village without was full of them. The French officers grew anxious, and
urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in collecting the promised ransom.
The answer boded no good: "Our women are afraid when they see the
matches of your guns burning. Put them out, and they will bring the corn
faster."

Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in
one of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him,
complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his
captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that
such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control them;
that the French were in danger; and that he had seen arrows stuck in
the ground by the side of the path, in token that war was declared. The
peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to regain the boats
while there was yet time.

On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in
order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows
of huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the overlapping
extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before them
stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked by
a natural growth of trees,--one of those curious monuments of native
industry to which allusion has already been made. Here Ottigny halted
and formed his line of march. Arlac, with eight matchlock men, was sent
in advance, and flanking parties were thrown into the woods on either
side. Ottigny told his soldiers that, if the Indians meant to attack
them, they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He
was right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave
tongue at once. The war-whoop rose, and a tempest of stone-headed arrows
clattered against the breast-plates of the French, or, scorching like
fire, tore through their unprotected limbs. They stood firm, and sent
back their shot so steadily that several of the assailants were laid
dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number, gave way as Ottigny
came up with his men.

They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems,
comparatively open, when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three
hundred savages bounded to the assault. Their whoops were echoed from
the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, and who,
leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on again with a
ferocity restrained onl