From this time, Benjamin Frobisher planned a desperate escape, saving at the cost of physical strength food from their daily allowance for the inland voyage. His men expostulated. A voyage inland so late meant certain death. It was a pitch dark night on the 30th of September. Frobisher and his men broke gaol, coaxed the friendly Hudson’s Bay man to give them three extra pairs of moccasins and mits, picked up an old fish net, with a piece of deerskin to act as tent, and clambered over the palisades. Winter had set in early. The rain-swollen river was cold as ice, but in the three emaciated fugitives plunged, and swam to the far shore where there chanced to rock an old canoe. With the help of the tide, they made ten miles that night. Frobisher began to recover courage, singing wildly and paddling buoyant as a school boy, irresponsible as a maniac. Hudson’s Bay fur brigades were still passing down the river. The three Nor’Westers passed these at night with muffled paddles, keeping to the far side of the stream. At intervals were abandoned hunter’s cabins. Here, the three would take refuge for a night, leaving their net set in the river for fish. The pemmican saved from the allowance at the fort and the fish caught at night were the only food. By the 19th of October, they had passed the Hudson’s Bay post, now called Oxford House, half way between Hudson Bay and the Saskatchewan. The nights now became bitterly cold, and there were no more old lodges--only a wind-break made of the canoe and the deerskin. Frobisher had become apparently quite sane, but provisions were running low, and he was visibly feebler each day.