In vain Bridgar fired muskets all that afternoon and waved flags, to call the savages to the ship. A solitary figure, seeming to be a spy, emerged from the brushwood, gazing stolidly at the apparition of the ship. Presently, two or three more figures were discovered moving through the swamp. The next morning Governor Bridgar ordered the gig-boat lowered, and accompanied by Gillam and an escort of six sailors—rowed ashore. First impressions count much with the Indians. On such occasion, Hudson’s Bay Company officers never failed of pompous ostentation—profusion of gold lace, cocked hats for officers, colored regimentals for underlings, a bugler to the fore, or a Scotchman blowing his bagpipes, with a show of burnished firearms and helmets. On rowed the gig-boat toward the imperturbable figure on the shore. Some paces out, the boat grated bottom and stuck in the sand. A sailor had jumped to mid-waist in water to drag the craft in, when the stolid figure on the sand suddenly came to life. With a leap, leveled musket covering the incoming boat, the man had bounded to the water’s edge and in purest English shouted—“Halt!” “We are Hudson’s Bay Company men,” protested Bridgar standing up. “But I,” answered the figure, “am Radisson, and I hold possession of _all_ this region for France.” If the Frenchman had been Vesuvius suddenly erupted under some idling tourists, or if a ghost arisen from the ground, the English could not have been more astonished. They had thought they had finished with the troublesome Frenchman, and behold him, here, in possession with a musket leveled at their heads and three men commanding ambushed forces behind.