were swimming on the water.  That reassured him, for the bird is more alert to alarm than man.  The fort was almost within call.  Radisson determined to have a shot at such easy quarry; but as he crept through the grass toward the game, he almost stumbled over what rooted him to the spot with horror.  Just as they had fallen, naked and scalped, with bullet and hatchet wounds all over their bodies, lay his comrades of the morning, dead among the rushes.  Radisson was too far out to get back to the woods.  Stooping, he tried to grope to the hiding of the rushes.  As he bent, half a hundred heads rose from the grasses, peering which way he might go.  They were behind, before, on all sides—­his only hope was a dash for the cane-grown river, where he might hide by diving and wading, till darkness gave a chance for a rush to the fort.  Slipping bullet and shot in his musket as he ran, and ramming down the paper, hoping against hope that he had not been seen, he dashed through the brushwood.  A score of guns crashed from the forest.[5] Before he realized the penalty that the Iroquois might exact for such an act, he had fired back; but they were upon him.  He was thrown down and disarmed.  When he came giddily to his senses, he found himself being dragged back to the woods, where the Iroquois flaunted the fresh scalps of his dead friends.  Half drawn, half driven, he was taken to the shore.  Here, a flotilla of canoes lay concealed where he had been hunting wild-fowl but a few hours before.  Fires were kindled, and the crotched sticks driven in the ground to boil the kettle for the evening meal.  The young Frenchman was searched, stripped, and tied round the waist with a rope, the Indians yelling and howling like so many wolves all the while till a pause was given their jubilation by the alarm of a scout that the French and Algonquins were coming.  In a trice, the fire was out and covered.  A score of young braves set off to reconnoitre.  Fifty remained at the boats; but if Radisson hoped for a rescue, he was doomed to disappointment.  The warriors returned.  Seventy Iroquois gathered round a second fire for the night.  The one predominating passion of the savage nature is bravery.  Lying in ambush, they had heard this French youth laugh at his comrades’ fears.  In defiance of danger, they had seen him go hunting alone.  After he had heard an alarm, he had daringly come out to shoot at the ducks.  And, then, boy as he was, when attacked he had instantly fired back at numerous enough enemies to have intimidated a score of grown men.  There is not the slightest doubt it was Radisson’s bravery that now saved him from the fate of his companions.