ainst the velvet, and the other was raised impressively above the
savages. How had he made the savages come to him? How are some men
born to draw all others as the sea draws the streams?

The poor creatures had piled their robes at his feet as offerings to a
god.

"What did he give for the pelts, Godefroy?" I asked.

"Words!" says Godefroy, with a grin, "gab and a drop o' rum diluted in
a pot o' water!"

"What is he saying to them now?"

Godefroy shrugged his shoulders. "That the gods have sent him a
messenger to them; that the fire he brings "--he was handing a musket
to the chief--"will smite the Indians' enemy from the earth; that the
bullet is magic to outrace the fleetest runner"--this as M. Radisson
fired a shot into mid-air that sent the Indians into ecstasies of
childish wonder--"that the bottle in his hands contains death, and if
the Indians bring their hunt to the white-man, the white-man will never
take the cork out except to let death fly at the Indians' enemy"--he
lifted a little phial of poison as he spoke--"that the Indian need
never feel cold nor thirst, now that the white-man has brought
fire-water!"

At this came a harsh laugh from a taciturn Indian standing on the outer
rim of the crowd. It was the fellow who had run through the forest
with the torch.

"Who is that, Godefroy?"

"Le Borgne."

"Le Borgne need not laugh," retorted M. de Radisson sharply. "Le
Borgne knows the taste of fire-water! Le Borgne has been with the
white-man at the south, and knows what the white-man says is true."

But Le Borgne only laughed the harder, deep, guttural, contemptuous
"huh-huh's!"--a fitting rebuke, methought, for the ignoble deception
implied in M. Radisson's words.

Indeed, I would fain suppress this part of M. Radisson's record, for he
juggled with truth so oft, when he thought the end justified the means,
he finally got a knack of juggling so much with truth that the means
would never justify any end. I would fain repress the ignoble faults
of a noble leader, but I must even set down the facts as they are, so
you may see why a man who was the greatest leader and trader and
explorer of his times reaped only an aftermath of universal distrust.
He lied his way through thick and thin--as we traders used to say--till
that lying habit of his sewed him up in a net of his own weaving like a
grub in a cocoon.

Godefroy was giving a hand to bind up my gashed palm when something
grunted a "huff-huf