But war broke out, and Lagrange’s gay troop scattered like leaves before the wind. Iberville was dead in Havana. La Fôrest of the Quebec Fur Company had gone back to the St. Lawrence. Jeremie, the interpreter, had gone to France on leave, in 1707, and now in 1708, when the French garrisons were starving and the high seas scoured by privateers—Jeremie came back as governor, under the king. He at once dispatched men to hunt. Nine bushrangers had camped one night near a tent of Crees. The Indians were hungry, sullen, resentful to the whitemen who failed to trade guns and powder as the English had traded. At the fort, they had been turned away with their furs on their hands. It is the characteristic of the French trader that he frequently descends to the level of the Indian. Jeremie’s nine men were, perhaps, slightly intoxicated after their supper of fresh game and strong brandy. Two Indian women came to the camp and invited two Frenchmen to the Indian tents. The fellows tumbled into the trap like the proverbial country jack with the thimblerigger. No sooner had they reached the Indian tepees than they were brained. Seizing the pistols and knives of the dead men, the Indians crept through the thicket to the fire of the bush-rovers. With unearthly yells they fell on the remaining seven and cut them to pieces. One wounded man alone escaped by feigning the rigor of death, while they stripped him naked, and creeping off into hiding of the bushes while the savages devoured the dead. Waiting till they had gone, the wounded man crawled painfully back by night—a distance of thirty miles—to Jeremie, at an outpost. Jeremie quickly withdrew the garrison from the outpost, retreated within the double palisades of Nelson (Bourbon) shot all bolts, unplugged his cannon and awaited siege; but Indians do not attack in the open. Jeremie held the fort till events in Europe relieved him of his charge. * * * * * In spite of French victories, as long as Mike Grimmington and Nick Smithsend were bringing home cargoes of thirty thousand beaver a year, the English Adventurers prospered. In fact, within twenty years of their charter’s grant, they had prospered so exceedingly that they no longer had the face to declare such enormous dividends, and on September 3, 1690, it was unanimously decided to treble their original stock from £10,500 to £31,500. The reasons given for this action were: that there were furs of more value than the original capital of the Company now in the Company’s warehouses; that the year’s cargo was of more value than the original capital of the Company; that the returns in beaver from Nelson and Severn alone this year exceeded £20,000; that the forts and armaments were of great value, and that the Company had reasons to expect £100,000 reparation from the French. Immediately after the decision, a dividend of 25 per cent. was declared on the trebled stock.