“Loyal subjects!” sneers M. de Radisson.

“And that reminds me, M. Colbert orders Sieur Radisson to present himself in Paris and report on the state of the fur-trade to the king!”

“Ramsay,” said M. Radisson to me, after Governor la Barre had gone, “this is some new gamestering!”

“Your court players are too deep for me, sir!”

“Pish!” says he impatiently, “plain as day—­we must sail on the frigate for France, or they imprison us here—­in Paris we shall be kept dangling by promises, hangers-on and do-nothings till the moneys are all used—­then——­”

“Then—­sir?”

“Then, active men are dangerous men, and dangerous men may lie safe and quiet in the sponging-house!”

“Do we sail in that case?”

“Egad, yes!  Why not?  Keep your colours flying and you may sail into hell, man, and conquer, too!  Yes—­we sail!  Man or devil, don’t swerve, lad!  Go your gait!  Go your gait!  Chouart here will look after the ships!  Paris is near London, and praise be Providence for that little maid of thine!  We shall presently have letters from her—­and,” he added, “from Sir John Kirke of the Hudson’s Bay Company!”

And it was even as he foretold.  I find, on looking over the tattered pages of a handbook, these notes: 

Oct. 6.—­Ben Gillam and Governor Brigdar this day sent back to New England.  There will be great complaints against us in the English court before we can reach London.

Nov. 11.—­Sailed for France in the French frigate.

Dec. 18.—­Reach Rochelle—­hear of M. Colbert’s death.

Jan. 30.—­Paris—­all our furs seized by the French Government in order to keep M. Radisson powerless—­Lord Preston, the English ambassador, complaining against us on the one hand, and battering our doors down on the other, with spies offering M. Radisson safe passage from Paris to London.

I would that I had time to tell you of that hard winter in Paris, M. Radisson week by week, like a fort resisting siege, forced to take cheaper and cheaper lodgings, till we were housed between an attic roof and creaking rat-ridden floor in the Faubourg St. Antoine.  But not one jot did M. Radisson lose of his kingly bearing, though he went to some fete in Versailles with beaded moccasins and frayed plushes and tattered laces and hair that one of the pretty wits declared the birds would be anesting in for hay-coils.  In that Faubourg St. Antoine house, I mind, we took grand apartments on the ground floor, but up and up we went, till M. Radisson vowed we’d presently be under the stars—­as the French say when they are homeless—­unless my Lord Preston, the English ambassador, came to our terms.

That starving of us for surrender was only another trick of the gamestering in which we were enmeshed.  Had Captain Godey, Lord Preston’s messenger, succeeded in luring us back to England without terms, what a pretty pickle had ours been!  France would have set a price on us.  Then must we have accepted any kick-of-toe England chose to offer—­and thanked our new masters for the same, else back to France they would have sent us.