’Twas Le Borgne, the one-eyed, emerging from the gloom of the snow like a ghost.  By signs and Indian words the fellow offered to guide us back to our Habitation.

We reached the fort that night, Le Borgne flitting away like a shadow, as he had come.  And the first thing we did was to hold a service of thanks to God Almighty for our deliverance.

[1] See Radisson’s account—­Prince Society (1885), Boston—­Bodleian Library.—­Canadian Archives, 1895-’96.

CHAPTER XIV

A CHALLENGE

Filling the air with ghost-shadows, silencing earth, muffling the sea, day after day fell the snow.  Shore-ice barred out the pounding surf.  The river had frozen to adamant.  Brushwood sank in the deepening drifts like a foundered ship, and all that remained visible of evergreens was an occasional spar or snow mushroom on the crest of a branch.

No east, no west, no day, no night; nothing but a white darkness, billowing snow, and a silence as of death.  It was the cold, silent, mystic, white world of northern winter.

At one moment the fort door flings wide with a rush of frost like smoke clouds, and in stamps Godefroy, shaking snow off with boisterous noise and vowing by the saints that the drifts are as high as the St. Pierre’s deck.  M. Groseillers orders the rascal to shut the door; but bare has the latch clicked when young Jean whisks in, tossing snow from cap and gauntlets like a clipper shaking a reef to the spray, and declares that the snow is already level with the fort walls.

“Eh, nephew,” exclaims Radisson sharply, “how are the cannon?”

Ben Gillam, who has lugged himself from bed to the hearth for the first time since his freezing, blurts out a taunting laugh.  We had done better to build on the sheltered side of an island, he informs us.

“Now, the shivers take me!” cries Ben, “but where a deuce are all your land forces and marines and jack-tars and forty thousand officers?”

He cast a scornful look down our long, low-roofed barracks, counting the men gathered round the hearth and laughing as he counted.  M. Radisson affected not to hear, telling Jean to hoist the cannon and puncture embrasures high to the bastion-roofs like Italian towers.

“Monsieur Radisson,” impudently mouths Ben, who had taken more rum for his health than was good for his head, “I asked you to inform me where your land forces are?”

“Outside the fort constructing a breastwork of snow.”

“Good!” sneers Ben.  “And the marines?”

“On the ships, where they ought to be.”

“Good!” laughs Gillam again.  “And the officers?”

“Superintending the raising of the cannon.  And I would have you to know, young man,” adds Radisson, “that when a guest asks too many questions, a host may not answer.”

But Ben goes on unheeding.

“Now I’ll wager that dog of a runaway slave o’ mine, that Jack Battle who’s hiding hereabouts, I’ll wager the hangdog slave and pawn my head you haven’t a corporal’s guard o’ marines and land forces all told!”