every abuse and evil name I could think of, then to the Indians: ‘Do not abandon the Hudson’s Bay on this account! There are brave men at our fort to protect you! That fellow was not brave enough to _seize_ me; he _stole_ me, and he would now rob you of your hunt if it were not for the young men I have left in my fort. Tell Clarke not to be discouraged. We will be revenged for this, but not like wolves prowling in the bushes. We will capture them as we captured them at Fort William, with the sun shining on our faces.’ At this moment, the Indian chief came up and squeezing my hand, whispered, ‘Never mind, white man! All right! We are your friends.’... This closed the turbulent scene.... Figure my feelings ... tumbled by an act of illegal violence from the summit of hope ... confidence of friends withdrawn ... all my prospects for life blasted ... mere personal danger is secondary now--I am in despair.” Simon McGillivray, Black, McIntosh, McLeod, in a word, the most influential partners in the Northwest Company were at Fort Chippewyan when Robertson was captured; but the post was in charge of that John George McTavish, who had helped to trick Astor out of his fur post on the Columbia. It was probably the ruinous lawsuits against the Nor’Westers that now restrained their savage followers from carrying out their threat “to scalp Robertson and feed him to the dogs,” but the Hudson’s Bay leader was clapped into a small room with log walls, under guard day and night. He was compelled to state his simplest wants in a formal daily letter. Pen and paper, the clothes on his back, a jack-knife in his pocket--that was Robertson’s entire paraphernalia during his captivity; but for all that, he outwitted the enemy. One of his written requests was that a Nor’Wester go across to the Hudson’s Bay fort under flag of truce for a supply of liquor. The Nor’Westers were delighted at the chance to spy on the Hudson’s Bay fort, and doubly delighted at the prospect of their captive fuddling himself _hors de combat_ with drink. It was an easy trick to give a rival his quietus with whiskey.