Chouart Groseillers smiles quietly and strokes his black beard. Jean
stretches across a bear-skin on the floor and shouts out, "Tell us!
Tell us!"
"We had been captives six months. The Iroquois were beginning to let
us wander about alone. Chouart there had sewed his thumb up, where an
old squaw had hacked at it with a dull shell. The padre's nails, which
the Indians tore off in torture, had grown well enough for him to
handle a gun. One day we were allowed out to hunt. Chouart brought
down three deer, the padre two moose, and I a couple of bear. That
night the warriors came back from a raid on Orange with not a thing to
eat but one miserable, little, thin, squealing pig. Pardieu! men,
'twas our chance; and the chance is always hiding round a corner for
the man who goes ahead."
Radisson paused to whiff his pipe, all the lights in his eyes laughing
and his mouth expressionless as steel.
"'Tis an insult among Iroquois to leave food at a feast. There were we
with food enough to stuff the tribe torpid as winter toads. The padre
was sent round to the lodges with a tom-tom to beat every soul to the
feast. Chouart and a Dutch prisoner and I cooked like kings' scullions
for four mortal hours!--"
"We wanted to delay the feast till midnight," explains Groseillers.
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