We learn our hardest lessons from unlikeliest masters.  This one came to me from the Indians of the blood-dyed northern snows.

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“Don’t show your faces till you have something to report about those pirates, who led the Indians,” was M. Radisson’s last command, as we sallied from the New Englanders’ fort with a firing of cannon and beating of drums.

Godefroy, the trader, muttered under his breath that M. Radisson need never fear eternal torment.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, if he goes there,” answered Godefroy, “he’ll get the better o’ the Nick.”

I think the fellow was smarting from recent punishment.  He and Allemand, the drunken pilot, had been draining gin kegs on the sly and replacing what they took with snow water.  That last morning at prayers Godefroy, who was half-seas over, must yelp out a loud “Amen” in the wrong place.  Without rising from his knees, or as much as changing his tone, M. de Radisson brought the drunken knave such a cuff it flattened him to the floor.

Then prayers went on as before.

The Indians, whom we had nursed of their wounds, were to lead us to the tribe, one only being held by M. Radisson as hostage for safe conduct.  In my mind, that trust to the Indians’ honour was the single mistake M. Radisson made in the winter’s campaign.  In the first place, the Indian has no honour.  Why should he have, when his only standard of right is conquest?  In the second place, kindness is regarded as weakness by the Indian.  Why should it not be, when his only god is victory?  In the third place, the lust of blood, to kill, to butcher, to mutilate, still surged as hot in their veins as on the night when they had attempted to scale our walls.  And again I ask why not, when the law of their life was to kill or to be killed?  These questions I put to you because life put them to me.  At the time my father died, the gentlemen of King Charles’s court were already affecting that refinement of philosophy which justifies despotism.  From justifying despotism, ’twas but a step to justifying the wicked acts of tyranny; and from that, but another step to thrusting God’s laws aside as too obsolete for our clever courtiers.  “Give your unbroken colt tether enough to pull itself up with one sharp fall,” M. Radisson used to say, “and it will never run to the end of its line again.”

The mind of Europe spun the tissue of foolish philosophy.  The savage of the wilderness went the full tether; and I leave you to judge whether the might that is right or the right that is might be the better creed for a people.

But I do not mean to imply that M. Radisson did not understand the savages better than any man of us in the fort.  He risked three men as pawns in the game he was playing for mastery of the fur trade.  Gamester of the wilderness as he was, Pierre Radisson was not the man to court a certain loss.