[[1]] Later Fort Frontenac.
So far I had been treated fairly well. My captors had shared with me their meager fare of parched corn and jerked meat; and if I had been compelled to bale out the canoe incessantly, it was equally true that they had labored at the paddles night and day. It was also true that de Veulle had made me the constant subject of his gibes and kicks and had encouraged the Cahnuagas—and God knows they required no encouragement—to maul me at pleasure. Yet the frailty of the canoe had forbidden indulgence in as much roughness as they desired.
But now everything was changed. My legs were left unbound, but with uncanny skill the savages lashed back my arms until well-nigh every bit of circulation was stopped in them and each movement I was forced to make became an act of torture. The one recompense for my sufferings was that for the first time since our capture I had the company of Ta-wan-ne-ars, and I was able to profit by his stoical demeanor in resisting the impulse to vent my anger against de Veulle.
"Say nothing, brother," he counseled me when I panted my hate, "for every word you say will afford him satisfaction."
"I wish I had staved in the canoe in the middle of the lake," I exclaimed bitterly.
"Ta-wan-ne-ars, too, thought of that," he admitted. "Yet must we have died with our tormenters, and perhaps if we wait we may escape and live to slay them at less cost to ourselves."
"It is not likely," I answered, for my spirits were very low. "What is this place? Where are we?"
Ta-wan-ne-ars looked around the landscape, rapidly dimming in the twilight. We had been left in custody of the Indians on the river-bank whilst de Veulle conversed with three white men who had emerged from the palisades as we scrambled ashore.
"This place Ta-wan-ne-ars does not know," he replied. "Yet it is on the river St. Lawrence, for there is no other stream of this size. I think, brother, that de Veulle is taking us to La Vierge du Bois."
"It matters little where he takes us," I returned ill-naturedly. "Our end is like to be the same in any case."