On the day after, some of the treacherous Hurons fled into the camp and told the awful tale of slaughter committed by the Iroquois during the night. The Hurons had spent the night insulting the French prisoners until sleep had closed their eyes, when the Iroquois fell upon them and slashed to pieces those who could not escape. Then taking the thirteen Huron canoes they loaded them with peltry; they descended the river with the three French prisoners in the sight of the onlookers of the fort, who were too few to pursue them. What happened to the prisoners was graphically told later when one of them arrived at the camp. He told how the design of his captors had been to descend to a point whence they could land and cut their way through the woods, to the place now known as Chambly. But having too heavy a load of beaver skins to carry, on landing they destroyed their canoes with their axes, as their custom was to render them useless. When they were in the woods, some four or five leagues from the place whence they left the river, their care of their prisoners became less guarded. He had been set to boil a kettle, and taking the opportunity of being sent to gather wood for the fire, he had eluded his captors and had come to the spot where he had landed. Finding one of the canoes less damaged than the others, he plugged up the dents made by the Iroquois hatchets, and loading it with a few skins, had then paddled up to Ville Marie. The soldiers of the fort went for the rest of the peltries and M. de Maisonneuve distributed them, but kept none fur himself.[51] The fate of the other two prisoners was told later by a Huron who escaped from the Iroquois. We are not told their names by the "Relations" of 1643, but one whose Christian name was Henri, having seen his companion, as well as two Hurons, burnt at a slow fire, had escaped, only to be recaptured for the same terrible fate. For the rest of that year, apprehension of ambuscades kept the colony within the walls of the fort as far as possible. Even to leave the threshold of their homes was to risk danger. "Tant il est vrai," adds M. Dollier de Casson, "que dans ces temps on était plus en assurance de ce qu'on avait franchi le seuil de sa porte." From this time begins the history of "Castle Dangerous," as we may term this period of the _nascent city_, now commencing, when there began a constant struggle with the daily risks of life. It was during this early anxiety that good news came to allay some of the alarm, and this was brought by the governor of Quebec.