While waiting with impatience for news of the combat, "Nous mangions nos pois par compte," which short allowance greatly reduced the strength of the people, most of the men becoming feeble, and hardly able to work. "We were deprived of all," says Champlain; "even salt was wanting." His ingenuity, however, provided a partial remedy for the evil of eating the peas whole; he first had mortars made wherein the peas might be pounded to a coarse flour; but the labour required being considerable, he imagined that a hand-mill would be better, but there were no mill-stones; however, as by dint of seeking most things are to be found, his locksmith discovered stone fit for the purpose. "So that," Champlain writes, "this necessity made us find that which for twenty years had been deemed impossible." When the hand-mill was finished, every one brought his little supply of peas, which they received back in flour, and which, made into a kind of soup, "did us a great deal of good, and set us up better than we had been for some time." So with the addition of a small supply of eels, from time to time, from the Indians, who, by the bye, sold them very dear, he continued to rub on as best he might. The success of his hand-mill encouraged him to have water-mills erected during the winter, which would better relieve the people, and spare labour. He also sent out men to hunt in the winter, "as the savages did, but," he adds, indignantly, "they were not so honest as those people, as having taken a very large elk, they amused themselves with devouring it like ravenous wolves, without giving us any, save about twenty pounds; which made me reproach them for their gluttony, as I never had any provisions without sharing with them; but as they were men without honour or civility, so had they acted, and I sent them no more, occupying them with other things."