Iberville was depending on loot to pay his men, and would not hear of granting the furs to the English, but he readily subscribed to the other conditions of surrender, and took possession of the fort. When Iberville hastily sailed away to escape through the straits before winter closed them, he left De la Forêst commander at Nelson, Jeremie, interpreter. And De la Forêst quickly ignored the conditions of surrender. He was not a good man to be left in charge. He was one of those who had outfitted Radisson in ’83 and lost when Radisson turned Nelson over to the English in ’84. Early next year, the English ships would come. If De la Forêst could but torture some of the English officers, who were his prisoners, into betraying the secret signals of the ships, he might lure them into port and recoup himself for that loss of ten years ago. Only four officers were kept in the fort. The rest of the fifty-three prisoners were harried and abused so that they were glad to flee to the woods. Beds, clothes, guns and ammunition—everything, was taken from them. Eight or ten, who hung round the fort, were treated as slaves. One Englishman was tied to a stake and tortured with hot irons to compel him to tell the signals of the English ships. But the secret was not told. No English ships anchored at Port Nelson in the summer of ’95. The sail that hove on the offing was a French privateer. In the hold of this, the English survivors were huddled like beasts, fed on pease and dogs’ meat. The ship leaked, and when the water rose to mid-waist of the prisoners, they were not allowed to come above decks, but set to pumping the water out. On the chance of ransom money, the privateer carried the prisoners in irons to France because—as one of the sufferers afterward took oath—“_we had not the money to grease the commander’s fist for our freedom_.” Of the fifty-three Hudson’s Bay men turned adrift from Nelson, only twenty-five survived the winter.