cluster of wigwams, apparently on a branch of the main river. Here they found Outina himself, whom, prepossessed with ideas of feudality, they regarded as the suzerain of a host of subordinate lords and princes, ruling over the surrounding swamps and pine barrens. Outina gratefully received the two prisoners whom Laudonniere had sent to propitiate him, feasted the wonderful strangers, and invited them to join him on a raid against his rival, Potanou. Laudonniere had promised to join Satouriona against Outina, and Vasseur now promised to join Outina against Potanon, the hope of finding gold being in both cases the source of this impolitic compliance. Vasseur went back to Fort Caroline with five of the men, and left Arlac with the remaining five to fight the battles of Ontina.
The warriors mustered to the number of some two hundred, and the combined force of white men and red took up their march. The wilderness through which they passed has not yet quite lost its characteristic features,—the bewildering monotony of the pine barrens, with their myriads of bare gray trunks and their canopy of perennial green, through which a scorching sun throws spots and streaks of yellow light, here on an undergrowth of dwarf palmetto, and there on dry sands half hidden by tufted wire-grass, and dotted with the little mounds that mark the burrows of the gopher; or those oases in the desert, the "hummocks," with their wild, redundant vegetation, their entanglement of trees, bushes, and vines, their scent of flowers and song of birds; or the broad sunshine of the savanna, where they waded to the neck in grass; or the deep swamp, where, out of the black and root-encumbered slough, rise the huge buttressed trunks of the Southern cypress, the gray Spanish moss drooping from every bough and twig, wrapping its victims like a drapery of tattered cobwebs, and slowly draining away their life, for even plants devour each other, and play their silent parts in the universal tragedy of nature.
The allies held their way through forest, savanna, and swamp, with Outina's Indians in the front, till they neared the hostile villages, when the modest warriors fell to the rear, and yielded the post of honor to the Frenchmen.
An open country lay before them, with rough fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins, and the palisades of an Indian town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanon swarmed out to meet them; but the sight of the bearded strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, and the fall of their foremost chief, shot through the brain by Arlac, filled them with consternation, and they fled within their defences. Pursuers and pursued entered pell-mell together. The place was pillaged and burned, its inmates captured or killed, and the victors returned triumphant.
CHAPTER V
1564, 1565
CONSPIRACY.
In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes had been dashed, and wild expectations had come to naught. The adventurers had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a hot and sickly river, with hard labor, bad fare, prospective famine, and nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and inveighed against the commandant. Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he said should follow us from France? And why is he always closeted with Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment?
The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony—unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil—was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them. The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonniere, whose greatest errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,—fatal defects in his position.
The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one La Roquette, who gave out that, high up the river, he had discovered by magic a mine of gold and silver, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the King. But for Laudonniere, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonniere's confidants, who, while still professing fast adherence to his interests, is charged by him with plotting against his life. "This Genre," he says, "secretly enfourmed the Souldiers that were already suborned by La Roquette, that I would deprive them of this great game, in that I did set them dayly on worke, not sending them on every side to discover the Countreys; therefore that it were a good deede to dispatch mee out of the way, and to choose another Captaine in my place." The soldiers listened too well. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time wearing their arms; and, pursues Laudonniere, "these gentle Souldiers did the same for none other ende but to have killed mee and my Lieutenant also, if by chance I had given them any hard speeches." About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him to put arsenic into his medicine; but the apothecary shrugged his shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up by hiding a keg of gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's machinations reaching the ears of Laudonniere, the culprit fled to the woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his commander.
Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France, the third, the "Breton," remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malcontents took the opportunity to send home charges against Laudonniere of peculation, favoritism, and tyranny.
On the fourth of September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer, had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the tenth of November, Laudonniere persuaded him to carry home seven or eight of the malcontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonniere's two pinnaces, and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by famine to put into Havana and give themselves up. Here, to make their peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and thus was forged the thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.
On a Sunday morning, Francois de la Caille came to Laudonniere's quarters, and, in the name of the whole company, requested him to come to the parade ground. He complied, and issuing forth, his inseparable Ottigny at his side, he saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and gentlemen volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre countenances. La Caille, advancing, begged leave to read, in behalf of the rest, a paper which he held in his hand. It opened with protestations of duty and obedience; next came complaints of hard work, starvation, and broken promises, and a request that the petitioners should be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the river, and cruise along the Spanish Main, in order to procure provisions by purchase "or otherwise." In short, the flower of the company wished to turn buccaneers.
Laudonniere refused, but assured them that, as soon as the defences of the fort should be completed, a search should be begun in earnest for the Appalachian gold mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the affair tended, broke with them, and, except Ottigny, Yasseur, and the brave Swiss Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.
A severe illness again seized Laudonniere, and confined him to his bed. Improving their advantage, the malcontents gained over nearly all the best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up a paper, to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed the conspirators, and they resolved to kill
