thinking, it may be, of some child of their own whom they would never
see or touch again.

I can understand better the mystery of that Divine Childhood that was
once in the world, when I hear how these poor slaves, unasked, gave of
their dying strength to this child; how, in tribes through which no
white man had ever travelled alive, it was passed from one savage mother
to the other, tenderly handled, nursed at their breasts; how a gentler,
kindlier spirit seemed to come from the presence of the baby and its
mother to the crew; so that, while at first they had cursed and fought
their way along, they grew at the last helpful and tender with each
other, often going back, when to go back was death, for the comrade who
dropped by the way, and bringing him on until they too lay down, and
were at rest together.

It was through the baby that deliverance came to them at last. The story
that a white woman and a beautiful child had been wandering all winter
through the deadly swamps was carried from one tribe to another until it
reached the Spanish fort at St. Augustine. One day therefore, when near
their last extremity, they "saw a Perre-augoe approaching by sea filled
with soldiers, bearing a letter signifying the governor of St.
Augustine's great Care for our Preservation, of what Nation soever we
were." The journey, however, had to be made on foot; and it was more
than two weeks before Dickenson, the old man, Mary and the child, and
the last of the crew, reached St. Augustine.

"We came thereto," he says, "about two hours before Night, and were
directed to the governor's house, where we were led up a pair of stairs,
at the Head whereof stood the governor, who ordered my Wife to be
conducted to his Wife's Apartment."

There is something in the picture of poor Mary, after her months of
starvation and nakedness, coming into a lady's chamber again, "where was
a Fire and Bath and Cloathes," which has a curious pathos in it to a
woman.

Robert Barrow and Dickenson were given clothes, and a plentiful supper
set before them.

St. Augustine was then a collection of a few old houses grouped about
the fort; only a garrison, in fact, half supported by the king of Spain
and half by the Church of Rome. Its three hundred male inhabitants were
either soldiers or priests, dependent for supplies of money, clothing,
or bread upon Havana; and as the famine had lasted for two years, and it
was then three since a vessel had reached them fr