How it opens
The last canoe of the season put you ashore at daybreak, six leagues below Quebec, with a leech-box, a habitant's coat, and a name that was not yours.
You were Robert Dollier, captain in a regiment that believed you dead of fever at Halifax, and the fleet in the river's mouth believed nothing about you at all.
They burn beautifully, monsieur le suceur, and they burn for nothing. My father says the real thing will not float.
Choose
Your father commands here, mademoiselle. If he says the real thing will not float, the town may sleep.
Fire on water never looks like deliverance to me. It looks like a town spending its nerves.
Watch the marines' faces on the far shore. They are not frightened, and that is the fact of the night.