“Ha! ha! you cry for him in vain!” was the mocking answer of Lachane. “Renaud, that miserable villain—that wretch after thy own heart and fashion—hath quite as much need of thee as thou of him! Ye will serve each other never more to the prejudice of better men. Hark! hear you not? Even now they are dealing with him!”
And, sure enough, even as he spoke, the screams of one in mortal terror, interrupted by several heavy blows in quick succession, seemed to confirm the truth of what Lachane had spoken. In that fearful moment Albert remembered the words, now full of meaning, which Nicholas Barré had spoken while they set forth. The hunter had indeed become the hunted. Lachane gave him little time for meditation.
“They have done with him! Prepare! To your knees, Captain Albert! I give you time to make your peace with God—such time as you gave my poor Guernache! Prepare!”
But, though Albert had not courage for combat, he yet found strength enough for flight. He was slight of form, small, and tolerably swift of foot. Flinging his now useless firelock to the ground, he suddenly darted off through the forests, with a degree of energy and spirit which it tasked all the efforts of the less wieldy frame of Lachane to approach. Life and death were on the event, and Albert succeeded in gaining the beach where the boat had been left before he was overtaken. But Lamotte, to whom the boat had been given in charge, pushed off, with a mocking yell of laughter, at his approach! His cries for succor were unheeded. Lamotte himself would have slain the fugitive but that he knew Lachane had claimed for himself this privilege. His spear had been uplifted as Albert drew nigh the water, but the shout of Lachane, emerging from the woods, warned him to desist. He used the weapon to push the pinnace into deep water, leaving Albert to his fate!
“Save me, Lamotte!” was the prayer, of the tyrant in his desperation, urged with every promise that he fancied might prove potent with the soldier. But few moments were allowed him for entreaty, and they were unavailing. Lamotte contented himself with looking on the event, ready to finish with his spear what Lachane might leave undone. Albert gazed around him, and as Lachane came, with one shriek of terror, darted into the sea. The avenger was close behind him. The water rose to the waist and finally to the neck of the fugitive. He turned in supplication, only to receive the stroke. The steel entered his shoulder, just below the neck. He staggered and fell forwards upon the slayer. The blade snapped in the fall, and the wounded man sunk down irretrievably beneath the waters. Lachane raised the fragment of his sword to Heaven, while, with something of a Roman fervor, he ejaculated—
“Guernache! dear friend, behold! the hand of Lachane hath avenged thee upon thy murderer!”
[VIII.]
FLIGHT, FAMINE, AND THE BLOODY FEAST OF THE FUGITIVES.
The assassination of Captain Albert restored peace, at least, to the little colony of Fort Charles. He had been the chief danger to the garrison, by reason of his vexatious tyranny, fomented ever by the miserable malice and espionage of Pierre Renaud. Both of these had perished, and a sense of new security filled the hearts of the survivors. They had also gratified all revenges. The sequel of the narrative may be told, almost in the very words of the simple chronicle from which our facts are mostly drawn.
“When they (the conspirators) were come home againe, they assembled themselves together to choose one to be Governor over them.” In this selection there was no difficulty. Jealousies and dissensions had ceased to exist, and the choice naturally fell upon Nicholas Barré,[15] whose former position, as Lieutenant under Albert, and whose recent connection with the party by which he was slain, had naturally given him a large influence among the colonists. He was equal to his new duties. He “knewe so well to quite himself of this charge that all rancour and dissention ceased among them, and they lived peaceably one with another.” But, though harmony was restored among them, it was a harmony without hope. They had been abandoned by their countrymen. The supplies which Ribault had promised them had utterly failed. They had never, indeed, been levied. Ribault returned to France only to find it convulsed with a renewal of the civil war, under the auspices of that incarnate mischief, Catherine de Medicis, and her fatherless and cruel son, in whose name she swayed the country to its ruin. Coligny, the father of the colony, had enough to do in fighting the battles of the Huguenots at home. He could do nothing for those whom he had sent abroad. The peace of Longjumean had been of short duration, and there had been really no remission of hostilities on the part of the Catholics. In the space of three months more than two thousand of the former fell victims to the rage of the populace; and, though reluctantly, the Prince of Condé and Coligny were forced into a resumption of arms for the safety of their own persons. The immediate necessities of their situation were such as to defeat their efforts in behalf of the remote settlement at Fort Charles. They needed all their soldiers and Huguenots in France. Feeling themselves abandoned—they knew not why—the colonists in Florida ceased to behold a charm or solace in their solitary realm of refuge. Its securities were no longer sufficient to compensate for its loneliness. Better the strife, perhaps, than this unmeaning and unbroken silence. They were too few for adventure, and the discouragements resulting from their domestic grievances were enough to paralyze any such spirit. But for this there had been no lack of the necessary inducements. In their second voyage to King Ouade, seeking “mil and beans,” they had learned some of the secrets of the country which made their eyes brighten. They had discovered that there was gold in the land, and that the gold of the land was good. This prince had freely given them of his treasure. He had bestowed on them pearls of the native waters, stones of finest chrystal, and certain specimens of silver ore, which he described, in reply to their eager inquiries, as having been gathered at the foot of certain high mountains, the bowels of which contained it in greatest quantity. These were the mountains of Apalachia, and the truth of Ouade’s revelations have been confirmed by subsequent discovery. The intelligence had greatly gladdened the hearts of our Frenchmen, and nothing but the feebleness of the garrison prevented Albert from prosecuting a search which promised so largely to gratify the lusts of avarice. His subsequent errors and fate put an end to the desire among his followers. They longed for nothing now so much as home. They had been temporarily abandoned by the Indians whose granaries they had emptied, and who had been compelled to wander off to remote forests in search of their own supplies. The gloom of the Frenchmen naturally increased in the absence of their allies, who had furnished them equally with food and recreation. Their provisions again began to fail them. Their resources in corn and peas were quite exhausted; and no more could be procured from the red-men, who had preserved a supply barely sufficient for the planting of their little fields. In this condition of want, with this feeling of destitution and abandonment, it was resolved among the Huguenots, to depart the colony. With a fond hope once more of recovering the shores of that country, still most beloved, which had so unkindly cast them forth, they began to build themselves a vessel sufficiently large to bear their little company. “And though there were no men among them,” says the chronicle, “that had any skill, notwithstanding, necessitye, which is the maistresse of all sciences, taught them the way to build it.” But how were they to provide the sails, the tackle and the cordage? “Having no meanes to recover these things they were in worse case than at the first, and almost ready to fall into despayre.” They were succored, when most desponding, by the help of Providence. “That good God, which never forsaketh the afflicted, did favor them in their necessitie.” The Indians, who had been for some time absent, seeking, by the chase, in distant forests, to supply themselves with provisions in place of those which they had yielded to the white men, now began to reappear; and, in the midst of their perplexities, they were visited by the Caciques, Audusta and Maccou, with more than two hundred of their followers. These, our Frenchmen went forth to meet, with great show of satisfaction; and had they been sufficiently re-assured by the return of their red friends—had they not been too much the victims of nostalgia, or homesickness, the cloud might have passed from their fortunes, and the little colony might have been re-established under favoring auspices. But their only thought was of their native land. They declared their wishes to the Indian chieftains, and, showing in what need of cordage they stood, they were told that this would be provided in the space of a few days. The Caciques kept their word, and, in little time, brought an abundance of cordage. But other things were wanted, and “our men sought all meanes to recover rosen in the woodes, wherein they cut the pine trees round about, out of which they drew sufficient reasonable quantitie to bray the vessel. Also they gathered a kind of mosse, which groweth on the trees of this countrie, to serve to caulke the same withall. There now wanted nothing but sayles, which they made of their own shirtes and of their sheetes.” Thus provided with the things requisite, our Frenchmen hastened to finish their brigantine, and “used so speedie diligence,” that they were soon ready to launch forth upon the great deep. They gave to their Indian friends all their surplus goods and chattels, leaving to them all the merchandise of the fort which they could not take away;—a liberality which gave the red-men the “greatest contentation in the worlde.” But they re-embarked their forge, their artillery and other munitions of war. Unhappily, they were too impatient to begin their journey. In the too sanguine hope of reaching France, with a speed proportioned to their eager desires, they laid in no adequate provision for a long voyage. “In the meane season the wind came so fit for their purpose, that it seemed to invite them to put to sea. Being drunken with the too excessive joy which they had conceived for their returning into France, or rather deprived of all foresight and consideration:—without regarding the inconsistencie of the winds which change in a moment, they put themselves to sea, and, with so slender victuals, that the end of their enterprise became unlucky and unfortunate.”