[CHAPTER II.]
RIBAULT’S FORTUNES AT SELOOE.
It was on the twenty-eighth of August, the day on which the Spaniards celebrated the festival of St. Augustine, that the Adelantado entered the mouth of the Selooe or Dolphin River. He was attracted by the aspect of the place, and here resolved to establish a settlement and fortress. He gave the name of the Saint to the settlement. Having landed a portion of his forces, he found himself welcomed by the savages, whom he treated with kindness and who requited him with assurances of friendship. From them he learned something of the French settlements, and of their vessels at the mouth of the May River, and he resolved to attempt the surprise of his enemies. We have seen the failure of this attempt. Disappointed in his first desire, like the tiger who returns to crouch again within the jungle from which he has unsuccessfully sprung, Melendez made his way back to the waters of the Selooe, where he proposed to plant his settlement, and which his troops were already beginning to entrench. Here he employed himself in taking formal possession in the name of the King of Spain, and having celebrated the Divine mysteries in a manner at once solemn and ostentatious, he swore his officers to fidelity in the prosecution of the expedition, upon the Holy Sacrament.
It was while most busy with his preparations, that the fleet of Ribault made its appearance at the mouth of the river. The two heaviest of the Spanish vessels, being relieved of their armament and troops, which had been transferred to the land, had been despatched, on the approach of the threatened danger, with all haste to Hispaniola. The two other vessels, at the bar or entrance of the harbor, were unequal to the conflict with the superior squadron of Ribault. Melendez was embarked in one of them, and the three lighter vessels of the French, built especially for penetrating shallow waters, were pressing forward to the certain capture of their prey, for which there seemed no possibility of escape. Melendez felt all his danger, but he had prepared himself for a deadly struggle, and was especially confident in the enthusiastic conviction that himself and his design were equally the concern of Providence. It would seem that fortune was solicitous
to justify the convictions of so much self-esteem. Ribault’s extreme caution in sounding the bar to which his vessels were approaching, lost him two precious hours; but for which his conquest must have been certain. There was no hope, else, unless in some such miraculous protection as that upon which the Spanish general seemed to count. Had these two vessels been taken and Melendez a prisoner, the descent upon the dismayed troops on shore, not yet entrenched, and in no preparation for the conflict with an equal or superior enemy, and the annihilation of the settlement must have ensued. The consequence of such an event might have changed the whole destinies of Florida, might have established the Huguenot colonies firmly upon the soil, and given to the French such a firm possession of the land, as might have kept the fleur-de-lis waving from its summits to this very day. But the miracle was not wanting which the Spanish Adelantado expected. In the very moment when the hands of Ribault, were stretched to seize his prizes, the sudden roar of the hurricane came booming along the deep. The sea rose between the assailant and his prey,—the storm parted them, and while the feebler vessels of Melendez, partially under the security of the land, swept back towards the settlement which he had made on shore, the brigantines and bateaux of Ribault were forced to rejoin their greater vessels, and they all bore away to sea before the gale. Under the wild norther that rushed down upon his squadron, Ribault with a groan of rage and disappointment, abandoned the conquest which seemed already in his grasp.
Melendez promptly availed himself of the Providential event, to insist among his people upon the efficiency of his prayers. They had previously been desponding. They felt their isolation, and exaggerated its danger. The departure of their ships for Hispaniola, their frequent previous disasters, the dispersion of nearly two thirds of the squadron with which they had left the port of Cadiz, but three months before; the labors and privations which already began to press upon them with a novel force; all conspired to dispirit them, and made them despair of a progress in which they were likely to suffer the buffetings only, without any of the rewards of fortune;—and when they beheld the approaching squadron of the French, in force so superior as to leave no doubt of the capture of their only remaining vessels, they yielded themselves up to a feeling of utter self-abandonment, to which the stern, grave self-reliance of Melendez afforded no encouragement. But when, with broad sweep of arm, he pointed to the awful rising of the great billows of the sea, the wild raging of cloud and storm in the heavens, the scudding flight of the trembling ships of Ribault, their white wings gradually disappearing in distance and darkness like feeble birds borne recklessly forward in the wild fury of the tempest, he could, with wonderful potency, appeal to his people to acknowledge the wonders that the Lord had done for them that day.
“Call you this the cause of our king only, in which we are engaged my brethren? Oh! shallow vanity! And yet, you say rightly. It is the cause of our king—the greatest of all kings—the king of kings; and he will make it triumphant in all lands, even though the base and the timid shall despair equally of themselves and of Him! We shall never, my brethren, abandon this cause to which we have sworn our souls, in life and death, without incurring the eternal malediction of the Most High God, forever blessed be his name! We are surrounded by enemies, my friends; we are few and we are feeble; but what is our might, when the tempest rises like a wall between us and our foes, and in our greatest extremity, the hand of God stretches forth from the cloud, and plucks us safely from the danger. Be of good heart, then; put on a fearless courage; believe that the cause is holy in which ye strive, and the God of Battles will most surely range himself upon our side!”
Loud cries of exultation from his people answered this address. A thousand voices renewed their vows of fidelity, and pledged themselves to follow blindly wherever he should lead. He commanded that a solemn mass of the Holy Spirit should be said that night, and that all the army should be present. He vouchsafed no farther words. Nothing, he well knew, that he could say, could possibly add to the miraculous event that had saved their vessels, before their own eyes, in the very moment of destruction. “Our prayers, our faith, my brethren; to these we owe the saving mercies of the Blessed Jesus!”
[CHAPTER III.]
MELENDEZ AT SELOOE.
But the enthusiasm excited by the dispersion of Ribault’s vessels, and the escape of their own, was of short-lived duration among the Spaniards at Selooe. Human nature may obey a grateful impulse, and, while it lasts, will be insensible to common dangers and common necessities; but the enthusiasm which excites and strengthens for a season, is one also which finally exhausts; and when the enervation which succeeds to a high-strung exultation, is followed by great physical trials, and the continued pressure of untoward events, the creature nature is quite too apt to triumph over that nobler spirit whose very intensity is fatal to its length of life. The sign of providential favor which they had beheld wrought visibly in their behalf, the inspiriting language of their stern and solemn leader, the offices of religion, meant to evoke the presence of the Deity, and to secure, by appropriate rites, his farther protection, of which they had recently witnessed so wonderful a manifestation; these wore away in their effects upon our Spaniards, and in the toils and sufferings which they were subsequently to endure.