The Lily and the Totem; or, The Huguenots in Florida

by William Gilmore Simms

Here our captain, Laudonniere, interrupted Barbu, and said—

“Verily, Señor Spaniard, had thy prayer been addressed to God himself, the Father, through the intervention and the mediation of the Blessed Saviour, his Son, whose blood was shed for sinners, it might have better profited thy case. Thy prayers to the Virgin were an unseemly elevation of a mortal woman over the divinity of the Godhead. But I will not vex thee with disputation. Thou art a Christian, though it is after a fashion which, to me seems scarcely more becoming than that of these poor savages of Calos, who yield faith, as thou tellest me, to the spells and enchantments of their bloody sovereign. But, proceed with thy story, which I shall be slow to break in upon again until thou art well ended.”

With the permission thus vouchsafed him, Barbu, the bearded man, thus resumed his discourse:

“We plead for the interposition of the Virgin, Monsieur le Capitaine, not as we deem her the source of power and of mercy, but as we hold it irreverent to rush even with our prayers to the feet of the awful Father himself; and rejoice to believe that she who was specially chosen, as one who should bear the burden of the Saviour-child, was of a spirit properly sanctified and pure for such purposes of interposition. But, as thou sayest, we will leave this matter. If we offend in our rites and offices, it is because we err in judgment, and not that our hearts wish to afflict the feelings or the thoughts of those who see with other eyes the truth. Besides, my long and outlandish abode among the red-men, might well excuse me many errors.”

“And so, indeed, it might, Señor Spaniard,” said Laudonniere graciously; then, as the latter remained silent, Barbu continued:

“Doubtless, Señor, as I said before, the bloody Juan de Mores y Silva, was the Jonah of our vessel, on whose account the Blessed Providence turned a deaf ear to our prayers and entreaties. It was not decreed that he should escape to rejoice in his ill-gotten treasure; and his fortunes were so mixed up with ours, that the overthrow of one was necessarily at the grievous loss and peril of us all. How many days we lay tossing on the tumultuous waves, or swept to and fro, beaten and sore distressed by the violent and changeful winds, I do not now remember, but it was in very sickness and hopelessness of heart, that we lay down at night as one lies down and submits to a power with which he feels himself wholly powerless to contend. Thus did we cast ourselves down—as the dreary shades of night came over us, with a deeper and drearier cloud than ever,—not seeking sleep, but seized upon by it, as it were, to save us from the suffering, akin to madness, which must haply follow upon our fearful waking thoughts. While we slept, our vessel struck upon the low flats of the Martyrs—those shoals which have laid bare the ribs of so many goodly and gold-laden ships of my countrymen, sucking down their brave hearts and all their treasures in the deep. We were lifted high by the surges, and rested, beyond recovery, upon the shoals, from which the remorseless seas refused again to lift us off. Our vessel lay upon one side, and the greedy waves rushed into her hold. We were stunned rather than awakened by the shock. We strove not for safety or repair. How many perished in the moment when the ship fell over I know not, but one of these was the husband of my sister. He was drowned in the first rush of the billows into the ship, though, as it was night, we knew it not. My sister had thrown herself beside my brother, and was sleeping upon his arm. She was the first to learn her misfortune, awaking, as she averred, to hear the faint cries of her lord for succor, though she knew not whence the sounds arose. When our eyes opened upon the scene, strange to say, the clouds had disappeared. The dark waves of the tempest had sped away to other regions. A gentle breeze from the land had arisen, full of sweet fragrance and a healing freshness, and, bright over head, in the blessed heavens, blossomed fresh the eternal host of the stars. Oh! the life and soothing in that smile of God. But we were not strong for the blessing, nor sufficiently grateful that life was still vouchsafed us. The day dawned upon us to increase our wretchedness. It left us without hope. Our food was ruined by the waves that filled the vessel, and though the land was spread before us in a lengthened stripe, bearing forests which were surely full of fragrance, we beheld not the means by which we should gain its pleasant shores with safety. Our boats had perished in the surf; one of them stove to pieces, and the other swept away. In our despondency and our sleep we had yielded our courage and our providence, and we lay now in the sight of heaven, amidst the equal realm of sea and sky, with the land spreading lovelily before us, yet could we do nothing for ourselves. We lay without food or drink all day, seeing nothing but the bare skies, the sea, and the shore, which only mocked our eyes. My sister sorrowed and sickened in my arms. She cried for water as one cries in the delirious agonies of fever. She would drink of the water of the deep, but this we denied her; and the day sunk again, and with it her hope and strength. With the increase of the winds that night, she grew delirious; and, when we knew not—and this was strange, for I cannot believe that I closed mine eyes that night—she disappeared. Once, it seemed that I heard her voice, in a wild scream, calling me by name, and I started forward to feel that she was gone. She left my arms while I lay insensible. It was not sleep. It was stupor. My consciousness was drowned in my great grief, and in the exhaustion of all my strength for lack of food.

“My brother and myself alone survived of all our family. With the knowledge that our sister was really gone—swallowed up, doubtless, in the remorseless deep, into which she had darted in her delirium—we came to a full consciousness. Then, when it was only misery to know, we were permitted to know all, and to feel the whole terrible truth pressing upon us, that we were alone in that dreary world of sea. Not alone of our company; only of our people. Many there were who still kept in life, watchful but hopeless. We could see their dusky forms by the faint light of the stars, crouching along the slanting plane of the vessel, upon which, by cord, and sail, and spar, we still contrived to maintain foothold; and, anon, our company would lessen. The solemn silence of all things, except the dash of the waves against us, rolling up with murmurs, and breaking away in wrath, was interrupted only by a sullen plunge, ever and anon, into the engulphing deep, as the hope went out utterly in the heart of the victim, and he yielded to death, rather than prolong the wretched endurance of a life so full of misery.

“Thus the night passed; not without other signs to cheer as well as startle us. Through the darkness we could see lights in the direction of the shore, as if borne by human hands. With the dawn of day, our eyes were turned eagerly in that direction. Nor did we look in vain. The shore swarmed with human forms. A hundred canoes were already darting along the margin of the great deep, and evident were the preparations of the people of this wild region, to visit our stranded vessel. In a little time they came. Their canoes were some of them large enough to carry forty warriors, though made from a single tree. They came to us in order of battle; a hundred boats, holding each from ten to fifty warriors. These carried spear and shield, huge lances, and well-curved bows, drawn with powerful sinews of the deer. Their arrows were long shafts of the feathery reed, such as flourish in all these forests. The feather from the eagle’s wing gave it buoyancy, and the end of the shaft was barbed with a keen flint, wrought by art to an edge such as our best workmen give to steel. Many were the chief men among these warriors, who approached us in full panoply of barbaric pomp. Turbans of white and crimson-stained cotton, such as the Turk is shown to wear, though folded in a still nobler fashion, were wrapped about their heads, over which shook bunches of plumes taken from the paroquet, the crane, and the eagle. Robes of cotton, white, or crimson, or scarlet, colored with native dies of the forest, clothed their loins, and fell flowing from their shoulders; and, ever and anon, as they came, they shook a thousand gourds which they had made to rattle with little pebbles, which, with their huge drum, wrought of the mammoth gourd, and covered with raw deer skin, made a clamor most astounding to our hapless ears. Thus they hailed our vessel, making it appear as if they intended to have fought us; but when they beheld how famishing we lay before them, with scarcely strength and courage enough to plead for mercy—speaking only through our dry and scalded eyes, and by clasping our hard and weary hands together—then it seemed as if they at once understood and felt for us; and they drew nigh with their canoes, and lowered their weapons, and darting with lithe sinews upon the sides of our leaning vessel, they held gourds of water to our lips, which cheered us while we swallowed, as with the sense of a fresh existence.

“Thus were we rescued from the yawning deep. The savages took us, with a rough kindness, from the wreck. They carried us in their canoes to the shore; and several were the survivors, as well women as men. They gave us food and nourishment, and when we were refreshed and strengthened, they separated us from our comrades, sharing us among our captors, each according to his rank, his power, or his favor with his sovereign. Seventeen of our poor Christians were thus scattered among the tribes and over the territories of the king of Calos. Some were kept in his household; but my hapless brother was not among them. He was given to a chief of the far tribes of the West, who made instant preparation to depart with him. When they would have borne us apart, with a swift bound and a common instinct, we buried ourselves in a mutual embrace. The chiefs looked on with a laugh that made us shudder; while he to whom my brother was given, with a savage growl, thrust his hands into the flowing locks of my brother, and hurled him away to the grasp of those who stood in waiting for the captive. He struggled once more to embrace me, and long after I could hear his cry—‘Brother, brother, shall we see each other never more!’ They heeded not his cries or struggles, or mine. They threw him to the ground with violence, bound him hand and foot, with gyves of the forest, and placing him in one of their great canoes, they sped away with him along the shores, as they treaded to the mighty West, where roll the great waters of the Mechachebe.

“Thus was I separated from my only surviving kinsman; and neither of us could tell the fate which was in waiting for the other. Verily, then did I look to find the worst. I no longer had a hope. It is my shame, as a Christian, that, in that desolate moment, I ceased to have a fear. I not only expected death, but I longed for it. I could have kissed the friendly hand that had driven the heavy stone hatchet of the savage into my brain. But, the Blessed Mother of God be praised, I thought not, in my despair, to do violence to my own self. That sin was spared me among my many sins, in that hour of despondency and woe; and all my crime consisted in the criminal indifference which made me too little heedful to preserve life. But this indifference lasted not long. I was the captive of the king of Calos himself. Nine others were kept by him including me, and among these was the cruel tyrant upon whose head lay the blood of so many of the wretched people of Mexico, Don Juan de Mores y Silva. He was the tyrant no longer. All his strength and courage had departed in his afflictions; and in the hour of our despair and terror, he was feebler than the meanest among us; feebler of soul than the girl whose heart beats with the dread that she cannot name, fearfully, as that of the little bird which you cover with your hand. We loathed him the worse for his miserable fear; and it made us all more resolute in courage to see one so cast down with his terrors, whom we had seen of late so insolent in his triumphs.