led by the priest struck across the lake, leaving the others
to gather up the scattered baggage.

The Onondagas were too deep to reveal their plots with seven armed
Frenchmen in pursuit. The Indians permitted the French boats to come
up with the main band. All camped together in the most friendly
fashion that night; but the next morning one Iroquois offered passage
in his canoe to one Frenchman, another Iroquois to another of the
whites, and by the third day, when they came to Lake St. Francis, the
old canoe had been abandoned. The French were scattered promiscuously
among the Iroquois, with no two whites in one boat. The Hurons were
quicker to read the signs of treachery than the French. There were
rumors of one hundred Mohawks lying in ambush at the Thousand Islands
to massacre the coming Hurons. On the morning of August 3 four Huron
warriors and two women seized a canoe, and to the great astonishment of
the encampment launched out before they could be stopped. Heading the
canoe back for Montreal, they broke out in a war chant of defiance to
the Iroquois.

The Onondagas made no sign, but they evidently took council to delay no
longer. Again, when they embarked, they allowed no two whites in one
canoe. The boats spread out. Nothing was said to indicate anything
unusual. The lake lay like a silver mirror in the August sun. The
water was so clear that the Indians frequently paused to spear fish
lying below on the stones. At places the canoes skirted close to the
wood-fringed shore, and braves landed to shoot wild-fowl. Radisson and
Ragueneau seemed simultaneously to have noticed the same thing.
Without any signal, at about four in the afternoon, the Onondagas
steered their canoes for a wooded island in the middle of the St.
Lawrence. With Radisson were three Iroquois and a Huron. As the canoe
grated shore, the bowman loaded his musket and sprang into the thicket.
Naturally, the Huron turned to gaze after the disappearing hunter.
Instantly, the Onondaga standing directly behind buried his hatchet in
the Huron's head. The victim fell quivering across Radisson's feet and
was hacked to pieces by the other Iroquois. Not far along the shore
from Radisson, the priest was landing. He noticed an Iroquois chief
approach a Christian Huron girl. If the Huron had not been a convert,
she might have saved her life by becoming one of the chief's many
slaves; but she had repulsed the Onondaga pagan. As Ragueneau loo