call.  At the first portage many of the canoes were nine and ten miles apart.  Enemies could have set on the Algonquins in some narrow defile and slaughtered the entire company like sheep in a pen.  Radisson and Groseillers warned the Indians of the risk they were running.  Many of these Algonquins had never before possessed firearms.  With the muskets obtained in trade at Three Rivers, they thought themselves invincible and laughed all warning to scorn.  Radisson and Groseillers were told that they were a pair of timid squaws; and the canoes spread apart till not twenty were within call.  As they skirted the wooded shores, a man suddenly dashed from the forest with an upraised war-hatchet in one hand and a blanket streaming from his shoulders.  He shouted for them to come to him.  The Algonquins were panic-stricken.  Was the man pursued by Mohawks, or laying a trap to lure them within shooting range?  Seeing them hesitate, the Indian threw down blanket and hatchet to signify that he was defenceless, and rushed into the water to his armpits.

“I would save you,” he shouted in Iroquois.

The Algonquins did not understand.  They only knew that he spoke the tongue of the hated enemy and was unarmed.  In a trice, the Algonquins in the nearest canoe had thrown out a well-aimed lasso, roped the man round the waist, and drawn him a captive into the canoe.

“Brothers,” protested the captive, who seems to have been either a Huron slave or an Iroquois magician, “your enemies are spread up and down!  Sleep not!  They have heard your noise!  They wait for you!  They are sure of their prey!  Believe me—­keep together!  Spend not your powder in vain to frighten your enemies by noise!  See that the stones of your arrows be not bent!  Bend your bows!  Keep your hatchets sharp!  Build a fort!  Make haste!”

But the Algonquins, intoxicated with the new power of firearms, would hear no warning.  They did not understand his words and refused to heed Radisson’s interpretation.  Beating paddles on their canoes and firing off guns, they shouted derisively that the man was “a dog and a hen.”  All the same, they did not land to encamp that night, but slept in midstream, with their boats tied to the rushes or on the lee side of floating trees.  The French lost heart.  If this were the beginning, what of the end?  Daylight had scarcely broken when the paddles of the eager voyageurs were cutting the thick gray mist that rose from the river to get away from observation while the fog still hid the fleet.  From afar came the dull, heavy rumble of a waterfall.[6]