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Updated: June 4, 2025
Gillam's journal records that the Nonsuch left Gravesend the 3d of June, 1668, reached Resolution Island on August 4, and came to anchor at the south of James Bay on September 29. It was here that Radisson had come overland five years before, when he thought that he discovered a river flowing from the direction of the St. Lawrence. The river was Nemisco.
Leaving them on the far side of the river, he bade the sailor and me paddle him across to young Gillam's island. What was our surprise to see every bastion mounted with heavy guns and the walls full manned. We took the precaution of landing under shelter of the ship and fired a musket to call out sentinels.
"Not much to boast in the way of a fleet," taunts Ben. "Those are the two smallest we have," quickly explains Radisson. Gillam's face went blank, and M. Radisson's eyes closed to the watchful slit of a cat mouse-hunting. "Come! Come!" exclaims Ben, with a sudden flare of friendliness, "I am no baby-eater! Put a peg in that! Shiver my soul if this is a way to welcome friends!
Radisson thanked the savages for their good will, but declined their offer. Floods had damaged the water-rotted timbers of the two old hulls in which the explorers voyaged north. It was agreed to return to Quebec in Ben Gillam's boat. A vessel was constructed on one of the hulls to send the English prisoners to the Hudson's Bay Company forts at the south end of the bay.
The spell of a presence was there. Then it came home to me what a desperate game the French doctor had played. That sword-thrust in the dark meant death; so did the attack on Ben Gillam's fort; and was it not Le Borgne, M. Picot's Indian ally, who had counselled the massacre of the sleeping tribe? You must not think that M. Picot was worse than other traders of those days!
While the cook was preparing our supper and Ben disguising as a French wood-runner, we wandered at will, M. Radisson all the while uttering low laughs and words as of thoughts. It was "Caught neat as a mouse in a trap! Don't let him spill the canoe when we're running the traverse, Ramsay! May the fiends blast La Chesnaye if he opens his foolish mouth in Gillam's hearing!
To go into a thing like that! How rude!" says Mrs. Chichester, going off into a little convulsion of laughter behind her fan. "Talking of clothes," says Captain Marryatt at the moment, "did you ever see anything like Gillam's get up?" "Gillam? Is that Mrs. Bethune's partner?" "Yes. Just look at his trousers, his diamonds! How can Mrs. Bethune stand it all?"
Gillam's Nonsuch with Groseilliers went on, but the Eaglet with Radisson was disabled and forced to return, and the season was now too late to permit Radisson to set sail again until the following spring.
At Gillam's Point Jeff and his friends, with Dunn and Quillen, left the Bellingham on the launch which brought the pilot. They caught the fast express a half hour later and reached Verden shortly after midnight.
'It is impossible, wrote Louis XIV to Governor La Barre, 'to imagine what you mean by releasing Gillam's boat and relinquishing claim to the North Sea, At the same time Louis was in a quandary. He would not relinquish the French claim to the North Sea; but he dared not risk a rupture of his secret treaty with England by openly countenancing Radisson's exploit on the Nelson river.
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