Only eighteen men had been wounded, but among them were two chiefs and Champlain himself. He had received one arrow in the knee and another in the leg. He urged the Indians to renew the attack, but they refused. From extreme overconfidence the warriors had passed to the deepest discouragement. The next day a violent wind offered them an opportunity to set fire to the fort, but the Hurons sat silent in their camp. For five days they waited to see if the five hundred allies which Brulé and twelve Hurons had started a month ago to fetch would appear. During this time they ventured out occasionally for imprudent skirmishes, each time running back under the cover of the French musket fire, amid taunts from the Iroquois on the palisade that the Hurons had very little courage to require French assistance. Then they hastily began to retreat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while the Iroquois harassed the flanks and rear of the company. The wounded, Champlain among them, were packed in rude baskets made on the spot, and bound on the backs of stout warriors. Champlain gives a vivid picture of the suffering he endured, while he was thus “bundled in a heap, and doubled and strapped together in such a fashion that it was as impossible to move as for an infant in swaddling-clothes.” The torment from the cramped position and constant jolting was so much worse than even the pain of his wound that as soon as he could possibly bear his weight on his leg he got out of “this prison.” Snow and hail overtook the party on their dismal march to the lake. They were relieved to find their hidden canoes safe, and embarked once more on Lake Ontario. In his vain efforts to get the Indians to renew the attack after their first defeat, Champlain had come to see that he had lost some of his peculiar influence over them. They had fancied that his presence would ensure victory. Now they saw him wounded, and by Indian weapons. Their superstitious reverence for the “man with the iron breast” was weakened. Here on the shores of Lake Ontario he was to experience a very practical consequence of his loss of prestige. The Hurons had promised him an escort to Quebec; but each warrior found a reason why he should not be able to lend his canoe for the journey. The chiefs who had made the promises had little control over their men, and Champlain found that he must winter with the natives. The great war-party broke up. Some went to hunt deer and bears, others to trap beavers, others to fish in the frozen lakes and streams, and still others returned to their villages. One of the chiefs offered Champlain the shelter of his cabin, which he was glad to accept, and he settled down to get what comfort and information he could from his forced visit.