one Captain Baptiste, a noted
sea-rover whom they had captured some time before.

He was soon after sent down the river to Quebec along with the superior
of the Jesuits. Here he lodged seven weeks with a member of the council,
who treated him kindly, but told him that if he did not avoid
intercourse with the other English prisoners he would be sent farther
away. He saw much of the Jesuits, who courteously asked him to dine;
though he says that one of them afterwards made some Latin verses about
him, in which he was likened to a captive wolf. Another Jesuit told him
that when the mission Indians set out on their raid against Deerfield,
he charged them to baptize all children before killing them,--such, he
said, was his desire for the salvation even of his enemies. To murdering
the children after they were baptized, he appears to have made no
objection. Williams says that in their dread lest he should prevent the
conversion of the other prisoners, the missionaries promised him a
pension from the King and free intercourse with his children and
neighbors if he would embrace the Catholic faith and remain in Canada;
to which he answered that he would do so without reward if he thought
their religion was true, but as he believed the contrary, "the offer of
the whole world would tempt him no more than a blackberry."

To prevent him more effectually from perverting the minds of his captive
countrymen, and fortifying them in their heresy, he was sent to Chateau
Richer, a little below Quebec, and lodged with the parish priest, who
was very kind to him. "I am persuaded," he writes, "that he abhorred
their sending down the heathen to commit outrages against the English,
saying it is more like committing murders than carrying on war."

He was sorely tried by the incessant efforts to convert the prisoners.
"Sometimes they would tell me my children, sometimes my neighbors, were
turned to be of their religion. Some made it their work to allure poor
souls by flatteries and great promises; some threatened, some offered
abuse to such as refused to go to church and be present at mass; and
some they industriously contrived to get married among them. I
understood they would tell the English that I was turned, that they
might gain them to change their religion. These their endeavors to
seduce to popery were very exercising to me."

After a time he was permitted to return to Quebec, where he met an
English Franciscan, who, he says, had been