But 'twas no burlesque that night, as you may know when I tell you that Governor Brigdar's forces played us such a trick they were under shelter of the ship before we had discovered them.
Forêt and La Chesnaye were watching from loopholes at the gates, and I was all alert from my place in the bastion. The northern lights waved overhead in a restless ocean of rose-tinted fire. Against the blue, stars were aglint with the twinkle of a million harbour lights. Below, lay the frost mist, white as foam, diaphanous as a veil, every floating icy particle aglimmer with star rays like spray in sunlight. Through the night air came the far howlings of the running wolf-pack. The little ermine, darting across the level with its black tail-tip marking the snow in dots and dashes, would sit up quickly, listen and dive under, to wriggle forward like a snake; or the black-eyed hare would scurry off to cover of brushwood.
Of a sudden sounded such a yelling from the New Englanders imprisoned in the ship, with a beating of guns on the keel, that I gave quick alarm. Forêt and La Chesnaye sallied from the gate. Pistol-shots rang out as they rounded the ship's prow into shadow. At the same instant, a man flung forward out of the frost cloud beating for admittance. M. de Radisson opened.
"The Indians! The Indians! Where are the New Englanders?" cried the man, pitching headlong in.
And when he regained his feet, Governor Brigdar, of the Hudson's Bay Company, stood face to face with M. de Radisson.
"A right warm welcome, Your Excellency," bowed M. de Radisson, bolting the gate. "The New Englanders are in safe keeping, sir, and so are you!"
The bewildered governor gasped at M. Radisson's words. Then he lost all command of himself.
"Radisson, man," he stormed, "this is no feint—this is no time for acting! Six o' my men shot on the way—four hiding by the ship and the Indians not a hundred yards behind! Take my sword and pistol," he proffered, M. de Radisson still hesitating, "but as you hope for eternal mercy, call in my four men!"
After that, all was confusion.
Forêt and the marquis rushed pell-mell for the fort with four terrified Englishmen disarmed. The gates were clapped to. Myriad figures darted from the frost mist—figures with war-paint on their faces and bodies clothed in white to disguise approach. English and French, enemies all, crouched to the palisades against the common foe, with sword-thrust for the hands catching at pickets to scale the wall and volleying shots that scattered assailants back. The redskins were now plainly visible through the frost. When they swerved away from shelter of the ship, every bastion let go the roar of a cannon discharge. There was the sudden silence of a drawing off, then the shrill "Ah-o-o-o-oh! Ah-o-o-o-oh! Ah-o-o-o-oh!" of Indian war-cry!