al, "Monday, the twenty-fourth,
came our good general himself, with fifty soldiers, very tired, Like all
those who were with him. As soon as they told me he was coming, I ran to
my lodging, took a new cassock, the best I had, put on my surplice, and
went out to meet him with a crucifix in my hand; whereupon he, like a
gentleman and a good Christian, kneeled down with all his followers,
and gave the Lord a thousand thanks for the great favors he had received
from Him."

In solemn procession, with four priests in front chanting Te Deum, the
victors entered St. Augustine in triumph.

On the twenty-eighth, when the weary Adelantado was taking his siesta
under the sylvan roof of Seloy, a troop of Indians came in with news
that quickly roused him from his slumbers. They had seen a French vessel
wrecked on the coast towards the south. Those who escaped from her were
four or six leagues off, on the banks of a river or arm of the sea,
which they could not cross.

Menendez instantly sent forty or fifty men in boats to reconnoitre.
Next, he called the chaplain,--for he would fain have him at his elbow
to countenance the deeds he meditated,--and, with him twelve soldiers
and two Indian guides, embarked in another boat. They rowed along the
channel between Anastasia Island and the main shore; then they landed,
struck across the island on foot, traversed plains and marshes, reached
the sea towards night, and searched along shore till ten o'clock to
find their comrades who had gone before. At length, with mutual joy, the
two parties met, and bivouacked together on the sands. Not far distant
they could see lights. These were the camp-fires of the shipwrecked
French.

To relate with precision the fortunes of these unhappy men is
impossible; for henceforward the French narratives are no longer the
narratives of eye-witnesses.

It has been seen how, when on the point of assailing the Spaniards at
St. Augustine, Jean Ribaut was thwarted by a gale, which they hailed
as a divine interposition. The gale rose to a tempest of strange fury.
Within a few days, all the French ships were cast on shore, between
Matanzas Inlet and Cape Canaveral. According to a letter of Menendez,
many of those on hoard were lost; but others affirm that all escaped but
a captain, La Grange, an officer of high merit, who was washed from a
floating mast. One of the ships was wrecked at a point farther northward
than the rest, and it was her company whose campfire