in a boat. As each successive party landed, their hands were bound fast
at their backs; and thus, except a few who were set apart, they were all
driven towards the fort, like cattle to the shambles, with curses and
scurrilous abuse. Then, at sound of drums and trumpets, the Spaniards
fell upon them, striking them down with swords, pikes, and halberds.
Ribaut vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his oath. By the
latter's order, a soldier plunged a dagger into his heart; and Ottigny,
who stood near, met a similar fate. Ribaut's beard was cut off, and
portions of it sent in a letter to Philip II. His head was hewn into
four parts, one of which was displayed on the point of a lance at each
corner of Fort St. Augustine. Great fires were kindled, and the bodies
of the murdered burned to ashes.

Such is the sum of the French accounts. The charge of breach of faith
contained in them was believed by Catholics as well as Protestants, and
it was as a defence against this charge that the narrative of the
Adelantado's brother-in-law was published. That Ribaut, a man whose good
sense and bravery were both reputed high, should have submitted himself
and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety is scarcely
credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a miscreant so
savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim,
current among the bigots of the day, that faith ought not to be kept
with heretics.

It was night when the Adelantado again entered St. Augustine. Some there
were who blamed his cruelty; but many applauded. "Even if the French had
been Catholics,"--such was their language,--"he would have done right,
for, with the little provision we have, they would all have starved;
besides, there were so many of them that they would have cut our
throats."

And now Menendez again addressed himself to the despatch, already begun,
in which he recounts to the King his labors and his triumphs, a
deliberate and business-like document, mingling narratives of butchery
with recommendations for promotions, commissary details, and petitions
for supplies; enlarging, too, on the vast schemes of encroachment which
his successful generalship had brought to nought. The French, he says,
had planned a military and naval depot at Los Martires, whence they
would make a descent upon Havana, and another at the Bay of Ponce de
Leon, whence they could threaten Vera Cruz. They had long been
encroaching on Spani