that the woman prisoner be given to him; and he saved her from torture
and death on the return to the Mohawks by presenting her as a slave to
his Indian mother. All his other share of booty he gave to the
friendly family. The raid was over. He had failed of his main object
in joining it. He had not escaped. But he had made one important
gain. His valor had reëstablished the confidence of the Indians so
that when they went on a free-booting expedition against the whites of
the Dutch settlements at Orange (Albany), Radisson was taken with them.
Orange, or Albany, consisted at that time of some fifty thatched
log-houses surrounded by a settlement of perhaps a hundred and fifty
farmers. This raid was bloodless. The warriors looted the farmers'
cabins, emptied their cupboards, and drank their beer cellars dry to
the last drop. Once more Radisson kept his head. While the braves
entered Fort Orange roaring drunk, Radisson was alert and sober. A
drunk Indian falls an easy prey in the bartering of pelts. The
Iroquois wanted guns. The Dutch wanted pelts. The whites treated the
savages like kings; and the Mohawks marched from house to house
feasting of the best. Radisson was dressed in garnished buckskin and
had been painted like a Mohawk. Suspecting some design to escape, his
Iroquois friends never left him. The young Frenchman now saw white men
for the first time in almost two years; but the speech that he heard
was in a strange tongue. As Radisson went into the fort, he noticed a
soldier among the Dutch. At the same instant the soldier recognized
him as a Frenchman, and oblivious of the Mohawks' presence blurted out
his discovery in Iroquois dialect, vowing that for all the paint and
grease, this youth was a white man below. The fellow's blundering
might have cost Radisson's life; but the youth had not been a captive
among crafty Mohawks for nothing. Radisson feigned surprise at the
accusation. That quieted the Mohawk suspicions and they were presently
deep in the beer pots of the Dutch. Again the soldier spoke, this time