last drop. Once more Radisson kept his head. While the braves
entered Fort Orange roaring drunk, Radisson was alert and sober. A
drunk Indian falls an easy prey in the bartering of pelts. The
Iroquois wanted guns. The Dutch wanted pelts. The whites treated the
savages like kings; and the Mohawks marched from house to house
feasting of the best. Radisson was dressed in garnished buckskin and
had been painted like a Mohawk. Suspecting some design to escape, his
Iroquois friends never left him. The young Frenchman now saw white men
for the first time in almost two years; but the speech that he heard
was in a strange tongue. As Radisson went into the fort, he noticed a
soldier among the Dutch. At the same instant the soldier recognized
him as a Frenchman, and oblivious of the Mohawks' presence blurted out
his discovery in Iroquois dialect, vowing that for all the paint and
grease, this youth was a white man below. The fellow's blundering
might have cost Radisson's life; but the youth had not been a captive
among crafty Mohawks for nothing. Radisson feigned surprise at the
accusation. That quieted the Mohawk suspicions and they were presently
deep in the beer pots of the Dutch. Again the soldier spoke, this time
in French. It was the first time that Radisson had heard his native
tongue for months. He answered in French. At that the soldier emitted
shouts of delight, for he, too, was French, and these strangers in an
alien land threw their arms about each other like a pair of long-lost
brothers with exclamations of joy too great for words.

[Illustration: The Battery, New York, in Radisson's Time.]

From that moment Radisson became the lion of Fort Orange. The women
dragged him to their houses and forced more dainties on him than he
could eat. He was conducted from house to house in triumph, to the
amazed delight of the Indians. The Dutch offered to ransom him at any
price; but that would have exposed the Dutch settlement to the
resentment of the Mohawks and placed Radisson under heavy obligation to
people who were the enemies of New France. Besides, his honor was
pledged to return to his Indian parents; and it was a long way home to
have to sail to Europe and back again to Quebec. Perhaps, too, there
was deep in his heart what he did not realize--a rooted love for the
wilds that was to follow him all through life. By the devious course
of captivity, he had tasted of a new freedom and could not give i