My comrades of the Trinity gave no sign of fear, though they felt the nearness of their doom as keen as I. The Admiral stood erect, his head high in air. Bourdelais had been pinioned and bound, and stood near his chief, helpless but determined that no supplication for pity should escape his lips. My heart went out to the Sieur de la Notte, for he was white as death and so weak that two soldiers carried him. His livid, delicate face looked this way and that as though his mind wandered and were unconscious of it all. I wanted to speak to him one last word—to tell him that Mademoiselle was alive and might be among the people of Satouriona; he might have died happy. The pity of it! But I could not, for my mouth was bandaged tightly and it was impossible for me to make a sound above a murmur.
At length all the Frenchmen of Ribault had come upon this shore and stood or lay bound and helpless among the sand-hills. Then Menendez de Avilés came to Admiral Ribault and said again,
“Is there any one among you who will go to confession?”
Ribault turned his head, closing his eyes and answered calmly,
“I and all here are of the Reformed Faith.”
Then he looked upward as though making one last mute appeal for the lives of the men whom he had unwittingly led to this martyrdom. His face shone with a new beauty as he gazed upward, and the heavens smiled back at him. The brightness, and glory of the day were wonderful, and that made the contrast the stranger. It even seemed as though the sun, the sea, the sky and all the wonders of God’s earth and firmament were sullied and polluted by the touch of these atrocities. There, upon the lonely sand-spit in the hands of these fanatics, we were forgotten of God.
Then Ribault raised his voice in a chant which mingled softly with the roar of the surf and melted into the air like the passing of a soul. It was the Psalm “Domine memento mei” and one by one the Huguenots, some kneeling, but most standing upright, fearlessly took it up until a great and holy prayer went up to God. There was something greater than the things of earth in that grand chorus, and in the faces of these martyrs was the look which must be borne by those already within the gates of Paradise.
As I saw Menendez de Avilés and his butchers come forward, closing in, two men took me from the rear, dragging me behind a sand-hill, throwing me upon the beach and tightly binding my feet and legs with ropes and arquebus cords. They fastened my handkerchief over the bandage upon my mouth to make it the more secure, and passed this closely over my ears so that now only sight remained to me. But this assisted me little, for my neck was bound so tight that I could not turn my head. They threw me face downward upon the sand and so left me.
I lay there I know not how long, expecting each moment to receive the point of a pike between the shoulders. I have thanked God many times since then that in those dreadful moments he made me powerless to see and hear. So great was the agony of mind that more than once I prayed that all might soon be ended. The sufferings through which I was passing had made me well-nigh distraught; but it was only a temporary lunacy like that upon the beach after the wreck. And I have come to this day, at a ripe age, in full possession of all my faculties. Death was not yet for me.