Some made for the main shore and took refuge on land. The Le Moynes’ two canoes kept on. A sea of boiling ice floes got between the two. There was nothing to do for the night but camp on the shifting ice, hanging for dear life to the canoe held high on the voyageurs’ heads out of danger, clinging hand to hand so that if one man slithered through the iceslush the human rope pulled him out. It was a new kind of canoe work for Iberville’s Indians. When daylight came through the gray fog, Iberville did not wait for the weather to clear. He kept guns firing to guide the canoe that followed and pushed across the traverse, portaging where there was ice, paddling where there was water. Four days the traverse lasted, and not once did this Robin Hood of Canadian wildwoods flinch. The first of August saw his Indians and bush-lopers below the embankments of Albany. A few days later came De Troyes on the boat with soldiers and cannon.
Governor Sargeant of Albany had been warned of the raiders by Indian coureurs. The fort was shut fast as a sealed box. Neither side gave sign. Not till the French began trundling their cannon ashore by all sorts of clumsy contrivances to get them in range of the fort forty yards back, was there a sign of life, when forty-three big guns inside the wall of Albany simultaneously let go forty-three bombs in midair that flattened the raiders to earth under shelter of the embankment. Chevalier De Troyes then mustered all the pomp and fustian of court pageantry, flag flying, drummers beating to the fore, guard in line, and marching forward demanded of the English traders, come half-way out to meet him, satisfaction for and the delivery of Sieur Péré, a loyal subject of France suffering imprisonment on the shores of Hudson Bay at the hands of the English. One may wonder, perhaps, what these raiders would have done without the excuse of Péré. The messenger came back from Governor Sargeant with word that Péré had been sent home to France by way of England long ago. (That Péré had been delayed in an English prison was not told.) De Troyes then pompously demanded the surrender of the fort. Sargeant sent back word such a demand was an insult in time of peace. Under cover of night the French retired to consider. With an extravagance now lamented, they had used at Rupert the most of their captured ammunition. Cannon, they had in plenty, but only a few rounds of balls. They had thirty prisoners, but no provisions; a ship, but no booty of furs. Between them and home lay a wilderness of forest and swamp. They must capture the fort by an escalade, or retreat empty-handed.
Inside the fort such bedlam reigned as might have delighted the raiders’ hearts. Sargeant, the sturdy old governor, was for keeping his teeth clinched to the end, though the larder was lean and only enough powder left to do the French slight damage as they landed their cannon. When a servant fell dead from a French ball, Turner, the chief gunner, dashed from his post roaring out he was going to throw himself on the mercy of the French. Sargeant rounded the fellow back to his guns with the generous promise to blow his brains out if he budged an inch. Two English spies sent out came back with word the French were mounting their battery in the dark. Instantly, there was a scurry of men to hide in attics, in cellars, under bales of fur, while six worthies, over signed names, presented a petition to the sturdy old governor, imploring him to surrender. Declaring they would not fight without an advance of pay anyway, they added in words that should go down to posterity, “for if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make it good.” Still Sargeant kept his teeth set, his gates shut, his guns spitting defiance at the enemy.
For two days bombs sang back and forward through the air. There was more parleying. Bridgar, the governor captured down at Rupert, came to tell Sargeant that the French were desperate; if they were compelled to fight to the end, there would be no quarter. Still Sargeant hoped against hope for the yearly English vessel to relieve the siege. Then Captain Outlaw came from the powder magazines with word there was no more ammunition. The people threw down their arms and threatened to desert en masse to the French. Sargeant still stubbornly refused to beat a parley; so Dixon, the under factor, hung out a white sheet as flag of truce, from an upper window. The French had just ceased firing to cool their cannon. They had actually been reduced to melting iron round wooden disks for balls, when the messenger came out with word of surrender. Bluff and resolute to the end, Sargeant marched out with two flagons of port, seated himself on the French cannon, drank healths with De Troyes, and proceeded to drive as hard a bargain as if his larders had been crammed and his magazines full of powder. Drums beating, flags flying, in full possession of arms, governor, officers, wives and servants were to be permitted to march out in honor, to be transported to Charlton Island, there to await the coming of the English ship.
Barely had the thirty English sallied out, when the bush-lopers dashed into the fort, ransacking house and cellar. The fifty-thousand-crowns’ worth of beaver were found, but not a morsel of food except one bowl of barley sprouts. Thirteen hundred miles from Canada with neither powder nor food! De Troyes gave his men leave to disband on August 10, and it was a wild scramble for home—sauve qui peut, as the old chronicler relates, some of the prisoners being taken to Quebec as carriers of the raided furs, others to the number of fifty, being turned adrift in the desolate wilderness of the bay! It was October before Iberville’s forest rovers were back in Montreal.
From Charlton Island, the English refugees found their way up to Port Nelson, there to go back on the annual ship to England. Among these were Bridgar and Outlaw, but the poor outcasts, who were driven to the woods, and the Hudson’s Bay servants, who were compelled to carry the loot for the French raiders back to Quebec—suffered slim mercies from their captors. Those round Albany were compelled to act as beasts of burden for the small French garrison, and received no food but what they hunted. Some perished of starvation outside the walls. Others attempted to escape north overland to Nelson. Of the crew from Outlaw’s ship Success, eight perished on the way north, and the surviving six were accused of cannibalism. In all, fifty English fur traders were set adrift when Albany surrendered to the French. Not twenty were ever heard of again.
Notes on Chapter XII.—The contents of this chapter are drawn from the documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, and the State Papers of the Marine, Paris, for 1685-87. It is remarkable how completely the State papers of the two hostile parties agree. Those in H. B. C. House are the Minutes, Governor Sargeant’s affidavit, Bridgar’s report, Outlaw’s oath and the petition of the survivors of Outlaw’s crew—namely, John Jarrett, John Howard, John Parsons, William Gray, Edmund Clough, Thomas Rawlin, G. B. Barlow, Thomas Lyon. As the raids now became an international matter, duplicates of most of these papers are to be found in the Public Records Office, London. All French historians give some account of this raid of Iberville’s; but all are drawn from the same source, the account of the Jesuit Sylvie, or from one De Lery, who was supposed to have been present. Oldmixon, the old English chronicler, must have had access to Sargeant’s papers, as he relates some details only to be found in Hudson’s Bay House.
CHAPTER XIII
1686-1697