On one the hardships fell with peculiar harshness. His daughter Marie he had always nurtured as a white girl. She fled in terror of her life from the brutal soldiery and perished of starvation outside the walls. Hearne has been blamed for two things in this surrender, for not making some show of resistance and for not sending scouts overland south to warn York. For thirty-nine men to have fought four hundred would have invited extermination, and Hearne did not know that the invaders were enemies till he himself was captured and so could not send word to York. What he might have done was earlier in the game. If he had sent out a pilot to guide the ships into Churchill Harbor, it might have led the enemy to wreck among reefs and sand-bars. On the third day, the three French men-of-war set sail for York, leaving Churchill in flames. Outward bound, one of the Company ships was sighted coming into Churchill. The French gave chase till seven in the evening, but the English captain led off through such shoal water the French desisted with a single chance volley in the direction of the fleeing fur ship. On August 20, the Company ship lying at York observed a strange fleet some twenty miles off shore landing men on Nelson River behind York, which faced Hayes River. From plans taken at Churchill, La Perouse had learned that York was weakest to the rear. There were in the fort at that time sixty English and twelve Indians with some twenty-five cannon and twelve swivel guns on the galleries. There was a supply of fresh water inside the fort with thirty head of cattle; but a panic prevailed. All the guns were overset to prevent the French using them, and the English ship scudded for sea at nightfall. The French meanwhile had marched across the land behind York and now presented themselves at the gates. The governor, Humphry Martin, welcomed them with a white flag in his hand. Umfreville, who gives the account of the surrender, was among the captured. His disgust knew no bounds. “The enemy’s ships lay at least twenty miles from the factory in a boisterous sea,” he writes, “and could not co-operate with the troops on shore. The troops had no supplies. Cold, hunger and fatigue were hourly working in our favor. The factory was not in want of a single thing to withstand siege. The people showed no fear but the reverse. Yet the English governor surrendered without firing a gun.” The French did not attempt to occupy the forts, which they had captured, but retired with the officers as prisoners, and with the plunder. By October the Company had received letters from the prison at Dinan Castle, France, asking for the ransom of the men. By May, the ransomed men were in London, and by June back at their posts on the bay.