hore 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 th