MAP OF HUDSON BAY
Before September the ships rode triumphantly into Five-Fathom-Hole off Nelson River, Hudson Bay. Here two great rivers, wide as the St. Lawrence, rolled to the sea, separated by a long tongue of sandy dunes. The north river was the Nelson; the south, the Hayes. Approach to both was dangerous, shallow, sandy, and bowlder strewn; but Radisson's vessels were light draught, and he ran them in on the tide to Hayes River on the south, where his men took possession for France and erected log huts as a fort.
Groseillers remained at the fort to command the twenty-seven men. Young Chouart ranged the swamps and woods for Indians, and Radisson had paddled down the Hayes from meeting some Assiniboine hunters, when, to his amazement, there rolled across the wooded swamps the most astonishing report that could be heard in desolate solitudes. It was the rolling reverberation, the dull echo of a far-away cannon firing signal after signal.
Like a flash Radisson guessed the game. After all, the Hudson's Bay Company had taken his advice and were sending ships to trade on the west coast. The most of men, supported by only twenty-seven mutineers, would have scuttled ships and escaped overland, but the explorers of New France, Champlain and Jolliet and La Salle, were not made of the stuff that runs from trouble.
Picking out three men, Radisson crossed the marsh northward to reconnoiter on Nelson River. Through the brush he espied a white tent on what is now known as Gillam's Island, a fortress half built, and a ship at anchor. All night he and his spies watched, but none of the builders came near enough to be seized, and next day at noon Radisson put a bold face on and paddled within cannon shot of the island.
Here was a pretty to-do, indeed! The Frenchman must have laughed till he shook with glee! It was not the Hudson's Bay Company ship at all, but a poacher, a pirate, an interloper, forbidden by the laws of the English Company's monopoly; and who was the poacher but Ben Gillam, of Boston, son of Captain Gillam of the Hudson's Bay Company, with whom, no doubt, he was in collusion to defraud the English traders! Calling for Englishmen to come down to the shore as hostages for fair treatment, Radisson went boldly aboard the young man's ship, saw everything, counted the men, noted the fact that Gillam's crew were mutinous, and half frightened the life out of the young Boston captain by telling him of the magnificent fort the French had on the south river, of the frigates and cannon and the powder magazines. As a friend he advised young Gillam not to permit his men to approach the French; otherwise they might be attacked by the Quebec soldiers. Then the crafty Radisson paddled off, smiling to himself; but not so fast, not so easy! As he drifted down Nelson River, what should he run into full tilt but the Hudson's Bay Company ship itself, bristling with cannon, manned by his old enemy, Captain Gillam!
If the two English parties came together, Radisson was lost. He must beat them singly before they met; and again putting on a bold face, he marched out, met his former associates, and as a friend advised them not to ascend the river farther. Fortunately for Radisson, both Gillam and Bridgar, the Hudson's Bay governor, were drinking heavily and glad to take his advice. The winter passed, with Radisson perpetrating such tricks on his rivals as a player might with the dummy men on a chessboard; but the chessboard, with the English rivals for pawns, was suddenly upset by the unexpected. Young Gillam discovered that Radisson had no fort at all,—only log cabins with a handful of ragamuffin bushrovers; and Captain Gillam senior got word of young Gillam's presence. Radisson had to act, act quickly, and on the nail.
Leaving half a dozen men as hostages in young Gillam's fort, Radisson invited the youth to visit the French fort for which the young Boston fellow had expressed such skeptical scorn. To make a long story short, young Gillam was no sooner out of his own fort than the French hostages took peaceable possession of it, and Gillam was no sooner in Radisson's fort than the French clapped him a prisoner in their guardroom. Ignorant that the French had captured young Gillam's fort, the Hudson's Bay Company men had marched upstream at dead of night to his rescue. The English knocked for admittance. The French guards threw open the gates. In marched the English traders. The French clapped the gates to. The English were now themselves prisoners. Such a double victory would have been impossible to the French if the Hudson's Bay Company men had not fuddled themselves with drink and allowed their fine ship, the Prince Rupert, to be wrecked in the ice drive.
In spring the ice jam wrecked Radisson's vessels, too, so he was compelled to send the most of his prisoners in a sloop down Hudson Bay to Prince Rupert, while he carried the rest with him on young Gillam's ship down to Quebec with an enormous cargo of furs.
By all the laws of navigation Ben Gillam was nothing more or less than pirate. The monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company forbade him trading on Hudson Bay. The license of the Company of the North at Quebec also excluded him. In later years, indeed, young Gillam turned pirate outright, was captured in connection with Captain Kidd at Boston, and is supposed to have been executed with the famous pirate. But when Radisson left Nelson in charge of young Chouart and came down to Quebec with young Gillam's ship as prize, a change had taken place at Quebec. Governor Frontenac had been recalled. In his place was La Barre, whose favor could be bought by any man who would pay the bribe, and who had already ruined La Salle by permitting creditors to seize Fort Frontenac. England and France were at peace. Therefore La Barre gave Gillam's vessel back to him. The revenue collectors were permitted to seize all the furs which La Chesnaye had not already shipped to France. Though La Barre was reprimanded by the King for both acts, not a sou did Radisson and Groseillers and Chouart ever receive for their investment; and Radisson was ordered to report at once to the King in France.