LE MOYNE D'IBERVILLE
Eastward of Moose was Rupert Fort, where the company's ship anchored. Hither the raiders plied their canoes by sea. Look at the map! Across the bottom of James Bay projects a long tongue of swamp land. To save time, Iberville portaged across this, and by July 1 was opposite Prince Rupert's bastions. At the dock lay the English ship. That day Iberville's men kept in hiding, but at night he had ambushed his men along shore and paddled across to the ship. Just as Iberville stepped on the deck a man on guard sprang at his throat. One blow of Iberville's sword killed the Englishman on the spot. Stamping to call the crew aloft, Iberville sabered the men as they scrambled up the hatches, till the Governor himself threw up hands in unconditional surrender. The din had alarmed the fort, and hot shot snapping fire from the loopholes kept the raiders off till the Le Moyne brothers succeeded in scrambling to the roofs of the bastions, hacking holes through the rough thatch and firing inside. This drove the English gunners from their cannon. A moment later, and the raiders were on the walls. It was a repetition of the fight at Moose Factory. The English, taken by surprise, surrendered at once; and the French now had thirty prisoners, a good ship, two forts, but no provisions.
Northwestward three hundred miles lay Albany Fort. Iberville led off in canoes with his bushrovers. De Troyes followed on the English boat with French soldiers and English prisoners. To save time, as the bay seemed shallow, Iberville struck out from the shore across seas. All at once a north wind began whipping the waters, sweeping down a maelstrom of churning ice. Worse still, fog fell thick as wool. Any one who knows canoe travel knows the danger. Iberville avoided swamping by ordering his men to camp for the night on the shifting ice pans, canoes held above heads where the ice crush was wildest, the voyageurs clinging hand to hand, making a life line if one chanced to slither through the ice slush. When daylight came with worse fog, Iberville kept his pistol firing to guide his followers, and so pushed on. Four days the dangerous traverse lasted, but August 1 the bushrovers were in camp below the cliffs of Albany.
Indians had forewarned Governor Sargeant. The loopholes of his palisades bristled with muskets and heavy guns that set the bullets flying soon as De Troyes arrived and tried to land the cannon captured from the other forts for assault on Albany. Drums beating, flags flying, soldiers in line, a French messenger goes halfway forward and demands of an English messenger come halfway out the surrender of Sieur Jan Peré, languishing in the dungeons of Albany. The English Governor sends curt word back that Peré has been sent home to France long ago, and demands what in thunder the French mean by these raids in time of peace. The French retire that night to consider. Cannon they have, but they have used up nearly all their ammunition. They have thirty prisoners, but they have no provisions. The prisoners have told them there are 50,000 pounds worth of furs stored at Albany.
Inside the fort the English were in almost as bad way. The larder was lean, powder was scarce, and the men were wildly mutinous, threatening to desert en masse for the French on the excuse they had not hired to fight, and "if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make it good."
At the end of two days' desultory firing, the company Governor captured down at Rupert came to Sargeant and told him frankly that the bloodthirsty bushrovers were desperate; they had either to conquer or starve, and if they were compelled to fight, there would be no quarter. Men and women alike would be butchered in hand-to-hand fight. Still Sargeant hung on, hoping for the annual frigate of the company. Then powder failed utterly. Still Sargeant would not show the white flag; so an underfactor flourished a white sheet from an upper window. Chevalier De Troyes came forward and seated himself on one of the cannon. Governor Sargeant went out and seated himself on the same cannon with two bottles of wine. The English of Albany were allowed to withdraw to Charlton Island to await the company ship. As for the other prisoners, those who were not compelled to carry the plundered furs back to Quebec, were turned adrift in the woods to find their way overland north to Nelson. Iberville's bushrovers were back in Montreal by October.