at a distance, and those of Radisson’s warriors who had not guns were armed with bows and arrows, and wore a shield of buffalo skin dried hard as metal.  The Iroquois rushed for the barricade at the foot of the Sault.  Five of them were picked off as they ran.  For a moment the Iroquois were out of cover, and their weakness was betrayed.  They had only one hundred and fifty men, while Radisson had five hundred; but the odds would not long be in his favor.  Ammunition was running out, and the enemy must be dislodged without wasting a shot.  Radisson called back encouragement to his followers.  They answered with a shout.  Tying the beaver pelts in great bundles, the Indians rolled the fur in front nearer and nearer the Iroquois boats, keeping under shelter from the shots of the fort.  The Iroquois must either lose their boats and be cut off from escape, or retire from the fort.  It was not necessary for Radisson’s warriors to fire a shot.  Abandoning even their baggage and glad to get off with their lives, the Iroquois dashed to save their boats.

[Illustration:  Voyageurs running the Rapids of the Ottawa River.]

A terrible spectacle awaited Radisson inside the enclosure of the palisades.[21] The scalps of dead Indians flaunted from the pickets.  Not a tree but was spattered with bullet marks as with bird shot.  Here and there burnt holes gaped in the stockades like wounds.  Outside along the river bank lay the charred bones of captives who had been burned.  The scarred fort told its own tale.  Here refugees had been penned up by the Iroquois till thirst and starvation did their work.  In the clay a hole had been dug for water by the parched victims, and the ooze through the mud eagerly scooped up.  Only when he reached Montreal did Radisson learn the story of the dismantled fort.  The rumor carried to the explorers on Lake Michigan of a thousand Iroquois going on the war-path to exterminate the French had been only too true.  Half the warriors were to assault Quebec, half to come down on Montreal from the Ottawa.  One thing only could save the French—­to keep the bands apart.  Those on the Ottawa had been hunting all winter and must necessarily be short of powder.  To intercept them, a gallant band of seventeen French, four Algonquins, and sixty Hurons led by Dollard took their stand at the Long Sault.  The French and their Indian allies were boiling their kettles when two hundred Iroquois broke from the woods.  There was no time to build a fort.  Leaving their food, Dollard and his men threw themselves into the rude palisades which Indians had erected the previous year.  The Iroquois kept up a constant fire and sent for reinforcements of six hundred warriors, who were on the Richelieu.  In defiance the Indians fighting for the French sallied out, scalped the fallen Iroquois, and hoisted the sanguinary trophies on long poles above the pickets.  The enraged Iroquois redoubled their fury.  The fort was too small