night the warriors came back from a raid on Orange with not a thing to
eat but one miserable, little, thin, squealing pig. Pardieu! men,
'twas our chance; and the chance is always hiding round a corner for
the man who goes ahead."

Radisson paused to whiff his pipe, all the lights in his eyes laughing
and his mouth expressionless as steel.

"'Tis an insult among Iroquois to leave food at a feast. There were we
with food enough to stuff the tribe torpid as winter toads. The padre
was sent round to the lodges with a tom-tom to beat every soul to the
feast. Chouart and a Dutch prisoner and I cooked like kings' scullions
for four mortal hours!--"

"We wanted to delay the feast till midnight," explains Groseillers.

"And at midnight in trooped every man, woman, and brat of the
encampment. The padre takes a tom-tom and stands at one end of the
lodge beating a very knave of a rub-a-dub and shouting at the top of
his voice: 'Eat, brothers, eat! Bulge the eye, swell the coat, loose
the belt! Eat, brothers, eat!' Chouart stands at the boiler ladling
out joints faster than an army could gobble. Within an hour every brat
lay stretched and the women were snoring asleep where they crouched.
From the warriors, here a grunt, there a groan! But Chouart keeps
ladling out the meat. Then the Dutchman grabs up a drum at the other
end of the lodge, and begins to beat and yell: 'Stuff, brudders, stuff!
Vat de gut zperets zend, gast not out! Eat, braves, eat!' And the
padre cuts the capers of a fiend on coals. Still the warriors eat!
Still the drums beat! Still the meat is heaped! Then, one brave bowls
over asleep with his head on his knees! Another warrior tumbles back!
Guards sit bolt upright sound asleep as a stone!"

"What did you put in the meat, Pierre?" asked Groseillers absently.

Radisson laughed.

"Do you mind, Chouart," he asked, "how the padre wanted to put poison
in the meat, and the Dutchman wouldn't let him? Then the Dutchman
wanted to murder them all in their sleep, and the padre wouldn't let
him?"

Both men laughed.

"And the end?" asked Jean.

"We tied the squealing pig at the door for sentinel, broke ice with our
muskets, launched the canoe, and never stopped paddling till we reached
Three Rivers." [1]

At that comes a loud sally of laughter from the sailors at the far end
of the hall. Godefroy, the English trader, is singing a rhyme of All
Souls' Day, and Allemand, the French pilot, protest