll be a day of reckoning.” The mate did not bother to disagree. Madden’s fussing provided him with a good deal of malicious amusement, and he was not above throwing in a word or two to fan the chief engineer’s resentment at Barling’s failure to pay sufficient attention to the needs of the engine-room.
