For ten years Hudson Bay becomes the theater of northern buccaneers and bushraiders. A treaty of neutrality in 1686 provides that the bay shall be held in common by the fur traders of England and France; but the adventurers of England and the bushrovers of Quebec have no notion of leaving things so uncertain. Spite of truce, both fit out raiders, and the King of France, according to the shifting diplomacy of the day, issues secret orders "to permit not a vestige of English possession on the northern bay." Maricourt Le Moyne held the newly captured forts on the south shore of James Bay till Iberville came back overland in 1687. The fort at Rupert had been completely abandoned after the French victory of the previous summer, and the Hudson's Bay Company sloop, the _Young_, had just sailed into the port to reëstablish the fur post. Iberville surrounded the sloop by his bushrovers, captured it with all hands, and dispatched four spies across to Charlton Island, where another sloop, the _Churchill_, swung at anchor. Here Iberville's run of luck turned. Three of his four spies were captured, fettered, and thrown into the hold of the vessel for the winter. In the spring of 1688 one was brought above decks to help the English sailors. Watching his chance, the grizzled bushrover waited till six of the English crew were up the ratlines. Quick as flash the Frenchman tiptoed across decks in his noiseless moccasins, took one precautionary glance over his shoulder, brained two Englishmen with an ax, liberated his comrades, and at pistol point kept the other Englishmen up the masts till he and his fellows had righted the ship and steered the vessel across to Rupert River, where the provisions were just in time to save Iberville's party from starvation. {162} This episode is typical of what went on at the Hudson's Bay forts for ten years. Each year, when the English ships came out to Nelson on the west coast, armed bands were sent south to wrest the forts on James Bay from the French; and each spring, when Iberville's bushrovers came gliding down the rivers in their canoes from Canada, there was a fight to drive out the English. Then the Indians would scatter to their hunting grounds. No more loot of furs for a year! The English would sail away in their ships, the French glide away in their canoes; and for a winter the uneasy quiet of calm between two thunderclaps would rest over the waters of Hudson Bay.