was need to serve my friends."

Young Gillam had begun to suspect the weakness of the French. When the
two were safely out of the Hudson's Bay Company fort, he offered to go
home part of the way with Radisson. This was to learn where the French
fort lay. Radisson declined the kindly service and deliberately set
out from the New Englanders' island in the wrong direction, coming down
the Nelson past young Gillam's fort at night. The delay of the trick
nearly cost Radisson his life. Fall rains had set in, and the river
was running a mill-race. Great floes of ice from the North were
tossing on the bay at the mouth of the Nelson River in a maelstrom of
tide and wind. In the dark Radisson did not see how swiftly his canoe
had been carried down-stream. Before he knew it his boat shot out of
the river among the tossing ice-floes of the bay. Surrounded by ice in
a wild sea, he could not get back to land. The spray drove over the
canoe till the Frenchman's clothes were stiff with ice. For four hours
they lay jammed in the ice-drift till a sudden upheaval crushed the
canoe to kindling wood and left the men stranded on the ice. Running
from floe to floe, they gained the shore and beat their way for three
days through a raging hurricane of sleet and snow toward the French
habitation. They were on the side of the Hayes opposite the French
fort. Four _voyageurs_ crossed for them, and the little company at
last gained the shelter of a roof.

Radisson now knew that young Gillam intended to spy upon the French; so
he sent scouts to watch the New Englanders' fort. The scouts reported
that the young captain had sent messengers to obtain additional men
from his father; but the New England soldiers, remembering Radisson's
orders to shoot any one approaching, had levelled muskets to fire at
the reenforcements. The rebuffed men had gone back to Governor Bridgar
with word of a fort and ship only nine miles up Nelson River. Bridgar
thought this was the French establishment, and old Captain Gillam could
not undeceive him. The Hudson's Bay Company governor had sent the two
men back to spy on what he thought was a French fort. At once Radisson
sent out men to capture Bridgar's scouts, who were found half dead with
cold and hunger. The captives reported to Radisson that the English
ship had been totally wrecked in the ice jam. Bridgar's people were
starving. Many traders would have left their rivals to perish.
Radisson suppli