The home-bound boats were just leaving the fur posts for the St. Lawrence. Frosts had already stripped the trees of foliage, and winter would presently lock all avenues of retreat in six months' ice. La Vérendrye's men began to doubt the wisdom of chasing a will-o'-the-wisp to an unknown Western Sea. The explorer sent half the party forward with his nephew Jemmeraie and his son Jean, while he himself remained at Kaministiquia with the mutineers to forage for provisions. {208} Winter found Jemmeraie's men on the Minnesota side of Rainy Lake, where they built Fort Pierre and drove a rich trade in furs with the encamped Crees. In summer of 1732 came La Vérendrye, his men in gayest apparel marching before the awe-struck Crees with bugle blowing and flags flying. Then white men and Crees advanced in canoes to the Lake of the Woods, coasting from island to island through the shadowy defiles of the sylvan rocks along the Minnesota shore to the northwest angle. Here a second winter witnessed the building of a second post, Fort St. Charles, with four rows of fifteen-foot palisades and thatched-roofed log cabins. The Western Sea seemed far as ever,--like the rainbow of the child, ever fleeing as pursued,--and La Vérendrye's merchant partners were beginning to curse him for a rainbow chaser. He had been away three years, and there were no profits. Suspicious that he might be defrauding them by private trade or sacrificing their interests to his own ambitions, they failed to send forward provisions for this year. La Vérendrye was in debt to his men for three years' wages, in debt to his partners for three years' provisions. To fail now he dared not. Go forward he could not, so he hurried down to Montreal, where he prevailed on the merchants to continue supplies by the simple argument that, if they stopped now, there would be total loss.