But here also the Governor was not the man for such an emergency. He knew nothing of war, and had a wholesome dread of all armed and equipped soldiery. Trembling so that he could scarcely stand, he begged the surgeon, "for God's sake to give him a glass of liquor to steady his nerves." There being none at hand, he swallowed a tumbler of raw spirits of wine, and this so far infused courage and determination into his blood, that he peremptorily declared he would shoot the first man who offered to fire a gun. Dismay filled the bosoms of many of the fur Company's servants. The second in command and the surgeon endeavoured to expostulate, and to silence them the Governor caught up a white sheet {255} with his own hand and waved it from a window of the fort. This was answered by the French officer displaying his pocket-handkerchief. Under the sanction of this flag of truce a parley took place. The Governor was ordered to surrender within two hours. But no such time was needed; the fort was most ingloriously yielded in ten minutes. In vain did some of the English council plead that the fort might have withstood the united efforts of double the number of those by whom it was assailed. Vainly they showed that, from the nature of the enemy's attack by way of Nelson River, they could not use their mortars or artillery, the ground being very bad and full of woods, thickets, and bogs. The miserable Governor was resolved to yield the place, and he carried out his intention, much to the astonishment and satisfaction of the French. The fur-trading company never rebuilt Fort Prince of Wales. The distant traveller may behold its ruins to-day standing to mark the most northern stronghold on the North American continent, a reminder of bygone strife, useful now only as a beacon and a resting-place for flocks of Arctic birds. Peace was declared between Britain and America in 1783, but there was no peace for the American Loyalists. When the King's armies sailed away from Charleston, the last spectacle they saw was the bodies of twenty-four Loyalists swinging from a row of gibbets. Of no crime were these men guilty but that of refusing to disunite the glorious Empire, of refusing to fight against him whom they regarded as {256} their lawful sovereign, and an honest and benevolent prince. By the Treaty of Versailles they had been abandoned by the mother-country, left to the tender mercies of the American conquerors. No wonder there were men in both Houses of Parliament who were shocked at this treatment. "When I consider the case of the colonists," cried Wilberforce, "I confess I there feel myself conquered; I there see my country humiliated; I there see her at the feet of America!" "A peace founded on the sacrifice of these unhappy subjects," declared one noble lord, "must be accursed in the sight of God and man."