Pathfinders of the West. Agnes C. Laut
back. The Algonquin continued to urge him. By this time, Radisson must have heard from returning Iroquois warriors that they had slain the governor of Three Rivers, Duplessis-Kerbodot, and eleven other Frenchmen, among whom was the husband of Radisson's eldest sister, Marguerite.[9]
While Radisson was still hesitating, the suspicious Iroquois demanded what so much whispering was about; but the alert Algonquin promptly quieted their fears by trumping up some hunting story. Wearied from their day's hunt, the three Mohawks slept heavily round the camp-fire. They had not the least suspicion of danger, for they had stacked their arms carelessly against the trees of the forest. Terrified lest the Algonquin should attempt to carry out his threat, Radisson pretended to be asleep. Rising noiselessly, the Algonquin sat down by the fire. The Mohawks slept on. The Algonquin gave Radisson a push. The French boy looked up to see the Algonquin studying the postures of the sleeping forms. The dying fire glimmered like a blotch of blood under the trees. Stepping stealthy as a cat over the sleeping men, the Indian took possession of their firearms. Drawn by a kind of horror, Radisson had risen. The Algonquin thrust one of the tomahawks into the French lad's hands and pointed without a word at the three sleeping Mohawks. Then the Indian began the black work. The Mohawk nearest the fire never knew that he had been struck, and died without a sound. Radisson tried to imitate the relentless Algonquin, but, unnerved with horror, he bungled the blow and lost hold of the hatchet just as it struck the Mohawk's head. The Iroquois sprang up with a shout that awakened the third man, but the Algonquin was ready. Radisson's blow proved fatal. The victim reeled back dead, and the third man was already despatched by the Algonquin.
Radisson was free. It was a black deed that freed him, but not half so black as the deeds perpetrated in civilized wars for less cause; and for that deed Radisson was to pay swift retribution.
Taking the scalps as trophies to attest his word, the Algonquin threw the bodies into the river. He seized all the belongings of the dead men but one gun and then launched out with Radisson on the river. The French youth was conscience-stricken. "I was sorry to have been in such an encounter," he writes, "but it was too late to repent." Under cover of the night mist and shore foliage, they slipped away with the current. At first dawn streak, while the mist still hid them, they landed, carried their canoe to a sequestered spot in the dense forest, and lay hidden under the upturned skiff all that day, tormented by swarms of mosquitoes and flies, but not daring to move from concealment. At nightfall, they again launched down-stream, keeping always in the shadows of the shore till mist and darkness shrouded them, then sheering off for mid-current, where they paddled for dear life. Where camp-fires glimmered on the banks, they glided past with motionless paddles. Across Lake Champlain, across the Richelieu, over long portages where every shadow took the shape of an ambushed Iroquois, for fourteen nights they travelled, when at last with many windings and false alarms they swept out on the wide surface of Lake St. Peter in the St. Lawrence.
Within a day's journey of Three Rivers, they were really in greater danger than they had been in the forests of Lake Champlain. Iroquois had infested that part of the St. Lawrence for more than a year. The forest of the south shore, the rush-grown marshes, the wooded islands, all afforded impenetrable hiding. It was four in the morning when they reached Lake St. Peter. Concealing their canoe, they withdrew to the woods, cooked their breakfast, covered the fire, and lay down to sleep. In a couple of hours the Algonquin impatiently wakened Radisson and urged him to cross the lake to the north shore on the Three Rivers side. Radisson warned the Indian that the Iroquois were ever lurking about Three Rivers. The Indian would not wait till sunset. "Let us go," he said. "We are past fear. Let us shake off the yoke of these whelps that have killed so many French and black robes (priests). … If you come not now that we are so near, I leave you, and will tell the governor you were afraid to come."
Radisson's judgment was overruled by the impatient Indian. They pushed their skiff out from the rushes. The water lay calm as a sea of silver. They paddled directly across to get into hiding on the north shore. Halfway across Radisson, who was at the bow, called out that he saw shadows on the water ahead. The Indian stood up and declared that the shadow was the reflection of a flying bird. Barely had they gone a boat length when the shadows multiplied. They were the reflections of Iroquois ambushed among the rushes. Heading the canoe back for the south shore, they raced for their lives. The Iroquois pursued in their own boats. About a mile from the shore, the strength of the fugitives fagged. Knowing that the Iroquois were gaining fast, Radisson threw out the loathsome scalps that the Algonquin had persisted in carrying. By that strange fatality which seems to follow crime, instead of sinking, the hairy scalps floated on the surface of the water back to the pursuing Iroquois. Shouts of rage broke from the warriors. Radisson's skiff was so near the south shore that he could see the pebbled bottom of the lake; but the water was too deep to wade and too clear for a dive, and there was no driftwood to afford hiding. Then a crash of musketry from the Iroquois knocked the bottom out of the canoe. The Algonquin fell dead with two bullet wounds in his head and the canoe gradually filled, settled, and sank, with the young Frenchman clinging to the cross-bar mute as stone. Just as it disappeared under water, Radisson was seized, and the dead Algonquin was thrown into the Mohawk boats.
Radisson alone remained to pay the penalty of a double crime; and he might well have prayed for the boat to sink. The victors shouted their triumph. Hurrying ashore, they kindled a great fire. They tore the heart from the dead Algonquin, transfixed the head on a pike, and cast the mutilated body into the flames for those cannibal rites in which savages thought they gained courage by eating the flesh of their enemies. Radisson was rifled of clothes and arms, trussed at the elbows, roped round the waist, and driven with blows back to the canoes. There were other captives among the Mohawks. As the canoes emerged from the islands, Radisson counted one hundred and fifty Iroquois warriors, with two French captives, one white woman, and seventeen Hurons. Flaunting from the canoe prows were the scalps of eleven Algonquins. The victors fired off their muskets and shouted defiance until the valley rang. As the seventy-five canoes turned up the Richelieu River for the country of the Iroquois, hope died in the captive Hurons and there mingled with the chant of the Mohawks' war-songs, the low monotonous dirge of the prisoners:—
"If I die, I die valiant!
I go without fear
To that land where brave men
Have gone long before me--
If I die, I die valiant."
Twelve miles up the Richelieu, the Iroquois landed to camp. The prisoners were pegged out on the sand, elbows trussed to knees, each captive tied to a post. In this fashion they lay every night of encampment, tortured by sand-flies that they were powerless to drive off. At the entrance to the Mohawk village, a yoke was fastened to the captives' necks by placing pairs of saplings one on each side down the line of prisoners. By the rope round the waist of the foremost prisoner, they were led slowly between the lines of tormentors. The captives were ordered to sing. If one refused or showed fear, a Mohawk struck off a finger with a hatchet, or tore the prisoners' nails out, or thrust red-hot irons into the muscles of the bound arms.[10] As Radisson appeared, he was recognized with shouts of rage by the friends of the murdered Mohawks. Men, women, and children armed with rods and skull-crackers—leather bags loaded with stones—rushed on the slowly moving file of prisoners.
"They began to cry from both sides," says Radisson; "we marching one after another, environed with people to witness that hideous sight, which seriously may be called the image of Hell in this world."
The prisoners moved mournfully on. The Hurons chanted their death dirge. The Mohawk women uttered screams of mockery. Suddenly there broke from the throng of onlookers the Iroquois family that had adopted Radisson. Pushing through the crew of torturers, the mother caught Radisson by the hair, calling him by the name of her dead son, "Orimha! Orimha!" She cut the thongs that bound him to the poles, and wresting him free shoved him to her husband, who led Radisson to their own lodge.
"Thou fool," cried the old chief, "thou wast my son! Thou makest thyself an enemy! Thou lovest us not, though we saved thy life! Wouldst kill me, too?" Then, with a rough push to a mat on the ground, "Chagon—now, be merry! It's a merry business you've got into! Give him something to eat!"
Trembling with fear, young Radisson put as bold a face on as he could and made a show of eating what the squaw