is
tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in
their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their
only hope.

May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his
companions, full of delighted anticipation, had first explored the
flowery borders of the St. John's. The contrast was deplorable; for
within the precinct of Fort Caroline a homesick, squalid band, dejected
and worn, dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or
lay stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks.
Some were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel
upon the meadows. If they had had any skill in hunting and fishing, the
river and the woods would have supplied their needs; but in this point,
as in others, they were lamentably unfit for the work they had taken in
hand. "Our miserie," says Laudonniere, "was so great that one was found
that gathered up all the fish-bones that he could finde, which he dried
and beate into powder to make bread thereof. The effects of this hideous
famine appeared incontinently among us, for our bones eftsoones beganne
to cleave so neere unto the skinne, that the most part of the souldiers
had their skinnes pierced thorow with them in many partes of their
bodies." Yet, giddy with weakness, they dragged themselves in turn to
the top of St. John's Bluff, straining their eyes across the sea to
descry the anxiously expected sail.

Had Coligny left them to perish? Or had some new tempest of calamity,
let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the
watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection
fell upon them,--a dejection that would have sunk to despair could their
eyes have pierced the future.

The Indians had left the neighborhood, but from time to time brought
in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at
exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion,
they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river,
beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them.
"Oftentimes," says Laudonniere, "our poor soldiers were constrained to
give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any
time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke,
these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make
so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we