Daily more warriors gathered; nightly the war drum pounded; week after week the beleaguered and imprisoned French heard their stealthy enemy closing nearer and nearer on them, and the painted foliage of autumn frosts gave place to the leafless trees and the drifting snows of midwinter. The French were hemmed in completely as if on a desert isle, and no help could come from Quebec, where New France was literally under Iroquois siege. {101} The question was, what to do? Messengers had been secretly sent to Quebec, but the Mohawks had caught the scouts bringing back answers, and there was no safe escape from the colony through ambushed woods in midwinter. The Iroquois could afford to bide their time for victims who could not escape. All winter the whites secretly built boats in the lofts of the fort, but when the timbers were put together the boats had to be brought downstairs, and a Huron convert spread a terrifying report of a second deluge for which the white men were preparing a second Noah's Ark. Mohawk warriors at once scented an attempt to escape when the ice broke up in spring, and placed their braves in ambush along the portages. Also they sent a deputation to see if that story of the boats were true. Forewarned by Radisson, the whites built a floor over the boats, heaped canoes above the floor, and invited the Mohawk spies in. The Mohawks smiled grimly and were reassured. Canoes would be ripped into shingles if they ran the ice jam of spring. The Iroquois felt doubly certain of their victims; but Radisson, free to go among the warriors as one of themselves, learned that they were plotting to murder half the colony and hold the other half as hostages for the safety of the twelve Indians in the dungeon at Quebec. The whites could delay no longer. Something must be done, but what? Radisson, knowing the Indian customs, proposed a way out. No normally built savage could refuse an invitation to a sumptuous feast. According to Indian custom, no feaster dare leave uneaten food on his plate. Waste to the Indian is crime. In the words of the Scotch proverb, "Better burst than waste." And all Indians have implicit faith in dreams. Radisson dreamed--so he told the Indians--that the white men were to give them a marvelous banquet. No sooner dreamed than done! The Iroquois probably thought it a chance to obtain possession inside the fort; but the whites had taken good care to set the banquet between inner and outer walls.