rch should be begun in earnest for
the Appalachian gold-mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then
building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for
provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to
content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot
thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the
affair tended, broke with them, and, beside Ottigny, Vasseur, and the
brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.

A severe illness again seized Laudonniere and confined him to his bed.
Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the
best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of
good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up
a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed
the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le
Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that
he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La Caille, who
escaped to the woods. It was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty
men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the commandant's door.
Forcing an entrance, they wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and
crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux, armed with steel cap and
cuirass, held his arquebuse to Laudonniere's breast, and demanded leave
to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The latter kept his
presence of mind, and remonstrated with some firmness; on which, with
oaths and menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him in fetters,
carried him out to the gate of the fort, placed him in a boat, and rowed
him to the ship anchored in the river.

Two other gangs at the same time visited Ottigny and Arlac, whom they
disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on
pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming all
the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the
conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated
West-India cruise, which he required Laudonniere to sign. The sick
commandant, imprisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first
refused; but, receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did
not comply, they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length
yielded.

The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels
on which the carpenters had bee