sion; Pere Poncet
was likewise kidnapped at Quebec and carried to the tortures of the
Mohawk towns; and a nephew of the Governor of Quebec was a few years
later attacked while hunting near Lake Champlain.

The outraged people of New France realized that fear was only
increasing the boldness of the Iroquois. A Mohawk-chief fell into
their hands. By way of warning, they bound him to a stake and burned
him to death. The Indian revenge fell swift and sure. In 1653 the
Governor of Three Rivers and twelve leading citizens were murdered a
short distance from the fort gates. {95} One night in May of 1652 a
tall, slim, swarthy lad about sixteen years of age was seen winding his
way home to Three Rivers from a day's shooting in the marshes. He had
set out at day dawn with some friends, but fear of the Iroquois had
driven his comrades back. Now at nightfall, within sight of Three
Rivers, when the sunset glittered from the chapel spire, he unslung his
bag of game and sat down to reload his musket. Then he noticed that
the pistols in his belt had been water-soaked from the day's wading,
and he reloaded them too.

Any one who is used to life in the open knows how at sundown wild birds
foregather for a last conclave. Ducks were winging in myriads and
settling on the lake with noisy flacker. Unable to resist the
temptation of one last shot, the boy was gliding noiselessly forward
through the rushes, when suddenly he stopped as if rooted to the
ground, with hands thrown up and eyes bulging from his head. At his
feet lay the corpses of his morning comrades,--scalped, stripped,
hacked almost piecemeal! Then the instinct of the hunted thing, of
flight, of self-protection, eclipsed momentary terror, and the boy was
ducking into the rushes to hide when, with a crash of musketry from the
woods, the Iroquois were upon him.

When he regained consciousness, he was pegged out on the sand amid a
flotilla of beached canoes, where Iroquois warriors were having an
evening meal. So began the captivity, the love of the wilds, the wide
wanderings of one of the most intrepid explorers in New France,--Pierre
Esprit Radisson.

His youth and the fact that he would make a good warrior were in his
favor. When he was carried back to the Mohawk town and with other
prisoners compelled to run the gauntlet between two lines of
tormentors, Radisson ran so fast and dodged so dexterously that he was
not once hit. The feat was greeted with shrieks