Illustrated by
Harold DeLay
The Coasts of Chance
Second of a Series
by H. Bedford-Jones
"Those charts, lad, have changed the course of history."
"She Loved Iberville"
They lived life roughly in those days; a storm of battle and sudden death filled all Newfoundland in 1697. In a world of ravening men, white and red, a girl alone had not an earthly chance.
Not a soul guessed that the crop-haired stripling, the tap-boy in the Placentia tavern, was really a girl. Not a soul dreamed that in the hands of young Adams lay the destiny of men, the future of fleets and armies, of Hudson's Bay, of the fur-trade, even of Canada and half the new world itself! Least of all did Bess Adams dream such a thing.
Alone and desperate, she labored in the tavern for bare existence—a slim, agile boy, breasts tightly bound, rough woolen garments concealing any hint of sex. Her father had been a pilot in Hudson's Bay, for the English. But, while the English held most of Newfoundland, the French held Placentia.
"Quick! Canadians are in there—attend to them!" cried the harassed innkeeper, and shoved young Adams into the main room. Thus began destiny, in the dead of winter, as she obeyed the order.
A crude place, this tavern room;
huge, log-walled, with an immense fire-
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