n killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely
that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the
corn, two bags only had been brought off.

Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had
killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the
new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the Breton
and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the voyage; for
now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a delicacy in
which the neighborhood abounded.

On the third of August, Laudonniere, perturbed and oppressed, was
walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that shot a
thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards
the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another.
He called the tidings to the fort below. Then languid forms rose and
danced for joy, and voices, shrill with weakness, joined in wild
laughter and acclamation.

A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they
the succors so long hoped in vain? or were they Spaniards bringing steel
and fire? They were neither. The foremost was a stately ship, of seven
hundred tons, a mighty burden at that day. She was named the Jesus; and
with her were three smaller vessels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the
Swallow. Their commander was "a right worshipful and valiant
knight,"--for so the record styles him,--a pious man and a prudent, to
judge him by the orders he gave his crew, when, ten months before, he
sailed out of Plymouth:--"Serve God daily, love one another, preserve
your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie." Nor were the
crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout chronicler of
the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of the seas to
"the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish."

Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special
Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to
benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic
destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn,
parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling
half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal
swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English
slave-trade.

He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a