they slept the tide carried off their canoe. Back they
had to come to the fort. But meanwhile some one else had arrived there.
With a fluttering of the ensign above the mainmast and a clatter as the
big sails came flopping down, Captain Outlaw had come to anchor on the
_Success_; and the tale that he told--one can see the anger mount to old
Sargeant's eyes and the fear to Jean Pere's--was that the _Merchant
Perpetuana_, off Digges Island, had been boarded and scuttled in the
midnight gloom of July 27 by two French ships. Hume and Smithsend had
been overpowered, fettered, and carried off prisoners to Quebec. Mike
Grimmington too, who seems to have been on Hume's ship, was a prisoner.
Fourteen of the crew had been bayoneted to death and thrown overboard.
Outlaw did not know the later details of the raid--how Hume was to be
sent home to France for ransom, and Mike Grimmington was to be tortured
to betray the secret signals of the Bay, and Smithsend and the other
English seamen to be sold into slavery in Martinique. Ultimately, all
three were ransomed or escaped back to England; but they heard strange
threats of raid and overland foray as they lay imprisoned beneath the
Chateau St Louis in Quebec. Fortunately Radisson and the five Frenchmen,
being on board the _Happy Return_, had succeeded in escaping from the
ice jam and were safe in Nelson.

What Jean Pere remarked on hearing this recital is not known--possibly
something not very complimentary about the plans of the French raiders
going awry; but the next thing is that Mr Jan Parry--as Sargeant
persists in describing him--finds himself in 'the butter vat' or prison
of Albany with fetters on his feet and handcuffs on his wrists. On
October 29 he is sent prisoner to England on the home-bound ships of
Bond and Lucas. His two companion spies are marooned for the winter on
Charlton Island. As well try, however, to maroon a bird on the wing as a
French wood-runner. The men fished and snared game so diligently that by
September they had full store of provisions for escape. Then they made
themselves a raft or canoe and crossed to the mainland. By Christmas
they had reached the French camps of Michilimackinac. In another month
they were in Quebec with wild tales of Pere, held prisoner in the
dungeons of Albany. France and England were at peace; but the Chevalier
de Troyes, a French army officer, and the brothers Le Moyne, dare-devil
young adventurers of New France, asked permissio