M. Colbert did not give his patronage to the scheme; but he wished Radisson a God-speed.  The Jesuits advanced Radisson money to pay his passage; and in the fall of 1681, he arrived in Quebec.  La Chesnaye met him, and Groseillers was summoned.  The three then went to the Chateau Saint-Louis to lay their plans before the governor.  Though the privileges of the West Indies Company had been curtailed, the fur trade was again regulated by license.[1] Frontenac had granted a license to the Company of the North for the fur trade of Hudson Bay.  He could not openly favor Radisson; but he winked at the expedition by granting passports to the explorers, and the three men who were to accompany him, Jean Baptiste, son of Groseillers, Pierre Allemand, the pilot who was afterward given a commission to explore the Eskimo country, and Jean Godefroy, an interpreter.[2] Jean Baptiste, Radisson’s nephew, invested 500 pounds in goods for barter.  Others of Three Rivers and Quebec advanced money, to provision the ship.[3] Ten days after Radisson’s arrival in Quebec, the explorers had left the high fortress of the St. Lawrence to winter in Acadia.  When spring came, they went with the fishing fleets to Isle Percee, where La Chesnaye was to send the ships.  Radisson’s ship, the St. Pierre,—­named after himself,—­came first, a rickety sloop of fifty tons with a crew of twelve mutinous, ill-fed men, a cargo of goods for barter, and scant enough supply of provisions.  Groseillers’ ship, the St. Anne, was smaller and better built, with a crew of fifteen.  The explorers set sail on the 11th of July.  From the first there was trouble with the crews.  Fresh-water voyageurs make bad ocean sailors.  Food was short.  The voyage was to be long.  It was to unknown waters, famous for disaster.  The sea was boisterous.  In the months of June and July, the North Atlantic is beset with fog and iceberg.  The ice sweeps south in mountainous bergs that have thawed and split before they reach the temperate zones.[4] On the 30th of July the two ships passed the Straits of Belle Isle.  Fog-banks hung heavy on the blue of the far watery horizon.  Out of the fog, like ghosts in gloom, drifted the shadowy ice-floes.  The coast of Labrador consists of bare, domed, lonely hills alternated with rock walls rising sheer from the sea as some giant masonry.  Here the rock is buttressed by a sharp angle knife-edged in a precipice.  There, the beetling walls are guarded by long reefs like the teeth of a saw.  Over these reefs, the drifting tide breaks with multitudinous voices.  The French voyageurs had never known such seafaring.  In the wail of the white-foamed reefs, their superstition heard the shriek of the demons.  The explorers had anchored in one of the sheltered harbors, which the sailors call “holes-in-the-wall.”  The crews mutinied.  They would go no farther through ice-drift and fog to an unknown sea.  Radisson never waited for the contagion of fear to work.  He ordered anchors up and headed for open sea.  Then he tried to encourage the sailors with promises.  They would not hear him; for the ship’s galley was nearly empty of food.  Then Radisson threatened the first mutineer to show rebellion with such severe punishment as the hard customs of the age permitted.  The crew sulked, biding its time.  At that moment the lookout shouted “Sail ho!”