Cartier kept on his guard.

He strengthened the fort with a great moat that ran all round the stockade.

The only entry was now by a lifting bridge; and pointed stakes were driven in beside the upright palisade.

Fifty men, divided into watches, were kept on guard all night, and, at every change of the watch, the Indians, across the river in their lodges of the Stadacona settlement, could hear the loud sounds of the trumpets break the clear silence of the winter night.
We have no record of the life of Cartier and his followers during the winter of their isolation among the snows and the savages of Quebec.

It must, indeed, have been a season of dread.