In the fury and heat of the fight, the French had not noticed the gathering storm that now broke with hurricane gusts of sleet and rain. The whistling in the cordage became a shrill shriek—warning a blizzard. Presently the billows were washing over decks with nothing visible of the wheel but the drenched helmsman clinging for life to his place. The pancake ice pounded the ships’ sides with a noise of thunder. Mist and darkness and roaring sleet drowned the death cries of the wounded, washed and tossed and jammed against the railing by the pounding seas. _The Pelican_ could only drive through the darkness before the storm-flaw, “the dead” says an old record, “floating about on the decks among the living.” The hawser, that had towed the captive ship, snapped like thread. Captor and captive in vain threw out anchors. The anchors raked bottom. Cables were cut, and the two ships drove along the sands. The deck of _The Pelican_ was icy with blood. Every shock of smashing billows jumbled dead and dying _en masse_. The night grew black as pitch. The little railing that still clung to the shattered decks of _The Pelican_ was now washed away, and the waves carried off dead and wounded. Tables were hurled from the cabin. The rudder was broken, and the water was already to the bridge of the foundering ship, when the hull began to split, and _The Pelican_ buried her prow in the sands, six miles from the fort. All small boats had been shot away. The canoes of the Canadians swamped in the heavy sea as they were launched. Tying the spars of the shattered masts in four-sided racks, Iberville had the surviving wounded bound to these and towed ashore by the others, half-swimming, half-wading. Many of the men sprang into the icy sea bare to mid-waist as they had fought. Guns and powderhorns carried ashore in the swimmers’ teeth were all that were saved of the wreck. Eighteen more men lost their lives going ashore in the dark. For twelve hours they had fought without pause for food, and now shivering round fires kindled in the bush, the half-famished men devoured moss and seaweed raw. Two feet of snow lay on the ground, and when the men lighted fires and gathered round in groups to warm themselves, they became targets for sharp-shooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp fires. Smithsend, who escaped from the wrecked _Hudson’s Bay_ and Grimmington, who had succeeded in taking _The Dering_ into harbor—put Governor Bailey on guard. Their one hope was that Iberville might be drowned. It was at this terrible pass that the other ships of Iberville’s fleet came to the rescue. They, too, had suffered from the storm, _The Violent_ having gone to bottom; _The Palmier_ having lost her steering gear, another ship her rudder.