alier de
Troyes, the Le Moyne brothers, and La Chesnaye, the fur trader, were
threading the deeply-forested, wild hinterland between Quebec and Hudson
Bay. On June 18, 1686, Moose Fort had shut all its gates; but the sleepy
sentry, lying in his blanket across the entrance, had not troubled to
load the cannon. He slept heavily outside the high palisade made of
pickets eighteen feet long, secure in the thought that twelve soldiers
lay in one of the corner bastions and that three thousand pounds of
powder were stored in another. With all lights out and seemingly in
absolute security, the chief factor's store and house, built of
whitewashed stone, stood in the centre of the inner courtyard.

Two white men dressed as Indians--the young Le Moyne brothers, not yet
twenty-six years of age--slipped noiselessly from the woods behind the
fort, careful not to crunch their moccasins on dead branches, took a
look at the sleeping sentry and the plugged mouths of the unloaded
cannon, and as noiselessly slipped back to their comrades in hiding.
Each man was armed with musket, sword, dagger, and pistol. He carried no
haversack, but a single blanket rolled on his back with dried meat and
biscuit enclosed. The raiders slipped off their blankets and coats, and
knelt and prayed for blessing on their raid.

The next time the Le Moynes came back to the sentinel sleeping heavily
at the fort gate, one quick, sure sabre-stroke cleft the sluggard's head
to the collar-bone. A moment later the whole hundred raiders were
sweeping over the walls. A gunner sprang up with a shout from his
sleep. A single blow on the head, and one of the Le Moynes had put the
fellow to sleep for ever. In less than five minutes the French were
masters of Moose Fort at a cost of only two lives, with booty of twelve
cannon and three thousand pounds of powder and with a dozen prisoners.

While the old Chevalier de Troyes paused to rig up a sailing sloop for
the voyage across the bottom of James Bay to the Rupert river, Pierre Le
Moyne--known in history as d'Iberville--with eight men, set out in
canoes on June 27 for the Hudson's Bay fort on the south-east corner of
the inland sea. Crossing the first gulf or Hannah Bay, he portaged with
his men across the swampy flats into Rupert Bay, thus saving a day's
detour, and came on poor old Bridgar's sloop near the fort at Rupert,
sails reefed, anchor out, rocking gently to the night tide. D'Iberville
was up the hull and over the d