and the Jesuits had learned of the Council from their converts. Before
the spies arrived, the French had built a floor over their flatboats,
and to cover the fresh floor had heaped up a dozen canoes. The spies
left the fort satisfied that neither a deluge nor an escape was
impending. Birch canoes would be crushed like egg-shells if they were
run through the ice jams of spring floods. Certain that their victims
were trapped, the Iroquois were in no haste to assault a double-walled
fort, where musketry could mow them down as they rushed the hilltop.
The Indian is bravest under cover; so the Mohawks spread themselves in
ambush on each side of the narrow river and placed guards at the falls
where any boats must be _portaged_.

Of what good were the boats? To allay suspicion of escape, the Jesuits
continued to visit the wigwams.[6] The French were in despair. They
consulted Radisson, who could go among the Mohawks as with a charmed
life, and who knew the customs of the Confederacy so well. Radisson
proposed a way to outwit the savages. With this plan the priests had
nothing to do. To the harum-scarum Radisson belong the sole credit and
discredit of the escapade. On his device hung the lives of fifty
innocent men. These men must either escape or be massacred. Of
bloodshed, Radisson had already seen too much; and the youth of
twenty-one now no more proposed to stickle over the means of victory
than generals who wear the Victoria cross stop to stickle over means
to-day.

Radisson knew that the Indians had implicit faith in dreams; so
Radisson had a dream.[7] He realized as critics of Indian customs fail
to understand that the fearful privations of savage life teach the
crime of waste. The Indian will eat the last morsel of food set before
him if he dies for it. He believes that the gods punish waste of food