by the Court to that degree that nothing passed between him and his great relations but bare civilities in the common forms." On the sixth of the ensuing month his body was privately interred among others of the Royal Family in a vault in Westminster Abbey.
A week later there was held a General Court of the Company, at which the Duke of York was chosen to succeed Rupert in the governorship. Besides the Duke himself, his Royal Highness the Duke of Albemarle, Lord Arlington and Mr. Hays, all delivered enthusiastic panegyrics on the deceased prince, rightly attributing to his zeal, judgment and enterprise, the successful establishment of the Company. And the meeting then adjourned out of regret for the dead Governor without proceeding to further business.
More than fifteen years had elapsed since Medard Chouart des Groseilliers had first fired Prince Rupert with his project of founding a great fur-traffic in the unknown and unexplored regions of the New World. The prince had lived to see that project succeed even beyond his most sanguine expectations. Now, at his death, the Company owned four ships; and after all the cost of its plant, its ships and its equipment had been paid, it was returning an annual profit of two hundred per cent. on its capital. It was well-known that his Highness favoured greater activity, and one of his last acts had been to sign the commission of John Bridgar as Governor of the new settlement at Port Nelson. But during his own Governorship, the Company, feeling, no doubt, that they must balance the Prince's zeal for adventure with considerable caution, opposed the policy of rapid expansion with somewhat excessive prudence; and it was only after his death that they felt confident in pursuing a more vigorous and enterprising plan of commerce.
Under date of April 27th, 1683, while the drama between the French and English was being enacted at Port Nelson, the following instructions were addressed to Governor Sargeant, regarding trade with the interior: "You are to choose out from amongst our servants such as are best qualified with strength of body and the country language to travel and to penetrate into the country, and to draw down the Indians by fair and gentle means to trade with us."
But the Company was to learn that the parsimony which then characterized its policy was not calculated to foster the success of its aims. The majority of the men it sent out from England could not be classified under the head of adventurous spirits, ready to dare all for mere excitement and the prospect of gain. They were for the most part young men gifted with no more aptitude for the work in the wilderness than a disinclination to pursue their callings at home. No small number were dissatisfied apprentices; one William Evans had been a drawer at the Rainbow Inn; Portman had sent his scullion.
Even at that early day the staffs employed on the plantations were recruited from amongst the very class least competent to exploit those regions. The majority of the applicants for employment in the Company's service in the seventeenth century were not men of character and vigour, or even of robust physique, but rather hare-brained artisans of the wild, dare-devil type, whose parents and friends foresaw for them, if London or Bristol formed the sphere of their talents, a legal and violent rather than a natural termination of their respective careers.
Company's encouragement requested.
Sargeant's response to the foregoing injunction certainly served to enlighten his superiors. "I shall not be neglectful," he wrote, "as soon as I can find any man capable and willing to send up into the country with the Indians, to endeavour to penetrate into what the country will and may produce, and to effect their utmost in bringing down the Indians to our factory; but your Honours should give good encouragement to those who undertake such extraordinary service; or else I fear that there will be but few that will embrace such employment."
The rebuke may have been just; but it seems to have given offence to some of the more pompous members of the Company; and Sargeant was desired not to cast any further reflection on his employers in his communications to them. Nevertheless, the Company was soon to learn the value of a less niggardly policy.
Meanwhile for ten days the two ex-employees, Radisson and Groseilliers, gave no further evidence to the English at the new settlement on Nelson River of their presence. But on the tenth day their curiosity and uneasiness regarding the conduct of the English Governor, Bridgar, and the other servants of the Company, had reached such a pitch that it was decided without further consideration that Radisson should start off at once to reconnoitre their behaviour. The actual distance between Fort Bourbon, on the Hays River, and the Company's factory on Nelson River was not above fifty miles; but owing to the dangerous character of the river, and the necessity for delay before an attempt could be made to cross it, Radisson and his party consumed fourteen days on the journey.
Bridgar's credulity.
On their arrival on the 3rd of February, one of the first objects to attract their attention was the Prince Rupert, stuck fast in the ice and mud about a mile from where the factory was being erected. At the same time they met the Governor, who was out on a hunting expedition with the chief mate of the vessel. Satisfying himself that no treachery was intended, Radisson accepted Bridgar's invitation to enter the log-house which he had caused to be built for his own occupation. Radisson introduced one of the Frenchmen who accompanied him as the captain of an imaginary ship, which he averred had arrived from France in his behalf. "Mr. B. believed it and anything else I chose to tell him," remarks Radisson naively, "I aiming always to prevent him from having any knowledge of the English interloper." While engaged in the pleasing diversion of drinking each other's health, a number of musket shots were fired. The crew of the vessel not taking any notice of this, the bushranger concluded that those on board were not on their guard and might readily be surprised.
With this condition uppermost in his mind, the Frenchman quitted Bridgar, having first allayed any suspicion which might have naturally arisen as to the intention of the party. The latter went boldly on board the ship, and no hindrance being offered, their leader had a colloquy with Captain Gillam. The latter, while he received the visit civilly enough, found occasion to let Radisson know that he was far from entirely trusting him. When his visitor suggested that he was running a great risk in allowing the Prince Rupert to remain grounded, Gillam bluntly requested Radisson to mind his own business, adding that he knew perfectly well what he was doing—a boast which, as the sequel showed, was certainly not well founded. Radisson was determined not to be put out of temper, and so run risk of spoiling his plans.
Winter, even in all its rigour, seems to have had no terrors for our indomitable bushranger. For the next two months, as we shall see, he continued to scour backwards and forwards through the country, inspiring his followers and urging them onward to the prosecution of a plan which was obvious to them all. After parting from Gillam the elder, who had not the faintest suspicion that his son was in the locality, Radisson at once started to parley with Gillam, the younger.
When he had regained the island which he had left, he was instantly made aware that the New Englanders had been considerably less idle than the Company's servants; having completed a very creditable fort and mounted it with six pieces of cannon. With Benjamin Gillam, our bushranger passed off the same subterfuge with which he had hoodwinked Zachary. He spoke fluently of his newly arrived ship and her cargo and crew, and to cap his narrative, proceeded to introduce her captain, who was none other than the old pilot, Pierre Allemand, who, from the description still extant of his appearance, looked every inch the bold, fierce and uncompromising mariner. He had a great deal to tell Benjamin likewise of the Company's post near by, which he said contained forty soldiers.
"Let them be forty devils," exclaimed Gillam, junior, "we have built a good fort and are afraid of nothing."
Whereupon Radisson gently reminded him that according to his agreement he was to have built no fort whatever. In reply to this Benjamin begged his visitor not to take umbrage at such a matter, as he never intended to dispute the rights of the French in the region; and the fort was merely intended as a defence against the Indians.
A manœuvre of Radisson's.
As the evening wore on, a manœuvre suggested itself to Radisson. He resolved to bring father and son together. No sooner had he formed this amiable resolve than he revealed to Benjamin Gillam the proximity of the Prince Rupert and her commander, and described the means by which an encounter might be effected without eliciting the suspicions of Governor Bridgar or any of the