With a desire for revenge was linked the practical consideration that slaves would prove useful at Port Royal.  A week later the French returned to the same place, ’resolved to get possession of some savages and, taking them to our settlement, put them to grinding corn at the hand-mill, as punishment for the deadly assault which they had committed on five or six of our company.’  As relations were strained, it became necessary to offer beads and gewgaws, with every show of good faith.  Champlain describes the plan in full.  The shallop was to leave the barque for shore, taking

the most robust and strong men we had, each one having a chain of beads and a fathom of match on his arm; and there, while pretending to smoke with them (each one having an end of his match lighted so as not to excite suspicion, it being customary to have fire at the end of a cord in order to light the tobacco), coax them with pleasing words so as to draw them into the shallop; and if they should be unwilling to enter, each one approaching should choose his man and, putting the beads round his neck, should at the same time put the rope on him to draw him by force.  But if they should be too boisterous and it should not be possible to succeed, they should be stabbed, the rope being firmly held; and if by chance any of them should get away, there should be men on land to charge upon them with swords.  Meanwhile, the little cannon on our barque was to be kept ready to fire upon their companions in case they should come to assist them, under cover of which firearms the shallop could withdraw in security.

This plot, though carefully planned, fell far short of the success which was anticipated.  To catch a redskin with a noose required more skill than was available.  Accordingly, none were taken alive.  Champlain says:  ’We retired to our barque after having done all we could.’  Lescarbot adds:  ’Six or seven of the savages were hacked and hewed in pieces, who could not run so lightly in the water as on shore, and were caught as they came out by those of our men who had landed.’

Having thus taken an eye for an eye, Poutrincourt began his homeward voyage, and, after three or four escapes from shipwreck, reached Port Royal on November 14.

Champlain was now about to spend his last winter in Acadia.  Mindful of former experiences, he determined to fight scurvy by encouraging exercise among the colonists and procuring for them an improved diet.  A third desideratum was cheerfulness.  All these purposes he served through founding the Ordre de Bon Temps, which proved to be in every sense the life of the settlement.  Champlain himself briefly describes the procedure followed, but a far more graphic account is given by Lescarbot, whose diffuse and lively style is illustrated to perfection in the following passage: