torturing their prisoner, and he rushed in, scattered the burning
brush, and unbound the prisoner.

The Indians who had captured Israel Putnam may not have intended
to kill him, but it was their custom to torture prisoners taken
in war, and both the French and the English officers often had
great difficulty in controlling their savage allies.

Putnam was carried to Canada and treated kindly by the French,
and a few months later he was exchanged and sent home with some
other prisoners.

Once before he had had a narrow escape from the Indians and only
his quick decision and courage saved him. He was on a river-bank
when they crept up belind him. Calling to the five men with him,
he rushed for the boat and pushed off downstream toward some
dangerous rapids. The Indians fired and missed him, and the boat
shot down the rapids. It came out safe below them,--the first
boat that had ever done so,--and the Indians thought it must be
under the protection of their own Great Spirit.

Two years after his unwilling visit to Canada as a prisoner,
Israel Putnam went there again, this time with the army under the
command of General Amherst. The French-and-Indian War was ending
in victory for the English; Quebec had fallen, but a few other
posts still held out, and this expedition was against Montreal.
On the way there a French ship on Lake Ontario opposed the
progress of the English, and a story is told of Putnam's original
way of overcoming this difficulty.