Gray dawn came over the trees as I reached the swollen waters, and the sun was high in mid-heaven when I came to the gravel patch where M. de Radisson had camped.  Round a sharp bend in the river a strange sight unfolded.

A score of crested savages with painted bodies sat on the ground.  In the centre, clad like a king, with purple doublet and plumed hat and velvet waistcoat ablaze with medals of honour—­was M. Radisson.  One hand deftly held his scabbard forward so that the jewelled hilt shone against the velvet, and the other was raised impressively above the savages.  How had he made the savages come to him?  How are some men born to draw all others as the sea draws the streams?

The poor creatures had piled their robes at his feet as offerings to a god.

“What did he give for the pelts, Godefroy?” I asked.

“Words!” says Godefroy, with a grin, “gab and a drop o’ rum diluted in a pot o’ water!”

“What is he saying to them now?”

Godefroy shrugged his shoulders.  “That the gods have sent him a messenger to them; that the fire he brings “—­he was handing a musket to the chief—­“will smite the Indians’ enemy from the earth; that the bullet is magic to outrace the fleetest runner”—­this as M. Radisson fired a shot into mid-air that sent the Indians into ecstasies of childish wonder—­“that the bottle in his hands contains death, and if the Indians bring their hunt to the white-man, the white-man will never take the cork out except to let death fly at the Indians’ enemy”—­he lifted a little phial of poison as he spoke—­“that the Indian need never feel cold nor thirst, now that the white-man has brought fire-water!”

At this came a harsh laugh from a taciturn Indian standing on the outer rim of the crowd.  It was the fellow who had run through the forest with the torch.

“Who is that, Godefroy?”

“Le Borgne.”

“Le Borgne need not laugh,” retorted M. de Radisson sharply.  “Le Borgne knows the taste of fire-water!  Le Borgne has been with the white-man at the south, and knows what the white-man says is true.”

But Le Borgne only laughed the harder, deep, guttural, contemptuous “huh-huh’s!”—­a fitting rebuke, methought, for the ignoble deception implied in M. Radisson’s words.

Indeed, I would fain suppress this part of M. Radisson’s record, for he juggled with truth so oft, when he thought the end justified the means, he finally got a knack of juggling so much with truth that the means would never justify any end.  I would fain repress the ignoble faults of a noble leader, but I must even set down the facts as they are, so you may see why a man who was the greatest leader and trader and explorer of his times reaped only an aftermath of universal distrust.  He lied his way through thick and thin—­as we traders used to say—­till that lying habit of his sewed him up in a net of his own weaving like a grub in a cocoon.