He himself had been a prisoner in Spanish dungeons, and had suffered as a Spanish galley-slave. Upon making his escape and returning to his own country, he had met his old friend, the Chevalier Laudonniere, and learned from him of the terrible massacres of the Huguenots, perpetrated by Menendez and the soldiers at San Augustin. Upon hearing this tale of wrong and outrage, he had then and there determined to devote his fortune and his life, if that should be necessary, to the punishment of these same Spaniards, and to the rescue of such of his countrymen as might have escaped with their lives, but who still remained in the New World.
By selling his estates, he had obtained the means to fit out three ships, and in them had induced a brave company of soldiers and seamen to accompany him upon what he considered his holy mission.
Ten days before the coming of Réné he had arrived off San Augustin, where the Spaniards, supposing his ships to be that of their own nation, had fired a salute of welcome from the guns of their newly erected fort.
As De Gourges deemed this place too strong for him to attack, and as he only wished to recover that which had belonged to the French, he had not tarried there, but had sailed northward to the River of May, the name of which the Spaniards had changed to Rio de San Mateo.
He found its entrance guarded by two small forts, one on either side, which Menendez had built after his capture of Fort Caroline. As the French ships were of too great draught to cross the bar, De Gourges had organized an expedition of small boats, and had carried these works, one after another, by assault.
Having thus effected a landing, and being joined by a large body of Indians, who had joyfully hailed him as a deliverer from Spanish cruelties, he had marched to the attack of Fort San Mateo, by which name Fort Caroline was now called.
Through a series of blunders on the part of its Spanish commandant he had been able to capture this fort with comparative ease. By the aid of powder and fire the walls of all these forts had been levelled with the ground, and their total destruction effected.
Having thus accomplished the main objects of his expedition, De Gourges had regained his ships, and sailed still farther northward, to the deep harbor in which Réné had discovered him, and in which he was now preparing for the homeward voyage.
"This," he said, in conclusion, "brings my narrative to the present date, and my expedition to the place in which I am granted the great blessing of a meeting with thee, my noble countryman, who art become at the same time a noble savage."
Then in his turn Réné gave an account of his experiences at the overthrow of Fort Caroline, his capture by the Seminoles, his rescue from them, and his subsequent life and rise to power among the Alachuas. To all of this De Gourges listened with breathless attention; and when Réné had finished, he exclaimed,