ts. They were the camp-fires of the
shipwrecked French.

And now, to relate the fortunes of these unhappy men. To do so with
precision is impossible, for henceforward the French narratives are no
longer the narratives of eye-witnesses.

It has been seen how, when on the point of assailing the Spaniards of
St. Augustine, John Ribaut was thwarted by a gale which the former
hailed as a divine interposition. The gale rose to a tempest of strange
fury. Within a few days, all the French ships were cast on shore, the
greater number near Cape Canaveral. According to the letter of Menendez,
many of those on board were lost, but others affirm that all escaped but
the captain, La Grange, an officer of high merit, who was washed from a
floating mast. One of the ships was wrecked at a point farther northward
than the rest, and it was her company whose camp-fires were seen by the
Spaniards at their bivouac among the sands of Anastasia Island. They
were endeavoring to reach Fort Caroline, of whose fate they knew
nothing, while Ribaut with the remainder was farther southward,
struggling through the wilderness towards the same goal. What befell the
latter will appear hereafter. Of the fate of the former party there is
no French record. What we know of it is due to three Spanish writers,
Mendoza, Doctor Solis de las Meras, and Menendez himself. Solis was a
priest, and brother-in-law to Menendez. Like Mendoza, he minutely
describes what he saw, and, like him, was a red-hot zealot, lavishing
applause on the darkest deeds of his chief. Before me lie the long
despatches, now first brought to light from the archives of Seville,
which Menendez sent from Florida to the King, a cool record of
atrocities never surpassed, and inscribed on the back with the royal
indorsement,--"Say to him that he has done well."

When the Adelantado saw the French fires in the distance, he lay close
in his bivouac, and sent two soldiers to reconnoitre. At two in the
morning they came back and reported that it was impossible to get at the
enemy, since they were on the farther side of an arm of the sea,
probably Matanzas Inlet. Menendez, however, gave orders to march, and
before daybreak reached the hither bank, where he hid his men in a bushy
hollow. Thence, as it grew light, they could discern the enemy, many of
whom were searching along the sands and shallows for shell-fish, for
they were famishing. A thought struck Menendez, an inspiration, says
Mendoza, of th