“Test our mettle!” sulked the trader, a key higher in his obstinacy.  “All very well to talk, sir, but how can we take a fort mounted with twenty cannon——­”

“I’ll tell you the how when it’s done,” interrupted M. de Radisson.

But Godefroy was one of those obstinates who would be silent only when stunned.

“I’d like to know, sir, what we’re to do,” he began.

“Godefroy, ’twould be waste time to knock sense in your pate!  There is only one thing to do always—­only one, the right thing!  Do it, fool!  An I hear more clack from you till it’s done, I’ll have your tongue out with the nippers!”

Godefroy cowered sulkily back, and M. de Radisson laughed.

“That will quell him,” said he.  “When Godefroy’s tongue is out he can’t grumble, and grumbling is his bread of life!”

Stripping off his bright doublet, M. Radisson hung it from a tree to attract the fort’s notice.  Then he posted us in ambuscade with orders to capture whatever came.

But nothing came.

And when the fort guns boomed out the noon hour M. Radisson sprang up all impatience.

“I’ll wait no man’s time,” he vowed.  “Losing time is losing the game!  Launch out!”

Chittering something about our throats being cut, Godefroy shrank back.  With a quick stride M. Radisson was towering above him.  Catching Godefroy by the scruff of the neck, he threw him face down into the canoe, muttering out it would be small loss if all the cowards in the world had their throats cut.

“The pirates come to trade,” he explained.  “They will not fire at Indians.  Bind your hair back like that Indian there!”

No sooner were we in the range of the fort than M. Radisson uttered the shrill call of a native, bade our Indian stand up, and himself enacted the pantomime of a savage, waving his arms, whistling, and hallooing.  With cries of welcome, the fort people ran to the shore and left their guns unmanned.  Reading from a syllable book, they shouted out Indian words.  It was safe to approach.  Before they could arm we could escape.  But we were two men, one lad, and a neutral Indian against an armed garrison in a land where killing was no murder.

M. de Radisson stood up and called in the Indian tongue.  They did not understand.

“New to it,” commented Radisson, “not the Hudson’s Bay Company!”

All the while he was imperceptibly approaching nearer.  He shouted in French.  They shook their heads.

“English highwaymen, blundered in here by chance,” said he.

Tearing off the Indian head-band of disguise, he demanded in mighty peremptory tones who they were.

“English,” they called back doubtfully.

“What have you come for?” insisted Radisson, with a great swelling of his chest.

“The beaver trade,” came a faint voice.

Where had I heard it before?  Did it rise from the ground in the woods, or from a far memory of children throwing a bully into the sea?