"I will myself travel into thy country," said he, "and eat sagamite in thy grandmother's skull."
While the brave and his small circle of friends were livid with fear and anger, Radisson ordered three fathoms of tobacco to be distributed; observing, contemptuously, to the hostile minority that as for them they might go and smoke women's tobacco in the country of the lynxes. The barter began, and when at nightfall the Indians departed not a skin was left amongst them.
Departure of the English.
It was now time to think of departure. As absent men tell no tales, it was decided to despatch Bridgar and his companions first. But at the last moment some trouble seems to have arisen as to which vessel the English should have to convey them to more hospitable shores. Bridgar himself would have preferred to go in the ship, and at first his passage had been arranged for in that craft; but it was at length settled that he should be carried with the brothers-in-law in their barque.
After numerous vicissitudes, which would need a volume to describe, the St. Anne arrived at the mouth of the St. Lawrence.
At Tadoussac was a trading post belonging to the French: and the sight of it seems to have inspired either one or both of these conscienceless adventurers with the idea of lightening their load of furs, which consisted of above two thousand skins, though this cargo only represented about one-third of the number they had actually secured by cheating, robbery and intrigue in the country of the Bay.
Having in this nefarious manner disposed of about half of La Chesnaye's property jointly with themselves, they again set sail and arrived at Quebec on the 26th of October.
Immediately on their arrival they went to report themselves to M. de la Barre, the Governor, La Chesnaye being fortunately, or unfortunately, absent in Montreal. The Governor thought proper to return the Susan to the New England merchants, with a warning not to send again to the place from which she had just come, and the Company's ill-starred Governor, Bridgar, together with young Gillam, sailed on board her for New England.
"We parted," says Radisson with that matchless audacity of statement for which his narrative deserves to be famous, "on friendly terms; and he (Bridgar) could testify that I let him know at the time my attachment; and yet, that I wished still to act as heartily in the service of the King and the nation as I wished to do for France."
This hardly tallies with Bridgar's evidence before the Company, that Radisson was "a cheat, a swindler, and a black-hearted, infamous scoundrel," and that he was "a born intriguing traitor." As for the elder Gillam, he was heard to declare, when he had at length arrived on the frail and half-rotten craft which bore him and his unhappy comrades to New England, that he would not die happy until his "hangar had dipped into the blood of the French miscreant, Radisson."