d not show it
too plainly, and Pierre had grown almost as self-contained as a veteran
of twice his years. When the French commander suggested fighting the
Spaniards Satouriona leaped for joy. He and his warriors asked only to
be allowed to join in that foray.

"How soon?" asked Gourgues. Satouriona could have his people ready in
three days.

"Be secret," the Gascon cautioned, "for the enemy must not feel the wind
of the blow." Satouriona assured him that there was no need of that
warning, for the Indians hated the Spaniards worse than the French did.

"Pierre," said Gourgues, when he had the lad safe on board ship, "they
said you were killed."

"I stayed alive to fight Spaniards," said the boy with a flash of the
eye. "'Sieur Dominic, there are four hundred of them behind their walls,
where they rebuilt our fort. I have hidden in the trees and counted. But
you can trust Satouriona. The Spaniards have stolen women, enslaved and
tortured men, and killed children, and the tribe is mad with hate."

Twenty sailors were left to guard the ships, Gourgues with a hundred and
sixty Frenchmen took up their march along the seashore; their Indian
allies slipped around through the forest. With the French went
Olotoraca, the nephew of the chief, a young brave of distinguished
reputation, a French pike in his hand. The French met their allies not
far from the fort, and pounced upon the garrison just as it finished
dinner, Olotoraca being the first man up the glacis and over the
unfinished moat. The fort across the river began to cannonade the
attacking party, who turned four captured guns upon them, and then
crossed, the French in a large boat which had been brought up the river,
the Indians swimming. Not one Spaniard escaped. Fifteen were kept alive,
to be hanged on the very trees from which Menendez had hanged his French
captives, and over them was set an inscription burned with a hot poker
on a pine board:

"Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."

When not one stone was left upon another in either fort, Dominic de
Gourgues bade farewell to his Indian allies, and taking with him the lad
so strangely saved from death and exile, went back to France.

NOTE

The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's
"The Pioneers of France in the New World."

THE DESTROYERS

The moon herself doth sail the air
As we do sail the sea,
Where by Saint Michael's Mount