“La Chesnaye!” uttered a sharp voice.  Radisson had heard.  “There are two things I don’t excuse a fool for—­not minding his own business and not holding his tongue.”

And though La Chesnaye’s money paid for the enterprise, he held his tongue mighty still.  Indeed, I think if any tongue had wagged twice in Radisson’s hearing he would have torn the offending member out.  Doing as we were bid without question, we all filed down to the canoe.  Less ice cumbered the upper current, and by the next day we were opposite Ben Gillam’s New England fort.

“La Chesnaye and Foret will shoot partridges,” commanded M. de Radisson.  Leaving them on the far side of the river, he bade the sailor and me paddle him across to young Gillam’s island.

What was our surprise to see every bastion mounted with heavy guns and the walls full manned.  We took the precaution of landing under shelter of the ship and fired a musket to call out sentinels.  Down ran Ben Gillam and a second officer, armed cap-a-pie, with swaggering insolence that they took no pains to conceal.

“Congratulate you on coming in the nick of time,” cried Ben.

“Now what in the Old Nick does he mean by that?” said Radisson.  “Does the cub think to cower me with his threats?”

“I trust your welcome includes my four officers,” he responded.  “Two are with me and two have gone for partridges.”

Ben bellowed a jeering laugh, and his second man took the cue.

“Your four officers may be forty devils,” yelled the lieutenant; “we’ve finished our fort.  Come in, Monsieur Radisson!  Two can play at the game of big talk!  You’re welcome in if you leave your forty officers out!”

For the space of a second M. Radisson’s eyes swept the cannon pointing from the bastion embrasures.  We were safe enough.  The full hull of their own ship was between the guns and us.

“Young man,” said M. Radisson, addressing Ben, “you may speak less haughtily, as I come in friendship.”

“Friendship!” flouted Ben, twirling his mustache and showing both rows of teeth.  “Pooh, pooh, M. Radisson!  You are not talking to a stripling!”

“I had thought I was—­and a very fool of a booby, too,” answered M. Radisson coolly.

“Sir!” roared young Gillam with a rumbling of oaths, and he fumbled his sword.

But his sword had not left the scabbard before M. de Radisson sent it spinning through mid-air into the sea.

“I must ask your forgiveness for that, boy,” said the Frenchman to Ben, “but a gentleman fights only his equals.”

Ben Gillam went white and red by turns, his nose flushing and paling like the wattle of an angry turkey; and he stammered out that he hoped M. de Radisson did not take umbrage at the building of a fort.

“We must protect ourselves from the English,” pleaded Ben.

“Pardieu, yes,” agreed M. de Radisson, proffering his own sword with a gesture in place of the one that had gone into the sea, “and I had come to offer you twenty men to hold the fort!”