Allerton himself later went to Port Royal to protest. But he was told by La Tour that “he had authority from the king of France, who challenged all from Cape Sable to Cape Cod, wishing them to take notice and to certify the rest of the English, that, if they traded to the east of Pemaquid, he would make prize of them.” When Allerton asked to see Monsieur La Tour’s commission the Frenchman replied that “his sword was commission sufficient, where he had strength to overcome; where that wanted, he would show his commission.” And the French made good on their challenge, for in 1635 Monsieur Charles d’Aunay, one of Governor Razilly’s lieutenants, came in a man-of-war to the Pilgrims’ trading post on the Penobscot. By a show of this force he took possession of the trucking house in the name of the King of France. Making an inventory of the goods he found there at prices he set himself, d’Aunay “made no payment for them, but told them in convenient time he would do it if they came for it. For the house and fortification etc. he would not allow nor account anything, saying that they which build on another man’s ground do forfeit the same.” Then he put the English traders in a shallop and sent them back to Plymouth. The Pilgrim fathers were enough upset about the loss of their goods and trading post to do something violent about it. With the approval of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but without much in the way of material assistance from their Puritan brethren, they hired “a fair ship of above 300 tun well fitted with ordnance” to retake Pentagoet. This ship was under the command of a Captain Girling. If the captain was successful he was to have 700 pounds of beaver; if not, nothing. Along with him went Captain Miles Standish and twenty Plymouth men in their own bark to resettle their trading post after Girling had driven out the French. It would appear, however, that the French must have had notice of the impending attack. So firmly were they entrenched behind earthworks that Captain Girling’s gunfire could not dislodge them and all the big ship’s powder was exhausted without effect. No landing was attempted. Standish, frustrated, returned to Plymouth in his bark, and Captain Girling went his own way. The French now remained in permanent possession of what was soon known as the “Mission of Pentagoet.” And so the line was finally drawn as a practical matter between the English and the French on the Maine coast, although England continued to maintain officially that it was more northerly, at the 45th parallel.