Puritan
commander an exchange of the prisoners captured at Port Royal with the
English from Maine and New Hampshire held in Quebec. She was sent
ashore by Phips and the exchange was arranged. Winter gales assailed
the English fleet as it passed Anticosti, and what with the wrecked and
wounded, Phips' loss totaled not less than a thousand men.

[Illustration: CASTLE ST. LOUIS, QUEBEC]

Frontenac had been back in Canada only a year, and in that time he had
restored the prestige of French power in America. The Iroquois were
glad to sue for peace, and his bitterest enemies, the Jesuits, joined
the merrymakers round the bonfires of acclaim kindled in the old
Governor's honor as the English retreated, and the joy bells pealed
out, and processions surged shouting through the streets of Quebec!
From Hudson Bay to the Mississippi, from the St. Lawrence to Lake
Superior and the land of the Sioux, French power reigned supreme. Only
Port Nelson, high up on the west coast of Hudson Bay, remained
unsubdued, draining the furs of the prairie tribes to England away from
Quebec. Iberville had captured it in the fall of 1694, at the cost of
his brother Chateauguay's life; but when Iberville departed from Hudson
Bay, English men-of-war had come out in 1696 and wrested back this most
valuable of all the fur posts. It was now determined to drive the
English forever from Hudson Bay. Le Moyne d'Iberville was chosen for
the task.

April, 1697, Serigny Le Moyne was dispatched from France with five
men-of-war to be placed under the command of Iberville at Placentia,
Newfoundland, whence he was "to proceed {184} to Hudson Bay and to
leave not a vestige of the English in the North." The frigates left
Newfoundland July 8. Three weeks later they were crushing through the
ice jam of Hudson Straits. Iberville commanded the _Pelican_ with two
hundred and fifty men. Bienville, a brother, was on the same ship.
Serigny commanded the _Palmier_, and there were three other frigates,
the _Profound_, the _Violent_, the _Wasp_. Ice locked round the fleet
at the west end of Hudson Straits, and fog lay so thick there was
nothing visible of any ship but the masthead. For eighteen days they
lay, crunched and rammed and separated by the ice drive, till on August
25, early in the morning, the fog suddenly lifted. Iberville saw that
Serigny's ship had been carried back {185} in the straits. The _Wasp_
and _Violent_ were not to be seen, but straight