y picked up a man who was alone and invited him to go with them
to their camp, which he gladly did. Imagine Radisson's surprise when
this man, while the others were getting supper ready, spoke to him in
Algonquin, that is, the language of the people who were allies of the
French and mortal enemies of the Iroquois. Evidently he was a prisoner
who had been spared and given his liberty.

"Do you love the French?" he asked in a low tone.

"Do you love the Algonquins?" Radisson returned.

"Indeed I do love my own people," he {196} replied. "Why, then, do we
live among these people? Let us kill these three fellows to-night with
their own hatchets. It can easily be done."

Radisson professes to have been greatly shocked. But in the end he
fell in with the plan. The two treacherous villains, after eating a
hearty supper with their intended victims, lay down beside them and
pretended to sleep. When the three Iroquois were deep in slumber, they
rose, killed them with tomahawks, loaded the canoe with guns,
ammunition, provisions, and the victims' scalps, which the Algonquin
had cut off as trophies, and started on the long journey to Three
Rivers.

Fourteen nights they had journeyed stealthily, lying in hiding all the
day, for fear of meeting Iroquois on the war-path, and had reached a
point but a few miles from Three Rivers, when, venturing to cross Lake
St. Peter, a wide expansion of the St. Lawrence, by daylight, they
encountered a number of hostile canoes. In vain they turned and
paddled their hardest for the shore they had left. The enemy gained on
them rapidly and opened fire. At the first discharge the Indian was
killed and the canoe was so riddled that it was sinking, when the
Iroquois ranged alongside and took Radisson out.

{197}

Now he was in trouble indeed. No more junketing! No more singing of
jolly French songs to amuse his captors, but doleful journeying along
with nineteen prisoners, one Frenchman, one Frenchwoman, and seventeen
Huron men and women, the latter constantly chanting their mournful
death-song.

Through the day the poor wretches lay in the canoes, pinioned and
trussed like fowls; and at night they were laid on the ground securely
fastened to posts, so that they could not move hand or foot, while
mosquitoes and flies swarmed about them. When the Iroquois country was
reached, they furnished sport to the whole population, which turned out
everywhere to greet them with tortures. Thi