small party made
their appearance in the northerly part of the town, where, finding two
boys at work in an open field, they managed to surprise and capture them,
and, without committing further violence, retreated through the woods to
their homes on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. Isaac Bradley, aged
fifteen, was a small but active and vigorous boy; his companion in
captivity, Joseph Whittaker, was only eleven, yet quite as large in size,
and heavier in his movements. After a hard and painful journey they
arrived at the lake, and were placed in an Indian family, consisting of a
man and squaw and two or three children. Here they soon acquired a
sufficient knowledge of the Indian tongue to enable them to learn from
the conversation carried on in their presence that it was designed to
take them to Canada in the spring. This discovery was a painful one.
Canada, the land of Papist priests and bloody Indians, was the especial
terror of the New England settlers, and the anathema maranatha of Puritan
pulpits. Thither the Indians usually hurried their captives, where they
compelled them to work in their villages or sold them to the French
planters. Escape from thence through a deep wilderness, and across lakes
and mountains and almost impassable rivers, without food or guide, was
regarded as an impossibility. The poor boys, terrified by the prospect
of being carried still farther from their home and friends, began to
dream of escaping from their masters before they started for Canada. It
was now winter; it would have been little short of madness to have chosen
for flight that season of bitter cold and deep snows. Owing to exposure
and want of proper food and clothing, Isaac, the eldest of the boys, was
seized with a violent fever, from which he slowly recovered in the course
of the winter. His Indian mistress was as kind to him as her
circumstances permitted,--procuring medicinal herbs and roots for her
patient, and tenderly watching over him in the long winter nights.
Spring came at length; the snows melted; and the ice was broken up on the
lake. The Indians began to make preparations for journeying to Canada;
and Isaac, who had during his sickness devised a plan of escape, saw that
the time of putting it in execution had come. On the evening before he
was to make the attempt he for the first time informed his younger
companion of his design, and told him, if he intended to accompany him,
he must be awake at the tim