Two white men dressed as Indians--the young Le Moyne brothers, not yet twenty-six years of age--slipped noiselessly from the woods behind the fort, careful not to crunch their moccasins on dead branches, took a look at the sleeping sentry and the plugged mouths of the unloaded cannon, and as noiselessly slipped back to their comrades in hiding. Each man was armed with musket, sword, dagger, and pistol. He carried no haversack, but a single blanket rolled on his back with dried meat and biscuit enclosed. The raiders slipped off their blankets and coats, and knelt and prayed for blessing on their raid. The next time the Le Moynes came back to the sentinel sleeping heavily at the fort gate, one quick, sure sabre-stroke cleft the sluggard's head to the collar-bone. A moment later the whole hundred raiders were sweeping over the walls. A gunner sprang up with a shout from his sleep. A single blow on the head, and one of the Le Moynes had put the fellow to sleep for ever. In less than five minutes the French were masters of Moose Fort at a cost of only two lives, with booty of twelve cannon and three thousand pounds of powder and with a dozen prisoners. While the old Chevalier de Troyes paused to rig up a sailing sloop for the voyage across the bottom of James Bay to the Rupert river, Pierre Le Moyne--known in history as d'Iberville--with eight men, set out in canoes on June 27 for the Hudson's Bay fort on the south-east corner of the inland sea. Crossing the first gulf or Hannah Bay, he portaged with his men across the swampy flats into Rupert Bay, thus saving a day's detour, and came on poor old Bridgar's sloop near the fort at Rupert, sails reefed, anchor out, rocking gently to the night tide. D'Iberville was up the hull and over the deck with the quiet stealth and quickness of a cat. One sword-blow severed the sleeping sentinel's head from his body. Then, with a stamp of his moccasined feet and a ramp of the butt of his musket, d'Iberville awakened the sleeping crew below decks. By way of putting the fear of God and of France into English hearts, he sabred the first three sailors who came floundering up the hatches. Poor old Bridgar came up in his nightshirt, hardly awake, both hands up in surrender--his second surrender in four years. To wake up to bloody decks, with the heads of dead men rolling to the scuppers, was enough to excuse any man's surrender. The noise on the ship had forewarned the fort, and the French had to gain entrance thereto by ladders. With these they ascended to the roofs of the houses and hurled down bombs--hand-grenades--through the chimneys, 'with,' says the historian of the occasion, 'an effect most admirable.' Most admirable, indeed! for an Englishwoman, hiding in a room closet, fell screaming with a broken hip. The fort surrendered, and the French were masters of Rupert with thirty prisoners and a ship to the good. What all this had to do with the rescue of Jean Péré would puzzle any one but a raiding fur trader.