id to
be land. Even then one man, who was known as Simon the Armorer, was
heard to mutter that it might be land and then again it might not; for
his part, he believed the whole world had been drowned in a flood, as in
the days of Noah, and that the only land they should ever see would be at
the bottom of the ocean.

As the day wore on, and before a light breeze the ships were wafted
towards the blue cloud, it was proved beyond a doubt to be land, for some
palm-trees and tall pines became distinguishable, and above all other
sounds came, faint but distinct, the heavy, regular boom of surf.

By noon the ships had approached as near to the coast as was deemed
prudent, and for the first time since leaving France their anchors were
dropped and their sails were furled.

They had come to anchor off the mouth of an inlet, before which extended
a bar upon which the great seas were breaking and roaring so frightfully
that no passage for the ships among them seemed to offer itself.
Laudonniere thought he recognized the inlet as one leading into a broad
river, on the opposite side of which was located an Indian village called
Seloy. This place he had visited two years before in company with
Admiral Ribault, and he determined to reassure himself as to the
locality; therefore, bidding Rene accompany him, he entered a small boat,
and ordering another, full of soldiers, to follow them, he gave the word
to pull straight for the breakers.

Just as Rene thought the boat was to be swallowed by the raging seas, his
uncle guided her, with great skill, into a narrow passage that opened in
their very midst. After a few minutes of suspense, during which Rene
dared hardly to breathe, they shot into smooth waters, rounded a point of
land, and saw before them the village of which they were in search. On
the beach in front of it a crowd of savage figures, nearly naked, were
dancing wildly, and brandishing bows and spears.

Meanwhile, the village that the boats were now approaching had been
thrown into a state of the greatest excitement by the appearance of the
ships, which had been discovered while yet so distant that their sails
resembled the wings of the white sea-gull. Upon the first alarm all the
warriors had been collected on the beach, and the women had left their
work in the fields of maize and hurried with the children to the security
of the forest depths. When, however, the fleet came to anchor and the
Indians could distinguish