The canoes had hardly started when a sudden September storm swept across the lake. The waves washed into the heavily laden canoes, darkness fell, and it was only by constant shouting that the men kept their boats together and got to shore. For four days the storm raged with unabated fury. As La Salle and his men waited from day to day in their cheerless encampment, living on pumpkins and Indian corn presented them by the friendly Indian chief and the meat of a single, porcupine brought in by a hunter, the thought of the _Griffon_ haunted them. Their worst fears proved afterward to have been fulfilled; she was never heard of again. With her sank the cargo which was to have restored La Salle’s credit in Montreal; and with her, too, perished the high hopes that had been set upon this first vessel on the upper lakes. Although La Salle feared the worst, he did not turn back. As soon as the lake grew calm the four canoes set out again, coasting southward along the shore of Wisconsin. But the elements were against them. Storm after storm drove them ashore, where they spent wretched days and nights among the rocks and bushes, crouched around driftwood fires with nothing to shelter them from snow and rain but their blankets. As they went southward, steep, high bluffs ran so close to the lake that it was hard to find a landing-place. Yet the violence of the wind was so great that they were compelled at evening to drag their canoes to the top of the bluffs in order not to leave them exposed all night to the waves which would have dashed them to pieces. In the morning, in order to reëmbark, two men had to go into the water to the waist and hold a canoe upright until it was loaded, pushing it out or drawing it back as the waves advanced or retreated. Food gave out and the men paddled from morning till night with nothing to eat but a daily handful of Indian corn and hawthorn berries which they picked on shore and devoured so ravenously that they made them ill. Exhaustion and famine stared them in the face, but relief was in sight.