When we had crossed the river in the canoes which had been sent, we found three hundred Indians waiting for us. But tired as he was De Gourgues would not rest. With Olotoraca and ten arquebusiers he set out to reconnoiter, for he wished to attack at daybreak. While we rested, night closed in, and finding it vain to struggle on in the darkness among the tangled vines and fallen trees, De Gourgues was forced to return to us anxious and gloomy. After he had eaten something, a brave of the Chief Olotoraca came to him saying that he knew of a path along the margin of the sea. De Gourgues joyfully set us all in motion again.
The brief rest had made new men of us, and even Job Goddard caught some of the spirit of the adventure. The path being a good one we went forward with speed; and at dawn, after a night of indomitable perseverance upon the part of these soldiers, we reached the banks of a small stream. Beyond this and very near was the first of the smaller forts that had saluted the Vengeance as we sailed up the coast. But to our great chagrin we discovered that the tide was in, and having no boats at this point we could not cross. De Gourgues was in a great ferment of mind, for he had hoped to take the fort while the defenders slept. He walked nervously up and down the bank trying in vain to find a fording-place. To add to the discomforts, a drenching rain fell upon us and the arquebusiers had much ado to keep their gun-matches alight. But they held them under morions, thus preserving them and screening the glow from the sentries of the Spaniards. The light grew fast, and so we withdrew to the shelter of the thicket. The fort was now plainly to be seen and the defenses seemed slight and unfinished. We could even mark the Spaniards within, yawning and stretching their arms as they crawled lazily from their beds at the call of day. It was maddening to the Frenchmen. I could see them crouching all around me, their eyes glowing like the sparks of their match-cords, and their hands trembling with excitement.
After a time, which seemed interminable, the tide went down; or at least it fell so low that the stream would not come higher than the arm-pits. And, finding a spot concealed by trees from the view of the fort, the passage of this stream was begun. Each man tied his powder-flask to his morion, held his arquebuse above his head with one hand and grasped his sword with the other. The channel was a bed of sharp-pointed shell-fish, and the edges of them cut the feet like knives even through our boots. The Frenchmen rushed through the water unmindful of all save the eagerness to be within the Spanish fort. But as they came out from the stream, lacerated and bleeding from the briars and the shells, the Avenger restrained them and set them in array of battle under cover of the trees, where they stood panting, their eyes kindling and their hearts throbbing in a frenzy of anticipation. Now that his quarry was in plain sight, De Gourgues laid his plans with the deliberation of a careful field-captain, sure of his position and of his men, but waiting only to devise the more surely. Whatever happened at Fort San Mateo, he was sure of these two forts at least.
When the men were all in line and had looked carefully to their weapons, he drew his sword so fiercely that it rang against the scabbard. He pointed it through the trees.
“Look! my comrades!” he cried, “there are the robbers who have stolen this land from our King; there are the murderers who have butchered our countrymen!”
[CHAPTER XXV.]
THE DEATH OF THE WOLF.
De Gourgues gave the word. Cazenove with thirty men pushed forward to the Fort gate while the main body of us under De Gourgues ran at full speed for the glacis. We were not discovered until we were well up the slope, when a cannoneer who had come upon the rampart sent up a startled cry.
“To arms! To arms! The French are coming! The French are coming!”