g
insults to those on board, mangling the corpses, tearing out their eyes,
and throwing them towards the vessel from the points of their daggers.
Thus did the Most Catholic Philip champion the cause of Heaven in the
New World.

It was currently believed in France, and, though no eye-witness attests
it, there is reason to think it true, that among those murdered at
Fort Caroline there were some who died a death of peculiar ignominy.
Menendez, it is affirmed, hanged his prisoners on trees, and placed
over them the inscription, "I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to
Lutherans."

The Spaniards gained a great booty in armor, clothing, and provisions.
"Nevertheless," says the devout Mendoza, after closing his inventory of
the plunder, "the greatest profit of this victory is the triumph which
our Lord has granted us, whereby His holy Gospel will be introduced
into this country, a thing so needful for saving so many souls from
perdition." Again he writes in his journal, "We owe to God and His
Mother, more than to human strength, this victory over the adversaries
of the holy Catholic religion."

To whatever influence, celestial or other, the exploit may best be
ascribed, the victors were not yet quite content with their success. Two
small French vessels, besides that of Jacques Ribaut, still lay within
range of the fort. When the storm had a little abated, the cannon were
turned on them. One of them was sunk, but Ribaut, with the others,
escaped down the river, at the mouth of which several light craft,
including that bought from the English, had been anchored since the
arrival of his father's squadron.

While this was passing, the wretched fugitives were flying from the
scene of massacre through a tempest, of whose persistent violence all
the narratives speak with wonder. Exhausted, starved, half naked,--for
most of them had escaped in their shirts,--they pushed their toilsome
way amid the ceaseless wrath of the elements. A few sought refuge in
Indian villages; but these, it is said, were afterwards killed by the
Spaniards. The greater number attempted to reach the vessels at the
mouth of the river. Among the latter was Le Moyne, who, notwithstanding
his former failure, was toiling through the mazes of tangled forests,
when he met a Belgian soldier, with the woman described as Laudonniere's
maid-servant, who was wounded in the breast; and, urging their flight
towards the vessels, they fell in with other fugitives, incl