"When 'tis safe, we might plan a surprise. The only doubt is how many of those pirates are there who attacked you in the woods?"
And he sat back whiffing his pipe and gazing in space. By this, La Chesnaye had distributed so generous a treat that half the sailors were roaring out hilarious mirth. Godefroy astride a bench played big drum on the wrong-end-up of the cook's dish-pan. Allemand attempted to fiddle a poker across the tongs. Voyageurs tried to shoot the big canoe over a waterfall; for when Jean tilted one end of the long bench, they landed as cleanly on the floor as if their craft had plunged. But the copper-faced Le Borgne remained taciturn and tongue-tied.
"Be curse to that wall-eyed knave," muttered Radisson. "He's too deep a man to let go! We must capture him or win him!"
"Perhaps when he becomes more friendly we may track him back to the inlanders," I suggested.
M. de Radisson closed one eye and looked at me attentively.
"La Chesnaye," he called, "treat that fellow like a king!"
And the rafters rang so loud with the merriment that we none of us noticed the door flung open, nor saw two figures stamping off the snow till they had thrown a third man bound at M. de Radisson's feet. The messengers sent to spy out the marsh had returned with a half-frozen prisoner.
"We found him where the ice is soft. He was half dead," explained one scout.
Silence fell. Through the half-dark the Indian glided towards the door. The unconscious prisoner lay face down.
As our men rolled him roughly over, the captive uttered a heavy groan. His arms fell away from his face revealing little Jack Battle, the castaway, in a haven as strange as of old.
"Search him before he wakes," commanded Radisson roughly.
In the pouches of the caribou coat was only pemmican; but my hand crushed against a softness in the inner waistcoat. I pulled it out--a little, old glove, the colour Hortense had dangled the day that Ben Gillam fell into the sea.
There crumpled out a yellow paper. M. Radisson snatched it up.
It was a page of my copy-book, when I used to take lessons with Rebecca. Replacing paper and glove, I closed up the sailor lad's coat.
I was mighty thankful, as you may guess, that other hands than mine found the tell-tale missive--a badly writ letter addressed to "Captain Zechariah Gillium."