Days of the Discoverers

by Louise Lamprey

In Fort Caroline, Pierre Debré, awakened by the sound of firing, ran down to the beach, where a crowd was gathering. No one could see anything but the flashes of the guns; who or what was attacking the ships there was no way of knowing. The first light of dawn showed the two fleets far out at sea, and Ribault at once ordered the drums to beat "To arms!" They saw the great galleon approach, hover about awhile, and bear away south. When the French fleet came back later, one of the captains, Cosette, reported that trusting in the speed of his ship he had followed the Spaniards to the harbor where they were now landing and entrenching themselves.

The terror which haunted the future of every Huguenot in France now menaced the New World.

Ribault gave his counsel for an immediate attack by sea, before Menendez completed his defense or received reinforcements. Laudonnière was ill in bed. The fleet sailed as soon as it could be made ready, and with it nearly every able fighting man in the settlement. Pierre, nearly crying with wrath and disappointment, was left among the non-combatants at the fort. In vain did old Challeux the carpenter try to console him. It might be, as Challeux said, that there would be plenty of chances to fight after his beard was grown, but now he was missing everything.

That night a terrible storm arose and continued for days. The marshes became a boundless sea; the forests were whipped like weeds in the wind. Where had the fleet found refuge? or had it been hurled to destruction by the rage of wind and sea? Laudonnière, in the driving rain, came from his sick-bed to direct the work on the defenses, which were broken down in three or four places. Besides the four dog-boys, the cook, the brewer, an old cross-bow maker, and the old carpenter, there were two shoemakers, a musician, four valets, fourscore camp-followers who did not know the use of arms, and the crowd of women and children. The sole consolation that could be found in their plight was that in such a storm no enemy would be likely to attack them by sea or land. Nevertheless Laudonnière divided his force into two watches with an officer for each, gave them lanterns and an hour glass for going the rounds, and himself, weak with fever, spent each night in the guard-room.

On the night of the nineteenth the tempest became a deluge. The officer of the night took pity on the drenched and gasping sentries and dismissed them. But on that night five hundred Spaniards were coming from San Augustin through almost impassable swamps, their provisions spoiled and their powder soaked, under the leadership of the pitiless Menendez. The storm had caught Ribault's fleet just as it was about to attack on the eleventh, and Menendez had determined to take a force of Spaniards overland and attack the fort while its defenders were away. With twenty Vizcayan axemen to clear the way and two Indians and a renegade Frenchman, François Jean, for a guide, he had bullied, threatened and exhorted them through eight days of wading through mud waist-deep, creeping around quagmires and pushing by main force through palmetto jungles, until two hours before daylight the panting, shivering, sullen men stood cursing the country and their commander, under their breath, in a pine wood less than a mile from Fort Caroline. It was all that Menendez could do to get them to go a rod further. All night, he said, he had prayed for help; their provisions and ammunition were gone; there was nothing to do but to go on and take the fort. They went on.

In the faint light of early morning a trumpeter saw them racing down the slope toward the fort and blew the alarm. "Santiago! Santiago!" sounded in the ears of the half-awakened French as the Spaniards came through the gaps in the defenses and over the ramparts. Fierce faces and stabbing pikes were everywhere. Laudonnière snatched sword and buckler, rallied his men to the point of greatest danger, fought desperately until there was no more hope, and with a single soldier of his guard escaped into the woods. Challeux, chisel in hand, on his way to his work, swung himself over the palisade and ran like a boy. In the edge of the forest he and a few other fugitives paused and looked down upon the enclosure of the fort. It was a butchery. Some of the Huguenots in the woods decided to return and surrender rather than risk the terrors of the wilderness. The Spaniards, they said, were at least men. Six of them did return, and were cut down as they came. Pierre Debré side by side with a few desperate men who had one of the two light cannon the fort possessed, was fighting like a tiger in defense of a corner where a group of women and children were crouching.

When Menendez could secure the attention of his maddened men he gave an order that women, children and boys under fifteen should be spared. This order and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last of the men in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds of the Spaniards. Pierre leaped the palisade and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw the trembling women and children herded into shelter, but not killed. Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were presently hanged; a hundred and forty-two had been cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank. Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering reached a friendly Indian village. The carpenter and the other fugitives who escaped were taken to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement. Menendez returned at leisure to San Augustin, where he knelt and thanked the Lord.

The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known through the letters which the Spaniards themselves wrote in course of time to their friends at home, but chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King. Dominic de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and his eyes burned with the still anger of a naturally impetuous man who has learned in stern schools how to keep his temper.

"As I understand it," he said grimly and quietly, "Menendez, in the disguise of a sailor, found Ribault and his men shipwrecked and starving, some in one place, some in another. He promised them food and safety on condition that they should surrender and give up their arms and armor. He separated them into lots of ten, each guarded by twenty Spaniards. When each lot had been led out of sight of the rest he explained that on account of their great numbers and the fewness of his own followers he should be compelled to tie their hands before taking them into camp, for fear they might capture the camp. At the end of the day, when all had reached a certain line which Menendez marked out with his cane in the sand, he gave the word to his murderers to butcher them."

Coligny bowed his noble gray head.