But I made the news of Jack Battle’s marriage the occasion of a letter to one of the queen’s maids of honour.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOME FROM THE BAY

’Twas as fair sailing under English colours as you could wish till Pierre Radisson had undone all the mischief that he had worked against the Fur Company in Hudson Bay.  Pierre Radisson sits with a pipe in his mouth and his long legs stretched clear across the cabin-table, spinning yarns of wild doings in savage lands, and Governor Phipps, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, listens with eyes a trifle too sleepily watchful, methinks, for the Frenchman’s good.  A summer sea kept us course all the way to the northern bay, and sometimes Pierre Radisson would fling out of the cabin, marching up and down the deck muttering, “Pah!  Tis tame adventuring!  Takes a dish o’ spray to salt the freshness out o’ men!  Tis the roaring forties put nerve in a man’s marrow!  Soft days are your Delilah’s that shave away men’s strength!  Toughen your fighters, Captain Gazer!  Toughen your fighters!”

And once, when M. Radisson had passed beyond hearing, the governor turns with a sleepy laugh to the captain.

“A pox on the rantipole!” says he.  “May the sharks test the nerve of his marrow after he’s captured back the forts!”

In the bay great ice-drift stopped our way, and Pierre Radisson’s impatience took fire.

“What a deuce, Captain Gazer!” he cries.  “How long do you intend to squat here anchored to an ice-pan?”

A spark shot from the governor’s sleepy eyes, and Captain Gazer swallowed words twice before he answered.

“Till the ice opens a way,” says he.

“Opens a way!” repeats Radisson.  “Man alive, why don’t you carve a way?”

“Carve a way yourself, Radisson,” says the governor contemptuously.

That was let enough for Pierre Radisson.  He had the sailors lowering jolly-boats in a jiffy; and off seven of us went, round the ice-pans, ploughing, cutting, portaging a way till we had crossed the obstruction and were pulling for the French fort with the spars of three Company boats far in the offing.

I detained the English sailors at the river-front till M. Radisson had entered the fort and won young Jean Groseillers to the change of masters.  Before the Fur Company’s ships came, the English flag was flying above the fort and Fort Bourbon had become Fort Nelson.

“I bid you welcome to the French Habitation,” bows Radisson, throwing wide the gates to the English governor.

“Hm!” returns Phipps, “how many beaver-skins are there in store?”

M. Radisson looked at the governor.  “You must ask my tradespeople that,” he answers; and he stood aside for them all to pass.

“Your English mind thinks only of the gain,” he said to me.

“And your French mind?” I asked.

“The game and not the winnings,” said he.