rescue, he was
doomed to disappointment. The warriors returned. Seventy Iroquois
gathered round a second fire for the night. The one predominating
passion of the savage nature is bravery. Lying in ambush, they had
heard this French youth laugh at his comrades' fears. In defiance of
danger, they had seen him go hunting alone. After he had heard an
alarm, he had daringly come out to shoot at the ducks. And, then, boy
as he was, when attacked he had instantly fired back at numerous enough
enemies to have intimidated a score of grown men. There is not the
slightest doubt it was Radisson's bravery that now saved him from the
fate of his companions.

His clothes were returned. While the evening meal was boiling, young
warriors dressed and combed the Frenchman's hair after the manner of
braves. They daubed his cheeks with war-paint; and when they saw that
their rancid meats turned him faint, they boiled meat in clean water
and gave him meal browned on burning sand.[6] He did not struggle to
escape, so he was now untied. That night he slept between two warriors
under a common blanket, through which he counted the stars. For fifty
years his home was to be under the stars. It is typically Radisson
when he could add: "I slept a sound sleep; for they wakened me upon the
breaking of the day." In the morning they embarked in thirty-seven
canoes, two Indians in each boat, with Radisson tied to the cross-bar
of one, the scalps lying at his feet. Spreading out on the river, they
beat their paddles on the gunwales of the canoes, shot off guns, and
uttered the shrill war-cry--"Ah-oh! Ah-oh! Ah-oh!" [7] Lest this
were not sufficient defiance to the penned-up fort on the river bank,
the chief stood up in his canoe, signalled silence, and gave three
shouts. At once the whole company answered till the hills rang; and
out swung the fleet of canoes with more shouting and singing and firing
of guns, each paddle-stroke sounding the death knell to the young
Frenchman's hopes.

By sunset they were among the islands at the mouth of the Richelieu,
where muskrats scuttled through the rushes and wild-fowl clouded the
air. The south shore of Lake St. Peter was heavily forested; the
north, shallow. The lake was flooded with spring thaw, and the Mohawks
could scarcely find camping-ground among the islands. The young
prisoner was deathly sick from the rank food that he had eaten and
heart-sick from the widening distance between hi