overs. 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 Pere, languishing in the dungeons of Albany. The English Governor
sends curt word back that Pere 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. {160} 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