In this town, also, the tortures were repeated with many horrid additions. Father Jogues, ever tender and sympathetic for the sufferings of his converts, was compelled to look on, and see the fingers of one of his Hurons nearly sawed off with a rough shell, and then violently torn off with the sinews uncut. Father Jogues and his companion René Goupil were led to a cabin and ordered to sing. Availing themselves of the command, they devoutly chanted the Psalms of David. They were burned in several parts of their bodies. Then two poles were erected in the air, in the form of a cross, and Father Jogues was tied to it by cords of twisted bark, thus throwing the whole weight of his body upon his wounded and lacerated arms. He asked to be released in mercy, in order that he might prepare for death, which he thought would result from his tortures, but this was refused him. Begging pardon of God for having made such a request, he had already resigned himself to the mercies of heaven, when suddenly an Indian in the crowd, touched with compassion, rushed forward and cut the cords that bound him to the cross. During the night he was again tied to a stake driven in the ground, and his sufferings were prolonged without relief till morning. On the following day the prisoners were carried back to the second town they had entered. Here the council decided to spare the lives of the French for the present, and to put the Hurons to death. Father Jogues and René Goupil lingered in suffering, and almost at the point of death, for three weeks, at Gandawagué, now Caughnawaga, in New York. The Mohawks had concluded to send them back when convenient to Three Rivers. In the meantime, the Dutch settlers in New Netherland, who were allies of the Mohawks, heard that their Iroquois neighbors and friends had taken some European prisoners. These generous Dutch, headed by their minister, the worthy Dominie Megapolensis, took the matter in hand, and raised six hundred guilders for the ransom of the French prisoners. Accordingly Arendt Curler set out with this sum, accompanied by two burghers from Rensselaerswyck, now Albany, for the Mohawk castles. The treaty between the Dutch and the Mohawks was renewed, but neither money nor diplomacy could move the chiefs to deliver up the prisoners, whose importance they began now to perceive from the effort made for their release. All that the Dutch could obtain was a promise to send them back to Three Rivers. Afterwards, divisions arose among the savages as to what disposition should be made of Father Jogues and René. In the meantime their lives were suspended upon the capricious humors and passions of the cruel Mohawks. The master of the cabin on seeing this ordered a young brave to put René to death; that order was afterwards obeyed.