"Do we sail in that case?"
"Egad, yes! Why not? Keep your colours flying and you may sail into hell, man, and conquer, too! Yes—we sail! Man or devil, don't swerve, lad! Go your gait! Go your gait! Chouart here will look after the ships! Paris is near London, and praise be Providence for that little maid of thine! We shall presently have letters from her—and," he added, "from Sir John Kirke of the Hudson's Bay Company!"
And it was even as he foretold. I find, on looking over the tattered pages of a handbook, these notes:
Oct. 6.—Ben Gillam and Governor Brigdar this day sent back to New England. There will be great complaints against us in the English court before we can reach London.
Nov. 11.—Sailed for France in the French frigate.
Dec. 18.—Reach Rochelle—hear of M. Colbert's death.
Jan. 30.—Paris—all our furs seized by the French Government in order to keep M. Radisson powerless—Lord Preston, the English ambassador, complaining against us on the one hand, and battering our doors down on the other, with spies offering M. Radisson safe passage from Paris to London.
I would that I had time to tell you of that hard winter in Paris, M. Radisson week by week, like a fort resisting siege, forced to take cheaper and cheaper lodgings, till we were housed between an attic roof and creaking rat-ridden floor in the Faubourg St. Antoine. But not one jot did M. Radisson lose of his kingly bearing, though he went to some fête in Versailles with beaded moccasins and frayed plushes and tattered laces and hair that one of the pretty wits declared the birds would be anesting in for hay-coils. In that Faubourg St. Antoine house, I mind, we took grand apartments on the ground floor, but up and up we went, till M. Radisson vowed we'd presently be under the stars—as the French say when they are homeless—unless my Lord Preston, the English ambassador, came to our terms.
That starving of us for surrender was only another trick of the gamestering in which we were enmeshed. Had Captain Godey, Lord Preston's messenger, succeeded in luring us back to England without terms, what a pretty pickle had ours been! France would have set a price on us. Then must we have accepted any kick-of-toe England chose to offer—and thanked our new masters for the same, else back to France they would have sent us.
But attic dwellers stave off many a woe with empty stomachs and stout courage. When April came, boats for the fur-trade should have been stirring, and my Lord Preston changes his tune. One night, when Pierre Radisson sat spinning his yarns of captivity with Iroquois to our attic neighbours, comes a rap at the door, and in walks Captain Godey of the English Embassy. As soon as our neighbours had gone, he counts out one hundred gold pieces on the table. Then he hands us a letter signed by the Duke of York, King Charles's brother, who was Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, granting us all that we asked.