he Spaniards came through
the gaps in the defenses and over the ramparts. Fierce faces and
stabbing pikes were everywhere. Laudonniere snatched sword and buckler,
rallied his men to the point of greatest danger, fought desperately
until there was no more hope, and with a single soldier of his guard
escaped into the woods. Challeux, chisel in hand, on his way to his
work, swung himself over the palisade and ran like a boy. In the edge of
the forest he and a few other fugitives paused and looked down upon the
enclosure of the fort. It was a butchery. Some of the Huguenots in the
woods decided to return and surrender rather than risk the terrors of
the wilderness. The Spaniards, they said, were at least men. Six of them
did return, and were cut down as they came. Pierre Debre side by side
with a few desperate men who had one of the two light cannon the fort
possessed, was fighting like a tiger in defense of a corner where a
group of women and children were crouching.

When Menendez could secure the attention of his maddened men he gave an
order that women, children and boys under fifteen should be spared. This
order and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last of the men
in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds of the Spaniards.
Pierre leaped the palisade and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw
the trembling women and children herded into shelter, but not killed.
Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were presently hanged; a hundred and
forty-two had been cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank.
Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering reached a
friendly Indian village. The carpenter and the other fugitives who
escaped were taken to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet
which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement. Menendez returned
at leisure to San Augustin, where he knelt and thanked the Lord.

The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known through the letters
which the Spaniards themselves wrote in course of time to their friends
at home, but chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King. Dominic
de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and his eyes burned with the still
anger of a naturally impetuous man who has learned in stern schools how
to keep his temper.

"As I understand it," he said grimly and quietly, "Menendez, in the
disguise of a sailor, found Ribault and his men shipwrecked and
starving, some in one place, some in another. He promise