e water back to
the pursuing Iroquois. Shouts of rage broke from the warriors.
Radisson's skiff was so near the south shore that he could see the
pebbled bottom of the lake; but the water was too deep to wade and too
clear for a dive, and there was no driftwood to afford hiding. Then a
crash of musketry from the Iroquois knocked the bottom out of the
canoe. The Algonquin fell dead with two bullet wounds in his head and
the canoe gradually filled, settled, and sank, with the young Frenchman
clinging to the cross-bar mute as stone. Just as it disappeared under
water, Radisson was seized, and the dead Algonquin was thrown into the
Mohawk boats.

Radisson alone remained to pay the penalty of a double crime; and he
might well have prayed for the boat to sink. The victors shouted their
triumph. Hurrying ashore, they kindled a great fire. They tore the
heart from the dead Algonquin, transfixed the head on a pike, and cast
the mutilated body into the flames for those cannibal rites in which
savages thought they gained courage by eating the flesh of their
enemies. Radisson was rifled of clothes and arms, trussed at the
elbows, roped round the waist, and driven with blows back to the
canoes. There were other captives among the Mohawks. As the canoes
emerged from the islands, Radisson counted one hundred and fifty
Iroquois warriors, with two French captives, one white woman, and
seventeen Hurons. Flaunting from the canoe prows were the scalps of
eleven Algonquins. The victors fired off their muskets and shouted
defiance until the valley rang. As the seventy-five canoes turned up
the Richelieu River for the country of the Iroquois, hope died in the
captive Hurons and there mingled with the chant of the Mohawks'
war-songs, the low monotonous dirge of the prisoners:--

"If I die, I die valiant!
I go without fear
To that land where brave men
Have gone long before me--
If I die, I die valiant."

Twelve miles up the Richelieu, the Iroquois landed to camp. The
prisoners were pegged out on the sand, elbows trussed to knees, each
captive tied to a post. In this fashion they lay every night of
encampment, tortured by sand-flies that they were powerless to drive
off. At the entrance to the Mohawk village, a yoke was fastened to the
captives' necks by placing pairs of saplings one on each side down the
line of prisoners. By the rope round the waist of the foremost
prisoner, they were led slowly between the lin