So the wild youth went onward, shooting game at many places, until, at length, he had a large number of geese, ducks, and teal. There were more than he could possibly carry, so, hiding in a hollow tree the game that he could not bring back, he began trudging towards Three Rivers. Wading swollen brooks and scrambling over fallen trees, he finally caught sight of the town chapel, glimmering in the sunlight against the darkening horizon above the river. He had reached the place where his comrades had left him, so he sat down to rest himself. The shepherd had driven his sheep back to Three Rivers and there was no one near. The river came lapping through the rushes. There was a clacking of ducks as they came swooping down to their marsh nests and Radisson felt strangely lonely. He noticed, too, that his pistols were water-soaked. Emptying the charges, he re-loaded, then crept back to reconnoiter the woodland. Great flocks of ducks were swimming on the river, so he determined to have one more shot before he returned to the fort, now within easy hail. Young Pierre crept through the grass towards the game, but he suddenly stopped, for, before him was a sight that rooted him to the ground with horror. Just as they had fallen, naked and scalped, with bullet and hatchet wounds all over their bodies, lay his comrades of the morning. They were stone dead, lying face upward among the rushes. Radisson was too far away from the woods to get back to them, so, stooping down, he tried to reach a hiding place in the marsh. As he bent over, half a hundred tufted heads rose from the high grass, and beady eyes looked to see which way he might go. They were behind him, before him, on all sides of him,—his only hope was a dash for the cane-grown river, where he might hide himself until darkness would give him a chance to rush to the fort. Slipping a bullet and some powder into his musket as he ran, and ramming it down, young Pierre dashed through the brushwood for a place of safety. _Crash!_ A score of guns roared from the forest. He turned, and fired back, but; before he could re-load, an Iroquois brave was upon him, he was thrown upon his back, was disarmed, his hands were bound behind him with deer thongs, and he was dragged into the woods, where the Indians flaunted the scalps of his friends before his eyes. Half drawn, half driven, he was taken to the shore where a flotilla of canoes was hidden. Fires were kindled, and, upon forked sticks driven into the ground, the redskins boiled a kettle of water for the evening meal.