Radisson was requested to make terms with the young Frenchman, but this was not such an easy matter. Some one suggested that Jean Chouart should follow the example of his uncle and marry an English wife. Jean shrugged his shoulders. In a letter to his mother at Three Rivers he wrote: 'I am offered proposals of marriage to which I will not listen. I would leave, but they hold back my pay, and orders have been given to arrest me in case I try. Cause it to be well known that I never intended to follow the English. I have been forced to this by my uncle's subterfuge. Assure M. Du Lhut of my humble services. I will have the honour of seeing him as soon as I can. Tell the same to M. Péré and all our good friends.' To M. Comporte he writes: 'I will be at the place you desire me to go, or perish.' As M. Du Lhut had been dispatched by the Company of the North with the knowledge of the governor of Quebec to intercept Indians going down to the English on Hudson Bay, and M. Péré and M. Comporte were suave diplomats and spies in his service, it may be guessed that the French passed secret messages into the hands of young Jean Chouart in London, and that he passed messages back to them. At all events, from being doggedly resistant to all overtures, he suddenly became complaisant in March of 1685, and took out papers of 'deninization,' or naturalization, in preference to the oath of fidelity, and engaged with the English Company at £100 a year. He was given another £100 to fit him out, and his four comrades were engaged at from £45 to £80 a year. How could the gentlemen of the Company guess that young Jean was betraying them to the Company of the North in Canada, where a mine was being laid to blow up their prosperity?
The Hudson's Bay Company declared dividends of fifty per cent, and chartered seven vessels for the season of 1685--some from a goldsmith, Sir Stephen Evance; and bespoke my Lord Churchill as next governor in place of James, Duke of York, who had become King James II.
The Company now had permanent forts at Rupert, Albany, and Moose rivers on James Bay, and at the mouth of the Hayes river on the west coast. The very year that Churchill was appointed governor and took his place at the board of the Governing Committee, a small sloop had sailed as far north as Churchill, or the River of the Strangers, to reconnoitre and fix a site for a post. The fleet of trading vessels had increased even faster than the forts. Seven ships--four frigates and three sloops--were dispatched for the Bay in 1685. Radisson, young Jean, and the four Frenchmen went on the _Happy Return_ with Captain Bond bound for Nelson. Richard Lucas commanded the _Owner's Good Will_. Captain Outlaw, with Mike Grimmington as mate, took the big ship _Success_, destined for Albany. Captain Hume, with Smithsend for mate, took his cargo boat, the _Merchant Perpetuana_. The Company did not own any of these vessels. They were chartered from Sir Stephen Evance and others, for sums running from £400 to £600 for the voyage, with £100 extra for the impress money. The large vessels carried crews of twenty men; the smaller, of twelve; and each craft boasted at least six great guns. In March, after violent debate over old Bridgar's case, the Committee reinstated him at £100 a year as governor at Rupert. Phipps went as governor to Port Nelson. One Nixon was already stationed at Moose. Bluff old Henry Sargeant, as true a Viking as ever rode the north seas, had been at Albany for a year with his family--the first white family known to have resided on the Bay. Radisson had been reappointed superintendent of trade over the entire Bay; and he recommended for this year 20,500 extra flints, 500 extra ice-chisels for trapping beaver above the waterfalls, and several thousand extra yards of tobacco--thereby showing the judgment of an experienced trader. This spring the curious oaths of secrecy, already mentioned, were administered to all servants. It may be inferred that the _Happy Return_ and the _Perpetuana_ were the heaviest laden, for they fell behind the rest of the fleet on the way out, and were embayed, along with Outlaw's _Success_, in the icefields off Digges Island in July. It was the realm of almost continuous light in summer; but there must have been fogs or thick weather, for candles were lighted in the binnacles and cabins, and the gloom outside was so heavy that it was impossible to see ten feet away from the decks in the woolly night mist.