In Search of Mademoiselle

by George Gibbs

But all of Ribault’s officers were not discouraged. Indeed upon the sight of so large a company many of the men and soldiers took great heart again and cried joyously to one another. The men we had found were sailors of the Gloire, who had elected to remain together upon the beach, until sighted by some French ship while the main body of their company had gone northward. Others were of the Petit-Jean and of the Jesus, which had gone ashore leagues below. We numbered now three hundred and fifty persons, and but for our hunger and the smallness of the supply of powder and ball would have been a formidable little army indeed. Captain Cosette of the Gloire, who was there, embraced the Admiral with great joy, and Bourdelais commanded a halt, for the men of the Trinity were tired out. Many of them dropped to the ground, and, forgetting their hunger and their thirst fell mercifully into a deep sleep in which they were left to rest.

I seemed to have no further sensation—even of weariness. Quiet was more irksome to me than aught else. I could not remain seated like the others but must walk up and down upon the sand. And yet I was not in a fever as before. It was easier for me to think thus upon my feet. I felt myself most calm in mind and could not understand how it should be so when every new discovery went to confirm the premonition of the doom that had hung over us like a pall since that day—years ago it seemed—when I had bade farewell to Mademoiselle upon the bastion at Fort Caroline. It all came back upon me as some dream, the stifling atmosphere, the ominous elements, the listlessness of all things human and animate upon the earth, and the misery which took the joy from those last words with my love. Then I thought of those red sunsets upon the ocean, when we had sat upon the fore-castle laughing at our ill omens and watched the great ball of fire drop down into the purple mists of the hot western sea. Such a sun there was this night—I mounted a sand hill that I might see it the better. A yellow mist rose from a swamp somewhere inland and the disk grew to a greater size than I had ever seen. Yet one could look at it squarely ere it had come to the horizon, for it was not bright and seemed not to be shining at all; only a great ball of blood poised in the air, which one might almost reach out and pluck from the sky. Then it fell down behind a line of barren pine trees at the horizon, which cut across it cold and clear as prison bars,—and in a moment was gone.

When I went back the officers of the Trinity and some of the other gentlemen had lit a fire and sat in a circle upon the sand. A council of war was held. The wilder blades were for pushing on at once. Bourdelais stood up and on behalf of the Admiral, said he, “We must be patient. To-morrow we will know something.”

“Bah!” said Arlac, angrily, “you speak of patience as though it were water or sand or anything that is easy to have. What will you know to-morrow? Sacré! Speak to us of food, if you please. Bigre! We’re hungry I tell you.”

“Yes,” growled others, “we starve. Let us die fighting at any rate.”

Some of the more moderate wished to wait until the dawn, that the men could sleep and so be fresh against any new adversity on the morrow. Others were for a rest until midnight and then a quick march to the mainland; for we did not doubt that we were on one of the many promontories which in these parts jut up and down the coast for long distances. For my part I asked nothing better than to move quickly, to the northward, or westward or which ever way would bring us soonest to our journey’s ending. So, at midnight we set forth again, the men moving uncomplaining.

By four of the morning, it being still dark, those of the company who were in advance came to a sudden halt. In a moment we were all at a standstill, peering out into the darkness over a body of water. It was a channel or sluice, through which the tide was running strongly into the sea. The line of the beach took a turn sharply to the left and follow it as we might there was no chance to gain our way to the mainland.

Across the channel from time to time we fancied we could make out the twinkling of lights, small like stars; but whether they were glow-flies or lights of lanthorns or fires upon a distant beach we could not discover. Men were at once set to work building large rafts out of small trees, upon which when day dawned we might make our way across this channel. Slowly the dawn came up out of the sea, and a faint glow spread over the sky overhead, turning it to a color deep and fathomless. One by one the lines of foam on the bar came out of the darkness until the sea was dark against the lightening sky and the stars grew fainter in the glow of coming day. It was cool and frosty—the freshness of something new begun, and the dry grasses behind us were trembling together in the morning breeze. Never did the spur of new-born day find such ready response. For the blithe Frenchmen, hungry as they were, answering readily to the crisp call of the dawn, set about putting their weapons to rights and gathered together in their companies in fine fettle.

By and by we could plainly see the low-lying beach of a shore not far distant across the channel. We seemed on a kind of cape or sand-spit, for the bay lay far around to the left and was lost in the angle of the sand dunes. There were sand dunes there, across this channel, in plenty too and bushes and hills higher than those we had passed. The sergeant-major, La Caille, the Chevalier de Brésac, and Bachasse came and stood by me, waiting until we could clearly make out the line of the coast.