Radisson was too far out to get back to the woods. Stooping, he tried
to grope to the hiding of the rushes. As he bent, half a hundred heads
rose from the grasses, peering which way he might go. They were
behind, before, on all sides--his only hope was a dash for the
cane-grown river, where he might hide by diving and wading, till
darkness gave a chance for a rush to the fort. Slipping bullet and
shot in his musket as he ran, and ramming down the paper, hoping
against hope that he had not been seen, he dashed through the
brushwood. A score of guns crashed from the forest.[5] Before he
realized the penalty that the Iroquois might exact for such an act, he
had fired back; but they were upon him. He was thrown down and
disarmed. When he came giddily to his senses, he found himself being
dragged back to the woods, where the Iroquois flaunted the fresh scalps
of his dead friends. Half drawn, half driven, he was taken to the
shore. Here, a flotilla of canoes lay concealed where he had been
hunting wild-fowl but a few hours before. Fires were kindled, and the
crotched sticks driven in the ground to boil the kettle for the evening
meal. The young Frenchman was searched, stripped, and tied round the
waist with a rope, the Indians yelling and howling like so many wolves
all the while till a pause was given their jubilation by the alarm of a
scout that the French and Algonquins were coming. In a trice, the fire
was out and covered.
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