At all this ostentation I could not but smile; but no man ever had greater need of pomp to hold his own against uneven odds than Radisson.

As we were leaving came a noise that set us all by the ears—­the dull booming reverberations of heavy cannonading.

The Indians shook as with palsy.  Jean Groseillers cried out that his father’s ships were in peril.  Godefroy implored the saints; but with that lying facility which was his doom, M. de Radisson blandly informed the savages that more of his vessels had arrived from France.

Bidding Jean go on to the Habitation with the Indians, he took the rest of us ashore with one redskin as guide, to spy out the cause of the firing.

“’Twill be a pretty to-do if the English Fur Company’s ships arrive before we have a French fort ready to welcome them,” said he.

CHAPTER X

THE CAUSE OF THE FIRING

The landing was but a part of the labyrinthine trickery in which our leader delighted to play; for while Jean delayed the natives we ran overland through the woods, launched our canoe far ahead of the Indian flotilla, and went racing forward to the throbs of the leaping river.

“If a man would win, he must run fast as the hour-glass,” observed M. Radisson, poising his steering-pole.  “And now, my brave lads,” he began, counting in quick, sharp words that rang with command, “keep time—­one—­two—­three!  One—­two—­three!” And to each word the paddles dipped with the speed of a fly-wheel’s spokes.

“One—­two—­three!  In and up and on!  An you keep yourselves in hand, men, you can win against the devil’s own artillery!  Speed to your strokes, Godefroy,” he urged.

And the canoe answered as a fine-strung racer to the spur.  Shore-lines blurred to a green streak.  The frosty air met our faces in wind.  Gurgling waters curled from the prow in corrugated runnels.  And we were running a swift race with a tumult of waves, mounting the swell, dipping, rising buoyant, forward in bounds, with a roar of the nearing rapids, and spray dashing athwart in drifts.  M. Radisson braced back.  The prow lifted, shot into mid-air, touched water again, and went whirling through the mill-race that boiled below a waterfall.  Once the canoe aimed straight as an arrow for rocks in mid-current.  M. Radisson’s steel-shod pole flashed in the sun.  There was a quick thrust, answered by Godefroy’s counter-stroke at the stern; and the canoe grazed past the rocks not a hair’s-breadth off.

“Sainte Anne ha’ mercy!” mumbled Godefroy, baling water from the canoe as we breasted a turn in the river to calmer currents, “Sainte Anne ha’ mercy!  But the master’d run us over Niagara, if he had a mind.”

“Or the River Styx, if ’twould gain his end,” sharply added Radisson.

But he ordered our paddles athwart for snatched rest, while he himself kept alert at the bow.  With the rash presumption of youth, I offered to take the bow that he might rest; but he threw his head back with a loud laugh, more of scorn than mirth, and bade me nurse a wounded hand.  On the evening of the third day we came to the Habitation.  Without disembarking, M. de Radisson sent the soldiers on sentinel duty at the river front up to the fort with warning to prepare for instant siege.