They then continued their route to Tadoussac, where they found the "General" David Kerk, who received them very kindly. Champlain also met his brother-in-brother, Boullé, who had been made prisoner, and the arch-traitor and rebel, Jacques Michel, who had guided the English in both their expeditions. He was vice-admiral of the fleet, which consisted of five large ships of four to five hundred tons, and about one hundred and twenty men each. "With the exception of the officers," says Champlain, "they were no great things."
The commander in chief, David Quer, Guer, Kertk, or Kerk (for his name is spelt in all these ways), proceeded up the river to Quebec, to see how matters were going on, while Champlain remained at Tadoussac, "passing the time as well as we could till his return." The "General" came back in ten or twelve days, and at supper a few days after, to Champlain's great amazement and anger, produced a letter which he had received from a certain Marsolet, a deserter from the settlement and an abominable scoundrel, who acted as interpreter to the English, to the effect that a canoe had arrived at Quebec, bringing intelligence of a council having been held by the Indians to deliberate whether Champlain should take the two little girls, whom they had given him, to France; and that the result had been that the girls were not to be allowed to go, and the General was requested to detain them.
"I judged immediately," says Champlain, "that the gallant had invented this cunning story to keep the girls," as one of them, named Espérance, had shortly before told him that Marsolet had solicited her to leave Champlain and go with him, promising all sorts of things if she would consent. Champlain represented to the "General" that the girls had been freely given him by the Indians to be brought up in the Christian faith, and that he loved them as his own daughters. He entreated him to allow them to go with him to France, otherwise "they might, by remaining in the country, fall back into the hands of the devil, from which he had extricated them"; and that Marsolet had invented the tale of the Indian council to gain his ends and ruin the poor girls, as he, Champlain, knew, that at the council which had been held at Trois Rivières, there had been no question whatever either of the girls or of Marsolet, and that two men, whom he could produce, could prove that the Indians were very glad that the girls should remain with him. The "General," however, for some reason or other which he did not mention, was not disposed to let the young "sauvagesses" go, notwithstanding the intervention of his brother Thomas and of Michel, and the bitter weeping of the poor girls themselves, "who could neither eat nor drink for crying," begging him, whom they loved as a father, not to abandon them.