The year 1687 saw the tireless Iberville back at Rupert River. The Hudson’s Bay sloop, _The Young_, had come to port. Iberville seized it without any ado and sent four spies over to Charlton Island where _The Churchill_, under Captain Bond, was wintering. Three of the French spies were summarily captured by the English fur traders and thrown into the hold of the ship, manacled, for the winter. In spring, one was brought above decks to give the English sailors a helping hand. The fellow waited till six of the crew were up the ratlines, then he seized an axe, tip-toed up behind two Englishmen, brained them on the spot, rushing down the hatchway liberated his two comrades, took possession of all firearms and at pistol point kept the Englishmen up the mast poles till he steered the vessel across to Iberville at Rupert River, where a cargo of provisions saved the French from famine. It was in vain that the English sent rescue parties south from Nelson and Severn to recapture Albany. Captain Moon had come down from Nelson with twenty-four men to Albany, reinforced by the crews of the two ships, _Hampshire_ and _North-West Fox_, when Iberville came canoeing across the ice floes with his Indian bandits. The English ships were locked in the ice before the besieged fort. Iberville ambushed his men in the tamarack swamps till eighty-two English had landed. Then, he rushed the deserted vessels, took possession of one with its cargo of furs, and as the ice cleared sailed gayly out of Albany for Quebec. The astounded English set fire to the other ship and retreated overland to Severn. At the straits, Iberville ran full-tilt into the fleet of incoming English vessels, but that was nothing to disconcert this blockade-runner, not though the ice closed round them all, holding French and English prisoners within gunshot of each other. Iberville ran up an English flag on his captured ship and had actually signaled the captains of the English frigates to come across the ice and visit him when the water cleared, and away he sailed.