Among such scenes, for twenty leagues, the adventurous sail moved on. Far to the right, beyond the silent waste of pines, lay the realm of the mighty Potanou. The Thimagoa towns were still above them on the river, when they saw three canoes of this people at no great distance in front. Forthwith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the woods. Then, landing, he approached the canoes, placed in them a few trinkets, and withdrew to a distance. The fugitives took heart, and, step by step, returned. An amicable intercourse was opened, with assurances of friendship on the part of the French, a procedure viewed by Satouriona's Indians with unspeakable disgust and ire.
The ice thus broken, Ottigny returned to Fort Caroline; and a fortnight later, an officer named Vasseur sailed up the river to pursue the adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay betwixt them and the gold-mines, would by no means quarrel with them, and Laudonnière repented him already of his rash pledge to Satouriona.
As Vasseur moved on, two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting him to their dwellings. He accepted their guidance, and presently saw before him the cornfields and palisades of an Indian town. Led through the wondering crowd to the lodge of the chief, Mollua, Vasseur and his followers were seated in the place of honor and plentifully regaled with fish and bread. The repast over, Mollua began his discourse. He told them that he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina, lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent and eager, strove to follow his meaning; and no sooner did he hear of these Appalachian treasures than he promised to join Outina in war against the two potentates of the mountains. Hereupon the sagacious Mollua, well pleased, promised that each of Outina's vassal chiefs should requite their French allies with a heap of gold and silver two feet high. Thus, while Laudonnière stood pledged to Satouriona, Vasseur made alliance with his mortal enemy.
Returning, he was met, near the fort, by one of Satouriona's chiefs, who questioned him touching his dealings with the Thimagoa. Vasseur replied, that he had set upon and routed them with incredible slaughter. But as the chief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the imaginary Thimagoa as they fled before his fury. Whereat the chief, at length convinced, led the party to his lodge, and entertained them with a certain savory decoction with which the Indians were wont to regale those whom they delighted to honor.
Elate at the promise of a French alliance, Satouriona had summoned his vassal chiefs to war. From the St. Mary's and the Satilla and the distant Altamaha, from every quarter of his woodland realm, they had mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred men. And now, when all was ready, Satouriona reminded Laudonnière of his promise, and claimed its fulfilment; but the latter gave evasive answers and a virtual refusal. Stifling his rage, the chief prepared to go without him.
Near the bank of the river, a fire was kindled, and two large vessels of water placed beside it. Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers, bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy, distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and, turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. "So," he cried, "may the blood of our enemies be poured out, and their lives extinguished!" and the concourse gave forth an explosion of responsive yells, till the shores resounded with the wolfish din.
The rites over, they set forth, and in a few days returned exulting with thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a pole before the royal lodge, and when night came, it brought with it a pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.
A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonnière. Resolved, cost what it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent a soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonnière, at the head of twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour. At length he spoke, renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the prisoners away. Laudonnière grew peremptory, when the chiefs son, Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the French led back to Fort Caroline.
Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave it.
Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers, embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina. Arrived, they were showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his neighbor, Potanou. To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.