"Go for them, you dogs!" cried Bailey. "Give it to them hot and heavy; I promise you forty pounds apiece for your widows!" Fighting in these days was attended by fearful mortality, and the scarcity of pensions to the hero's family, perhaps, made the offer seem handsome. At any rate it seemed a sufficient bribe to the Company's men, who fought like demons. A continual fire of guns and mortar, as well as {152} of muskets, was kept up. The Canadians sallied out upon a number of skirmishes, filling the air with a frightful din, borrowing from the Iroquois their piercing war-cries. In one of these sallies St. Martin, one of their bravest men, perished. Under protection of a flag of truce, Sérigny came again to demand a surrender. It was the last time, he said, the request would be preferred. A general assault had been resolved upon by the enemy, who were at their last resort, living like beasts in the wood, feeding on moss, and to whom no extremity could be odious were it but an exchange for their present condition. They were resolved upon carrying the fort, even at the point of the bayonet and over heaps of their slain. Bailey decided to yield. He sent Morrison to carry the terms of capitulation, in which he demanded all the peltries in the fort belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. This demand being rejected by the enemy, Bailey later in the evening sent Henry Kelsey with a proposition to retain a portion of their armament; this also was refused. There was now nothing for it but to surrender, Iberville having granted an evacuation with bag and baggage. At one o'clock on the following day, therefore, the evacuation took place. Bailey, at the head of his garrison, and a number of the crew of the wrecked _Hudson's Bay_ and six survivors of the _Hampshire_, marched forth from Fort York with drums beating, flag flying, and with arms and baggage. They hardly knew whither they were to go, or what fate awaited them. A vast, and inhospitable region surrounded {153} them, and a winter long to be remembered for its severity had begun. But to the French it seemed as if their spirits were undaunted, and they set forth bravely. The enemy watched the retreat of the defeated garrison not without admiration, and for the moment speculation was rife as to their fate. But it was only for a moment. Too rejoiced to contemplate anything but the termination of their own sufferings, the Canadians hastened to enter the fort, headed by Boisbriant, late an ensign in the service of the Compagnie du Nord. Fort Nelson was once more in the hands of the French.