“If you are afraid to go forward,” said he, “I will go ahead by myself.”
So the wild youth went onward, shooting game at many places, until, at length, he had a large number of geese, ducks, and teal. There were more than he could possibly carry, so, hiding in a hollow tree the game that he could not bring back, he began trudging towards Three Rivers. Wading swollen brooks and scrambling over fallen trees, he finally caught sight of the town chapel, glimmering in the sunlight against the darkening horizon above the river. He had reached the place where his comrades had left him, so he sat down to rest himself.
The shepherd had driven his sheep back to Three Rivers and there was no one near. The river came lapping through the rushes. There was a clacking of ducks as they came swooping down to their marsh nests and Radisson felt strangely lonely. He noticed, too, that his pistols were water-soaked. Emptying the charges, he re-loaded, then crept back to reconnoiter the woodland. Great flocks of ducks were swimming on the river, so he determined to have one more shot before he returned to the fort, now within easy hail.
Young Pierre crept through the grass towards the game, but he suddenly stopped, for, before him was a sight that rooted him to the ground with horror. Just as they had fallen, naked and scalped, with bullet and hatchet wounds all over their bodies, lay his comrades of the morning. They were stone dead, lying face upward among the rushes.
Radisson was too far away from the woods to get back to them, so, stooping down, he tried to reach a hiding place in the marsh. As he bent over, half a hundred tufted heads rose from the high grass, and beady eyes looked to see which way he might go. They were behind him, before him, on all sides of him,—his only hope was a dash for the cane-grown river, where he might hide himself until darkness would give him a chance to rush to the fort.
Slipping a bullet and some powder into his musket as he ran, and ramming it down, young Pierre dashed through the brushwood for a place of safety. Crash! A score of guns roared from the forest. He turned, and fired back, but; before he could re-load, an Iroquois brave was upon him, he was thrown upon his back, was disarmed, his hands were bound behind him with deer thongs, and he was dragged into the woods, where the Indians flaunted the scalps of his friends before his eyes. Half drawn, half driven, he was taken to the shore where a flotilla of canoes was hidden. Fires were kindled, and, upon forked sticks driven into the ground, the redskins boiled a kettle of water for the evening meal.
The Iroquois admired bravery in any man, and they now evinced a certain affection for this young Frenchman, for, in defiance of danger, they had seen him go hunting alone. When attacked, he had fired back at enough enemies to have terrified any ordinary Canadian. This they liked, so his clothing was returned to him, they daubed his cheeks with war paint, shaved his head in the manner of the redskinned braves, and, when they saw that their stewed dog turned him faint, they boiled him some meat in clean water and gave him some meal, browned upon burning sand. That night he slept beneath a blanket, between two warriors.
In the morning the Indians embarked in thirty-seven canoes, two redskins in each boat, with young Pierre tied to a cross-bar in one of them. Spreading out on the river, they beat their paddles upon the gunwales of their bateaux, shot off their guns, and uttered their shrill war cry,—“Ah-oh! Ah-oh! Ah-oh!”
The echoes carried along the wailing call, and in the log stockade the Canadians looked furtively at one another as the horrid sound was borne to them by the gentle wind. Then the chief stood up in his canoe, signaled silence, and gave three long blood-curdling yells. The whole company answered with a quavering chorus like wolf barks, and, firing their guns into the air, the canoes were driven out into the river, past the nestling log-stockade of Three Rivers, and up the current of the rushing stream. By sunset they were among the islands at the mouth of the river Richelieu, where were great clouds of wild-ducks, which darkened the air at their approach.
Young Pierre bore up bravely, determined to remain with his captors until an opportunity to escape presented itself. The red men treated him kindly, saying: “Chagon! Chagon! Be merry! Cheer up!” He was given a paddle and was told to row, which he did right willingly. Another band of warriors was met with on the river, and the prisoner was forced to show himself as a trophy of victory and to sing songs for his captors, which he did to the best of his ability. That evening an enormous camp-fire was kindled and the united bands danced a scalp-dance around it, flaunting the scalps of the two dead French boys from spear heads, and reënacted in pantomime all the episodes of the massacre, while the women beat on rude, Indian drums.