midnight
There they were alone in the wilderness , thousands of miles from friends and home . Out in the cold , amid the frost and snow of an Acadian winter , without a house to shelter them , a friend to cheer them , or a fire to warm them ; surrounded by demons of the forest , panting and thirsting for their blood . There was no possible escape by water , the St. John was covered by a thick winding sheet of ice , and the sloop was lying some miles away in an icy bed of a lake . The history of early colonial life does not and can not present a more affecting scene than that of the Godfrey family , as they stood alone on the banks of the river St. John in the midnight of a Nova Scotian winter . All that was saved from the flames were several pieces of half-burnt pork , the two old muskets , a few half-burnt blankets , one hundred and forty pounds of beaver skin , between two and three hundred weight of gunpowder , the old family Bible and service book , and a trunk containing some papers and old clothes . The above articles Captain Godfrey and his son , at the risk of their lives , saved from complete destruction . In an hour the little band of early settlers was reduced from comfortable circumstances to a misery beyond the power of words to express .