Chapter III

While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferrière had been sent out as an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have reached the mysterious mountains of Appalachee. He sent to the fort mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains, and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under Laudonnière. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic, became prime favorite with the chief of Edelano, married his daughter, and, in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged towards despotism, his subjects took offence, and beat out his brains with a hatchet.

During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the Indians,—in other words, were not clothed at all,—and their uncut hair streamed wildly down their backs. They brought strange tales of those among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on whose domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power. In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, too, and a magician, with power over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the sea had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that of the River Caloosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua, dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But, as the bride, with her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness, espoused them all, and, as we are assured, "loved them above all measure."

Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou, again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom gold-mines of Appalachec. Ottigny set forth on this fool's-errand with thrice the force demanded. Three hundred Thimagoa and thirty Frenchmen took up their march through the pine-barrens. Outina's conjurer was of the number, and had well-nigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on Ottigny's shield, that he might not touch the earth, with hideous grimaces, howlings, and contortions, he wrought himself into a prophetic frenzy, and proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to advance farther would be destruction. Outina was for instant retreat, but Ottigny's sarcasms shamed him into a show of courage. Again they moved forward, and soon encountered Potanou with all his host. Le Moyne drew a picture of the fight. In the foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with a gigantic savage, who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the plumed helmet of his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard his head, darts under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him with his sword. The arquebuse did its work: panic, slaughter, and a plentiful harvest of scalps. But no persuasion could induce Outina to follow up his victory. He went home to dance around his trophies, and the French returned disgusted to Fort Caroline.

And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their folly. Conquest, gold, military occupation,—such had been their aims. Not a rood of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores were consumed; the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too, were hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their only hope.

May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his companions, full of delighted anticipations, had explored the flowery borders of the St. John's. Dire was the contrast; for, within the homesick precinct of Fort Caroline, a squalid band, dejected and worn, dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or lay stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal. Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining their eyes across the sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.

Had Coligny left them to perish? or had some new tempest of calamity, let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection fell upon them, a dejection that would have sunk to despair, could their eyes have pierced the future.

The Indians had left the neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion, they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river, beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them. "Oftentimes," says Laudonnière, "our poor soldiers were constrained to give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke, these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish: then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat."

The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the timber. The maize began to ripen, and this brought some relief; but the Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold it with reluctance, and murdered two half-famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields.

The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose villages would yield an ample supply. The offer was accepted. Ottigny and Vasseur set forth, but were grossly deceived, led against a different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.

Pale with famine and with rage, a crowd of soldiers beset Laudonnière, and fiercely demanded to be led against Outina to take him prisoner and extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from his gratitude. The commandant was forced to comply. Those who could bear the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty, in two barges, and sailed up the river under the commandant himself. Outina's landing reached, they marched inland, entered his village, surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized him amid the yells and howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats. Here, anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of corn and beans as the price of his ransom.

The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging from all his villages. The forest along the shore was full of them; and troops of women gathered at the water's edge with moans, outcries, and gestures of despair. Yet no ransom was offered, since, reasoning from their own instincts, they never doubted, that, the price paid, the captive would be put to death.

Laudonnière waited two days, then descended the river. In a rude chamber of Fort Caroline, pike in hand, the sentinel stood his guard, while before him crouched the captive chief, mute, impassive, brooding on his woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as a hound on the scent of prey, tried, by great offers, to bribe Laudonnière to give the prisoner into his hands. Outina, however, was kindly treated, and assured of immediate freedom on payment of the ransom.

Meanwhile his captivity was entailing dire affliction on his realm; for, despairing of his return, his subjects mustered to the election of a new chief. Party-strife ran high. Some were for a boy, his son, and some for an ambitious kinsman who coveted the vacant throne. Outina chafed in his prison, learning these dissensions, and, eager to convince his over-hasty subjects that their king still lived, he was so profuse of promises, that he was again embarked and carried up the river.

At no great distance below Lake George, a small affluent of the St. John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonnière yielded, released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were fast bound in the boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong detachment of arquebusiers, set forth to receive the promised supplies, for which, from the first, full payment in merchandise had been offered. Arrived at the village, they filed into the great central lodge, within whose dusky precincts were gathered the magnates of the tribe. Council-chamber, forum, banquet-hall, dancing-hall, palace, all in one, the royal dwelling could hold half the population in its capacious confines. Here the French made their abode. Their armor buckled, their arquebuse-matches lighted, they stood, or sat, or reclined on the earthen floor, with anxious eyes watching the strange, dim scene, half lighted by the daylight that streamed down through the hole at the apex of the roof. Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, quivers at their backs, bows and arrows in their hands, while groups, crouched in the shadow beyond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable visages, and malignant, sidelong eyes. Corn came in slowly, but warriors were mustering fast. The village without was full of them. The French officers grew anxious, and urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in collecting the promised ransom. The answer boded no good, "Our women are afraid, when they see the matches of your guns burning. Put them out, and they will bring the corn faster."

Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in one of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him, complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control them,—that the French were in danger,—and that he had seen arrows stuck in the ground by the side of the path, in token that war was declared. Their peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to regain the boats while there was yet time.

On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows of squalid huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the interfolding extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before them stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked by a natural growth of trees,—one of those curious monuments of native industry to which allusion has been already made. Here Ottigny halted and formed his line of march. Arlac with eight matchlockmen was sent in advance, and flanking parties thrown into the woods on either side. Ottigny told his soldiers, that, if the Indians meant to attack them, they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He was right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at once. The war-whoop quavered through the startled air, and a tempest of stone-headed arrows clattered against the breastplates of the French, or tore, scorching like fire, through their unprotected limbs. They stood firm, and sent back their shot so steadily that several of the assailants were laid dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number, gave way as Ottigny came up with his men.

They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems, comparatively open; when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three hundred savages came bounding to the assault. Their whoops were echoed from the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, who, leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on with a ferocity restrained only by their lack of courage. There was no panic. The men threw down their corn-bags, and took to their weapons. They blew their matches, and, under two excellent officers, stood well to their work. The Indians, on their part, showed a good discipline, after their fashion, and were perfectly under the control of their chiefs. With cries that imitated the yell of owls, the scream of cougars, and the howl of wolves, they ran up in successive bands, let fly their arrows, and instantly fell back, giving place to others. At the sight of the levelled arquebuse, they dropped flat on the earth. Whenever, sword in hand, the French charged upon them, they fled like foxes through the woods; and whenever the march was resumed, the arrows were showering again upon the flanks and rear of the retiring band. The soldiers coolly picked them up and broke them as they fell. Thus, beset with swarming savages, the handful of Frenchmen pushed their march till nightfall, fighting as they went.

The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest was silent again. Two of the French had been killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the corn, two bags only had been brought off.

Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the Breton and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the voyage; for now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a delicacy in which the neighborhood abounded.

On the third of August, Laudonnière, perturbed and oppressed, was walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that shot a thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another. He called the tidings to the fort below. Then languid forms rose and danced for joy, and voices, shrill with weakness, joined in wild laughter and acclamation.

A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they the succors so long hoped in vain? or were they Spaniards bringing steel and fire? They were neither. The foremost was a stately ship, of seven hundred tons, a mighty burden at that day. She was named the Jesus; and with her were three smaller vessels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the Swallow. Their commander was "a right worshipful and valiant knight,"—for so the record styles him,—a pious man and a prudent, to judge him by the orders he gave his crew, when, ten months before, he sailed out of Plymouth:—"Serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie." Nor were the crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout chronicler of the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of the seas to "the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish."

Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn, parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English slave-trade.

He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River of May to obtain a supply.

Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as "a man borne for the honour of the English name.... Neither did the West of England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and all England was of his thinking. A hardy seaman, a bold fighter, overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal, and avaricious, he buffeted his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship Jesus, they were merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for the market. Queen Elizabeth had an interest in the venture, and received her share of the sugar, pearls, ginger, and hides which the vigorous measures of Sir John gained from his Spanish customers.

Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline, "accompanied," says Laudonnière, "with gentlemen honorably apparelled, yet unarmed." Between the Huguenots and the English there was a double tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards. Wakening from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced, when he learned their purpose to abandon Florida; for, though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid from him the secret of their Appalachian gold-mine, he coveted for his royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head, however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This, from obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonnière declined, upon which Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.

Hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans beset Laudonnière's chamber, threatening loudly to desert him, and take passage with Hawkins, unless the offer of the latter were accepted. The commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver, whose reputed avarice nowise appears in the transaction, desired him to set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort, with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too, a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provision for the voyage, receiving in payment Laudonnière's note,—"for which," adds the latter, "I am until this present indebted to him." With a friendly leave-taking he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.

Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.

On the twenty-eighth of August, the two captains, Vasseur and Verdier, came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death: betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. With the following morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing boats. Still no response. Laudonnière was almost defenceless. He had given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were French, commanded by John Ribaut.

At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families, and young nobles weary of a two-years' peace, were mustered at the port of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.

No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to blow them out of the water. Laudonnière issued from his stronghold to welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he might. Ribaut was present, conspicuous by his long beard, the astonishment of the Indians; and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonnière. Why, then, had they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to know more, on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an independent command: accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He gave him, too, a letter from the Admiral Coligny. In brief, but courteous terms, it required him to resign his command, and invited his return to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it. Ribaut warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonnière declined his friendly proposals.

Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A peasant-woman attended him, brought over, he says, to nurse the sick and take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as a servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.

Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the sunny borders of the River of May swarmed with busy life. "But, lo, how oftentimes misfortune doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at rest!" exclaims the unhappy Laudonnière. Behind the light and cheer of renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.

At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September, the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air the portentous banner of Spain.

Here opens a wilder act of this eventful drama. At another day we shall lift the curtain on its fierce and bloody scenes.