"I will give it to one of my squaws," he said. "The papooses in my lodge
will play with it. Come, Medecine, Tatua will go and drink fire-water;"
and, shouldering his carabine, he turned his broad back without ceremony
upon the monarch and his train, and disappeared down one of the walks
of the garden. Franklin found him when his own interview with the French
Chief Magistrate was over; being attracted to the spot where the Chief
was, by the crack of his well-known rifle. He was laughing in his quiet
way. He had shot the Colonel of the Swiss Guards through his cockade.

Three days afterwards, as the gallant frigate, the "Repudiator," was
sailing out of Brest Harbor, the gigantic form of an Indian might be
seen standing on the binnacle in conversation with Commodore Bowie, the
commander of the noble ship. It was Tatua, the Chief of the Nose-rings.


II.


Leatherlegs and Tom Coxswain did not accompany Tatua when he went to the
Parisian metropolis on a visit to the father of the French pale-faces.
Neither the Legs nor the Sailor cared for the gayety and the crowd of
cities; the stout mariner's home was in the puttock-shrouds of the old
"Repudiator." The stern and simple trapper loved the sound of the waters
better than the jargon of the French of the old country. "I can follow
the talk of a Pawnee," he said, "or wag my jaw, if so be necessity bids
me to speak, by a Sioux's council-fire and I can patter Canadian
French with the hunters who come for peltries to Nachitoches or
Thichimuchimachy; but from the tongue of a Frenchwoman, with white flour
on her head, and war-paint on her face, the Lord deliver poor Natty