ll
this day meet in Heaven!"

In the volley and counter volley of ball and arrow, Father Daniel
reeled on his face, shot in the heart. In a trice his body was cut to
pieces, and the Iroquois were bathing their hands in his warm
lifeblood. A moment later the village was in roaring flames, and on
the burning pile were flung the fragments of the priest's body. The
victors set out on the homeward tramp with a line of more than six
hundred prisoners, the majority, women and children, to be brained if
their strength failed on the march, to be tortured in the Iroquois
towns if they survived the abuse on the way.

{88} Next westward from the Lake Simcoe missions were St. Ignace with
four hundred people and St. Louis with seven hundred, near the modern
Penetang and within short distance of the Jesuits' strong headquarters
on the River Wye. At these two missions labored Brebeuf, the giant,
and a fragile priest named Lalemant.

Encouraged by the total destruction of St. Joseph, the Iroquois that
very fall took the warpath with more than one thousand braves.
Ascending the Ottawa leisurely, they had passed the winter hunting and
cutting off any stray wanderers found in the forest.

The Hurons knew the doom that was slowly approaching. Yet they
remained passive, stunned, terrified by the blow at St. Joseph. It was
spring of 1649 before the warriors reached Georgian Bay. March winds
had cleared the trail of snowdrifts, but the forests were still
leafless. St. Ignace mission lay between Lake Simcoe and St. Louis.
Approaching it one windy March night, the Iroquois had cut holes
through the palisades before dawn and burst inside the walls with the
yells and gyrations of some hideous hell dance. Here a warrior
simulated the howl of the wolf. There another approached in the
crouching leaps of a panther, all the while uttering the yelps and
screams of a beast of prey lashed to fury. The poor Hurons were easy
victims. Nearly all their braves happened to be absent hunting, and
the four hundred women and children, rushing from the long houses half
dazed with sleep, fell without realizing their fate, or found
themselves herded in the chapel like cattle at the shambles, Iroquois
guards at every window and door.

Luckily three Hurons escaped over the palisades and rushed breathless
through the forest to forewarn Brebeuf and Lalemant cooped up in St.
Louis. The Iroquois came on behind like a wolf pack.

"Escape! Escape! Run