heir marsh nests;
perhaps a crane flopped through the reeds; but Radisson, who had
laughed the nervous fears of the others to scorn, suddenly gave a start
at the lonely sounds of twilight. Then he noticed that his pistols
were water-soaked. Emptying the charges, he at once reloaded, and with
characteristic daring crept softly back to reconnoitre the woods.
Dodging from tree to tree, he peered up and down the river. Great
flocks of ducks were swimming on the water. That reassured him, for
the bird is more alert to alarm than man. The fort was almost within
call. Radisson determined to have a shot at such easy quarry; but as
he crept through the grass toward the game, he almost stumbled over
what rooted him to the spot with horror. Just as they had fallen,
naked and scalped, with bullet and hatchet wounds all over their
bodies, lay his comrades of the morning, dead among the rushes.
Radisson was too far out to get back to the woods. Stooping, he tried
to grope to the hiding of the rushes. As he bent, half a hundred heads
rose from the grasses, peering which way he might go. They were
behind, before, on all sides--his only hope was a dash for the
cane-grown river, where he might hide by diving and wading, till
darkness gave a chance for a rush to the fort. Slipping bullet and
shot in his musket as he ran, and ramming down the paper, hoping
against hope that he had not been seen, he dashed through the
brushwood. A score of guns crashed from the forest.[5] Before he
realized the penalty that the Iroquois might exact for such an act, he
had fired back; but they were upon him. He was thrown down and
disarmed. When he came giddily to his senses, he found himself being
dragged back to the woods, where the Iroquois flaunted the fresh scalps
of his dead friends. Half drawn, half driven, he was taken to the
shore. Here, a flotilla of canoes lay concealed where he had been
hunting wild-fowl but a few hours before. Fires were kindled, and the
crotched sticks driven in the ground to boil the kettle for the evening
meal. The young Frenchman was searched, stripped, and tied round the
waist with a rope, the Indians yelling and howling like so many wolves
all the while till a pause was given their jubilation by the alarm of a
scout that the French and Algonquins were coming. In a trice, the fire
was out and covered. A score of young braves set off to reconnoitre.
Fifty remained at the boats; but if Radisson hoped for a