e cabin, marching up and down the deck muttering,
"Pah! Tis tame adventuring! Takes a dish o' spray to salt the
freshness out o' men! Tis the roaring forties put nerve in a man's
marrow! Soft days are your Delilah's that shave away men's strength!
Toughen your fighters, Captain Gazer! Toughen your fighters!"

And once, when M. Radisson had passed beyond hearing, the governor
turns with a sleepy laugh to the captain.

"A pox on the rantipole!" says he. "May the sharks test the nerve of
his marrow after he's captured back the forts!"

In the bay great ice-drift stopped our way, and Pierre Radisson's
impatience took fire.

"What a deuce, Captain Gazer!" he cries. "How long do you intend to
squat here anchored to an ice-pan?"

A spark shot from the governor's sleepy eyes, and Captain Gazer
swallowed words twice before he answered.

"Till the ice opens a way," says he.

"Opens a way!" repeats Radisson. "Man alive, why don't you carve a
way?"

"Carve a way yourself, Radisson," says the governor contemptuously.

That was let enough for Pierre Radisson. He had the sailors lowering
jolly-boats in a jiffy; and off seven of us went, round the ice-pans,
ploughing, cutting, portaging a way till we had crossed the obstruction
and were pulling for the French fort with the spars of three Company
boats far in the offing.

I detained the English sailors at the river-front till M. Radisson had
entered the fort and won young Jean Groseillers to the change of
masters. Before the Fur Company's ships came, the English flag was
flying above the fort and Fort Bourbon had become Fort Nelson.

"I bid you welcome to the French Habitation," bows Radisson, throwing
wide the gates to the English governor.

"Hm!" returns Phipps, "how many beaver-skins are there in store?"

M. Radisson looked at the governor. "You must ask my tradespeople
that," he answers; and he stood aside for them all to pass.

"Your English mind thinks only of the gain," he said to me.

"And your French mind?" I asked.

"The game and not the winnings," said he.

No sooner were the winnings safe--twenty thousand beaver-skins stowed
away in three ships' holds--than Pierre Radisson's foes unmasked. The
morning of our departure Governor Phipps marched all our Frenchmen
aboard like captives of war.

"Sir," expostulated M. de Radisson, "before they gave up the fort I
promised these men they should remain in the bay."

Governor Phipps's sleepy eyes o