“Señor, I have made myself the master of your fort. I have laid strong hands upon the garrison. I have slain them all, sparing none but the women, and such children as were under fifteen years.”
The Frenchmen looked incredulous.
“If you doubt,” he continued, “I can soon convince you. I have brought hither with me the only two soldiers whom I have admitted to mercy. I spared them, because they claimed to be of the Catholic faith. You shall see them, and hear the truth from their own lips. In all probability you know them, and will recognise their persons. Rest you here, while I send you something to eat. You shall see your compatriots, with some of the spoils taken at La Caroline. These shall prove to you the truth of what I say.”
With these words he disappeared. Soon after, refreshments were brought to our Frenchmen, and when they had eaten, the two captives at La Caroline, who had been spared on account of their faith, were allowed to commune with them, and to repeat all the facts in the cruel history of La Caroline. Nothing of that terrible tragedy was concealed. Melendez had a policy too refined for concealment, when the revelation of his atrocities was to be the means for their renewal. To strike the hearts of the Frenchmen with such terror, as to have them at his mercy, was a profound secret of success in dealing with the wretched, suffering, and already desponding outcasts in his presence.
After an hour’s absence he returned.
“Are you satisfied,” he asked? “of the truth of the things which I have told you.”
“We can doubt no longer;” was the reply; “but this does not lessen our claim upon your humanity as men, and your consideration as Frenchmen. Our people are at peace, there is amity and alliance between our sovereigns. You cannot deny us assistance, and the vessels necessary for our return to France.”
“Surely not, if you are Catholics, and if I had the means of helping you to ships. But you are not Catholics. The alliance between our kings is an alliance of members of the true Church, both sworn against heretics.”
“We are members of the Reformed Church,” was the reply of the officers; “but we are men; human; made equally in the image of the Deity, and serve the same God, if not at the same altars. Suffer us, at least, to remain with you for a season, till we can find the means for returning to our own country.”
“Señor, it cannot be. As for sheltering heretics, that is impossible. I have sworn on the holy sacrament, to root out and to extirpate heresy, wherever I encounter it—by sea or land—to wage against the damnable heresy which you profess a war to the utterance, as vindictive as possible, to the death and to the torture; and in this resolution I conceive myself to be serving equally the king of France as the king, my sovereign. I am here in Florida for the express purpose of establishing the Holy Roman Catholic Faith! I will assist no heretic to remain in the country.”