Waiting only till it was dark, the terrified hunters hitched their dog sleighs up, tore off all bells that would betray flight, and drove like mad for the stronger fort of Richmond. Potts hurriedly sent out orders to recall his trappers from the hills and manned Richmond for siege. It was four days before all the men came under shelter, and nightly the Eskimos could be heard trying to scale the palisades. The fort was so short of provisions, all hands were reduced to one meal a day. Potts called for volunteers, to go to the rescue of the kidnapped cook—a boy, named Matthew Warden; and thirteen men offered to go. The Eskimos had taken refuge on the islands of the outer shore. Frost-fog thick as wool lay on the bay. Eskimos were seen lurking on the hills above the fort. A council was held. It was determined to catch three Eskimos as hostages for the cook’s safety rather than risk the lives of thirteen men outside the fort. Some ten days later, when a few men ventured out for partridges, the forest again came to life with Eskimo spies. Potts recalled his hunters, sent two scouts to welcome the Eskimos to the fort and placed all hands on guard. Three Indians were conducted into the house. In a twinkling, fetters were clapped on two, and the third bade go and fetch the missing white boy on pain of death to the hostages. The stolid Eskimo affected not to understand. Potts laid a sword across the throats of the two prisoners and signaled the third to be gone. The fellow needed no urging but scampered. “I had our men,” relates Potts, “one by one pass through the guardroom changing their dresses every time to give the two prisoners the idea that I had a large garrison. They seemed surprised that I had one hundred men, but they spoke no word.” The next day, the fettered prisoners drew knives on their guard, seized his gun and clubbed the Company men from the room. In the scuffle that followed, both Eskimos were shot. The danger was now increased a hundredfold. Friendly Montagnais Indians, especially one named Robinson Crusoe, warned Potts that if the shooting were known, nothing could save the fort. The bodies were hidden in the cellar till some Montagnais went out one dark night and weighting the feet with stones, pushed them through a hole in the ice. How quickly white men can degenerate to savagery is well illustrated by the conduct of the cooped-up, starving garrison. Before sending away the dead bodies, they cut the ears from each and preserved them in spirits of alcohol to send down by Indian scouts to Isbister at Moose with a letter imploring that the sloop come to the rescue as soon as the ice cleared. For two months the siege lasted. Nothing more was ever heard of the captured boy, but by the end of May, Isbister had sent a sloop to Richmond. As told elsewhere, Richmond was dismantled in 1778 and the stores carried down to Whale River and East Main.