Meanwhile, Selkirk and Robertson had not been idle. The summer that Miles MacDonell had led his colonists to Red River, twenty more families had arrived on the bay. They had been brought by Selkirk’s Irish agent, Owen Keveny. The same plotting and counter-plotting of an enemy with unseen motives marked their passage out as had harassed MacDonell. Barely were the ships at sea when mutineers set the passengers all agog planning to murder officers, seize the ships and cruise the world as pirates; but the colonists betrayed the treachery to the captain. Armed men were placed at the hatches, and the swivel guns wheeled to sweep the decks from stem to stern. The conspirator that first thrust his head above decks received a swashing blow that cut his arm clean from his shoulder, and the plot dissolved in sheer fright. Keveny now ruled with iron hand. Offenders were compelled to run the gauntlet between men lined up on each side armed with stout sticks; and the trickery--if trickery it were by Nor’West spies--to demoralize the colonists ceased for that passage. Father Burke, waiting to return by these ships, welcomed the colonists ashore at York, and before he sailed for Ireland performed the first formal marriage ceremony in the Northwest. The Catholic priest married two Scotch Presbyterians--an incident typical to all time of that strange New World power, which forever breaks down Old World barriers. The colonists were so few this year, that the majority could be housed in the fort. Some eight or ten risked winter travel and set out for Red River, which they reached in October; but the trip inland so late was perilous. Three men had camped to fish with the Company servants on Lake Winnipeg. Fishing failed. Winter closed the lake to travel. The men went forward on foot along the east shore southward for Red River. Daily as they tramped, their strength dwindled and the cold increased. A chance rabbit, a prairie chicken, moss boiled in water--kept them from starvation, but finally two could journey no farther and lay down on the wind-swept ice to die. The third hurried desperately forward, hoping against hope, doggedly resolved if he must perish to die hard. Suddenly, a tinkling of dog bells broke the winter stillness and the pack trains of Northwest hunters came galloping over the ice. In a twinkling, the overjoyed colonist had signaled them and told his story, and in less time than it takes to relate, the Nor’Westers were off to the rescue. The three starving men were carried to the Northwest fort at Winnipeg River where they were cared for till they regained strength. Then they were given food enough to supply them for the rest of the way to the settlement. Plainly--if the Nor’Westers’ opposition to Lord Selkirk’s colony had been confined to trickery at the ports of sailing, there would be no tragedy to relate; but the next year witnessed an aggressive change of policy on both sides, which had fatal consequences.