tween lay strewn with booty! Radisson
rushed his Indians for the waterside to intercept the Iroquois' flight.
The Iroquois left their boats and swam for the opposite shore, where
they threw up the usual barricade and entrenched themselves to shoot on
Radisson's passing canoes. Using the captured beaver pelts as shields,
the Upper Indians ran the gantlet of the Iroquois fire with the loss of
only one man.

The slightest defeat may turn well-ordered retreat into panic. If the
explorers went on, the Iroquois would hang to the rear of the
travelling Indians and pick off warriors till the Upper Country people
became so weakened they would fall an easy prey. Not flight, but
fight, was Radisson's motto. He ordered his men ashore to break up the
barricade. Darkness fell over the forest. The Iroquois could not see
to fire. "They spared not their powder," relates Radisson, "but they
made more noise than hurt." Attaching a fuse to a barrel of powder,
Radisson threw this over into the Iroquois fort. The crash of the
explosion was followed by a blaze of the Iroquois musketry that killed
three of Radisson's men. Radisson then tore the bark off a birch tree,
filled the bole with powder, and in the darkness crept close to the
Iroquois barricade and set fire to the logs. Red tongues of fire
leaped up, there was a roar as of wind, and the Iroquois fort was on
fire. Radisson's men dashed through the fire, hatchet in hand. The
Iroquois answered with their death chant. Friend and foe merged in the
smoke and darkness. "We could not know one another in that skirmish of
blows," says Radisson. "There was noise to terrify the stoutest man."
In the midst of the melee a frightful storm of thunder and sheeted rain
rolled over the forest. "To my mind," writes the disgusted Radisson,
"that was something extraordinary. I think the Devil himself sent that
storm to let those wretches escape, so that they might destroy more
innocents." The rain put out the fire. As soon as the storm had
passed, Radisson kindled torches to search for the missing. Three of
his men were slain, seven wounded. Of the enemy, eleven lay dead, five
were prisoners. The rest of the Iroquois had fled to the forest. The
Upper Indians burned their prisoners according to their custom, and the
night was passed in mad orgies to celebrate the victory. "The sleep we
took did not make our heads giddy," writes Radisson.

The next day they encountered more Iroquois