own boats. About a mile from the shore, the strength of the fugitives
fagged. Knowing that the Iroquois were gaining fast, Radisson threw
out the loathsome scalps that the Algonquin had persisted in carrying.
By that strange fatality which seems to follow crime, instead of
sinking, the hairy scalps floated on the surface of the water back to
the pursuing Iroquois. Shouts of rage broke from the warriors.
Radisson's skiff was so near the south shore that he could see the
pebbled bottom of the lake; but the water was too deep to wade and too
clear for a dive, and there was no driftwood to afford hiding. Then a
crash of musketry from the Iroquois knocked the bottom out of the
canoe. The Algonquin fell dead with two bullet wounds in his head and
the canoe gradually filled, settled, and sank, with the young Frenchman
clinging to the cross-bar mute as stone. Just as it disappeared under
water, Radisson was seized, and the dead Algonquin was thrown into the
Mohawk boats.

Radisson alone remained to pay the penalty of a double crime; and he
might well have prayed for the boat to sink. The victors shouted their
triumph. Hurrying ashore, they kindled a great fire. They tore the
heart from the dead Algonquin, transfixed the head on a pike, and cast
the mutilated body into the flames for those cannibal rites in which
savages thought they gained courage by eating the flesh of their
enemies. Radisson was rifled of clothes and arms, trussed at the
elbows, roped round the waist, and driven with blows back to the
canoes. There were other captives among the Mohawks. As the canoes
emerged from the islands, Radisson counted one hundred and fifty
Iroquois warriors, with two French captives, one white woman, and
seventeen Hurons. Flaunting from the canoe prows were the scalps of
eleven Algonquins. The victors fired off their muskets and shouted
defiance until the valley rang. As the seventy-five canoes turned up