Two or three times the unruly and riotous spirit, engendered by shedding of blood, broke forth among the Frenchmen; but so complete was the control and discipline which De Gourgues had put upon them that little harm was done. Once they had broken into a wine cask without his knowledge, and there was like to be a repetition of the affair of Cabouche. It is a strange thing that Cabouche himself, who had often made good his boast of bully of the fore-castle, should have been the one to put this small mutiny down. For he stood in the doorway of the wine room pointing his arquebuse toward his companions and vowing he would shoot the one who advanced. It was said, when it was done and they had retreated, that he disappeared into the darkness and took a good paunch-full himself, coming forth with a strong smell of alcohol hanging about him.
In the afternoon there was a wonderful scene. De Gourgues gathered all the Indians about him under the battlements and, through Dariol, made them a long speech. From time to time they uttered loud cries which broke in upon his words. When he had done, a prolonged yell came from the savages and they swarmed over the ill-fated Fort, looking not unlike a swarm of ants upon a hill of their own. They rushed through the living quarters and the barracks and out upon the roofs tearing and rending until it seemed as though some movement of the earth or elements were splitting the buildings to pieces. In two hours the corps-de-garde was razed to the ground. Meanwhile a great number had mounted the battlements and with pikes, pieces of iron, and any rough implements that came to hand, began prying the stones from their places. With savage cries of exultation they tossed these out into the river or threw them in the ditch or thicket. A dust arose which hid them from our sight, but they worked on, as though maddened, in the heat and glare until sundown, when not one stone was left upon another. It was a whirlwind of ruin.
That night when I heard the preparations above me for sailing on the morrow, it seemed impossible that only a week and three days had passed since we had come to anchor in the Tacatacourou—since we had made our league—found Mademoiselle—passed the hardships of the march and attack, and come to the successful ending of our expedition. De Gourgues said little. When he had finished speaking to the Indians he had come aboard and set all the seamen to work stowing the vessel and breaking out the spars and sails for the voyage. That night Mademoiselle and Maheera bade a tearful good-by, for they had come to love each other with a fond affection; and to this day I cannot forget the services the Indian maiden did for me and mine. On the morrow the anchors were broken out, and with a favoring breeze we moved slowly down the river toward the sea; while the Indians, shouting messages of good will to us, ran along the banks until the freshening wind had driven us from their sight.
When the ships passed the smaller forts I could see that there too the work of destruction had been complete; for the stones and fascines were scattered in all directions, and only a few overturned and broken gun rests showed where the bastions had been. We sailed out over the bar at high tide and with a last salute to our friendly hosts we set our prow squarely abreast the broad surges, for France. In a few days I could almost crawl about the decks without an arm to steady me. In two weeks I went about some simple duties; and in the long summer twilights, Mademoiselle and I would sit high up on the slanting after-castle near the lanthorns, looking back down the pink, swirling wake toward the land where we had both suffered so much. Of De Baçan we spoke but once. I let fall a word of regret that so gallant and splendid a fighter should have been of so ill-favored a disposition. But Mademoiselle made me no reply. With the thought how near she had come to falling into his hands after the capture of Fort Caroline, she shuddered, drew closer to me and would hear of him no more. We had too many present joys to conjure up the miseries that were past. We had been born into a new world of our own and we peopled it with fancies as blithe as ourselves. Under the laughing stars we were creatures of unreality, unconscious of all save the great love which had conquered everything. De Gourgues sat with us sometimes, but not for long; for there is no pain keener than that which comes from seeing a forbidden joy through the eyes of another.
My tale is soon ended. We reached Rochelle after a voyage of little event, and were greeted with great honor. So soon as it could be accomplished,—and that was with such speed of habit and frock making as was never known before or since,—Diane and I were married. The endurance and strength of heart which bore her up in all her sufferings among those wild western forests has, to this day of our age and contentment, been my sturdiest prop in time of stress. I need not tell at length how, through Coligny, the prize money for the San Cristobal was turned over at last to Captain Hooper; and how upon a certain successful voyage from Plymouth I came to be his second in command, nor how I owned my own vessel before my mistress had Domenique and little Diane well out of their swaddling clothes. The Chevalier de Brésac has come back from his voyage with Sir Walter Raleigh. M. de Teligny is dead, leaving the Chevalier a great fortune, and he is now out upon a venture of his own. Job Goddard, hoary headed and staunch, but convincing and windy-worded as ever, sits smoking at his window in the Pelican with Martin Cockrem. And the two rogues, gathering the growing youth of the docks about them, with easy elaboration, tell wonderful yarns of voyages to strange countries where people walk upside down, and of a preference use their toes for fingers, to which the urchins listen, their wide mouths agape and their eyes agog with curiosity. Job has set about planting a patch of tobacco at Plymouth; but his pursuit has fared ill, and so he gets the leaf in bales from the ships that come laden to Plymouth from the western main.
It is history how De Gourgues was spurned at Paris by that weakling, Charles; how our own good Queen Bess of England offered him a command, and how Charles thereupon relented, and would have given him a position of authority. But De Gourgues was never a stranger to adversity; and through it all, his great grief has ever been that Menendez de Avilés escaped the vengeance at San Mateo, of which he had been the dearest object. This malefactor died full of honor and riches, high in the favor of Philip of Spain, who, had he lived, would have given him command of the great Armada.
That Spanish fleet, so long threatened, has come and gone. Through the good offices of Sir Francis Drake and Lord Howard, for both of whom my father had performed some service, I was given considerable responsibility and command upon Drake’s own Revenge, acquitting myself to the great Admiral’s satisfaction. So that I came into the royal service again as commander of the White Bear, and gained for myself many emoluments and honors. By great good fortune I thus won my way into the notice of the Queen, and so, through her generosity, was enabled in some sort to restore my family to the prestige it had enjoyed before the imprudences and generosities of my grandfather and father had depleted the value of the estates. I lay no claim to credit for these achievements. Had it not been for Diane, I should have made no attempt to regain the position of my family before the Court. Her soft influences, strong and womanly, have weaned me away from the boisterous habits of my wild young life, and have shown me the value of the refinements which come of gentle living: With the death of the Queen Mother, in France, there came, too, a change in the fortunes of Diane and the great Henry—the greatest, Henry of Navarre,—with that rare grace which has ever distinguished him, has given back again the estate of La Notte, at Villeneuve, to my wife. Thither, at certain seasons, we go; forming thus another link, not without a certain value, between two great Christian monarchs.
Diane has built a summer-house on her estate, and she has fashioned it after the lodge of Olotoraca, where during those long months she waited for me. It is not in a wild pine forest, where every night the winds may sing their grand and lonely psalms. It is on the borders of a quiet lake, where soft sweeping willows whisper with the rippling water, and tall poplars, like sentinels, guard us against the legions of unrest. When the sun has set, and the slender moon has sailed out across the deep green vault above us, then we sit, hand-in-hand, dreaming and at peace, I—and Mademoiselle.
THE END.