He had scarcely finished speaking when the guns began to go off in twos and threes and sixes, anyhow, in fact. Then the surgeon put away his pistol and laughed, for there was not a splash on the water anywhere. "The Father was right; it's only a salute. Do they often do this?" he asked of the nearest of the canoemen. "I've not seen it before." The Indian looked very knowing and mysterious, and, after a pause, answered: "It is a royal salute. They only fire like this for a great Iroquois chief, or for a messenger from the white king." Very soon another succession of reports came, the guns all the while trained so accurately on the boat that even Bigsby, fresh from three years' constant active service at the Cape, began earnestly to hope that no one had, in the excitement of the moment, dropped a bullet into a gun-muzzle by mistake. Before the muskets could be loaded a third time the travellers were safely at the landing-stage. At other Indian villages the doctor had noticed that the priest was always subjected to lengthy greetings, speechifyings, and very elaborate homage. The homage and the greetings were not absent to-day, but they were of the hurried and perfunctory sort, for everyone, after a word and an obeisance to his reverend fellow-traveller, turned to Bigsby himself; and the old chief, coming forward with tremulous respect, began to address a long oration to him, calling him the lord of lakes and forests, the father of the red man, the slayer of beasts, and a score of other titles; in short, "describing him ever so much better than he knew himself," as John Ridd says. While he was stammering out a suitable acknowledgment in French, the parish priest came hurrying to greet his superior, and then the mystery was explained, for Père Tabeau introduced the lord of lakes, etc., to him as plain "Surgeon Bigsby." The old _curé_ laughed heartily. "I understand. Your uniform is responsible for all this, monsieur. Your boatmen had told us that an ambassador from the king was coming with the Père Supérieur." He pointed at the doctor's regimental coat. "Then that is why all the canoemen have been so distant and servile with me to-day," said the young surgeon. "I've not been able to get a word out of them."