t out, and in a few days returned exulting, with
thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. These last were hung on a
pole before the royal lodge; and when night came, it brought with it a
pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.

A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonniere. Resolved, cost what
it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it to be a stroke of
policy to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent
a soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a
fiat refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had
shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonniere, at the head of
twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the
opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated
himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his
displeasure, he remained in silence for half an hour. At length he
spoke, renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no
reply; then he coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had
frightened the prisoners away. Laudonniere grew peremptory, when the
chief's son, Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two
Indians, whom the French led back to Fort Caroline.

Satouriona, says Laudonniere, "was wonderfully offended with his
bravado, and bethought himselfe by all meanes how he might be revenged
of us." He dissembled for the time, and presently sent three of his
followers to the fort with a gift of pumpkins; though under this show
of good-will the outrage rankled in his breast, and he never forgave it.
The French had been unfortunate in their dealings with the Indians. They
had alienated old friends in vain attempts to make new ones.

Vasseur, with the Swiss ensign Arlac, a sergeant, and ten soldiers,
went up the river early in September to carry back the two prisoners
to Outina. Laudonniere declares that they sailed eighty leagues, which
would have carried them far above Lake Monroe; but it is certain that
his reckoning is grossly exaggerated. Their boat crawled up the hazy St.
John's, no longer a broad lake like expanse, but a narrow and tortuous
stream, winding between swampy forests, or through the vast savanna,
a verdant sea of brushes and grass. At length they came to a village
called Mayarqua, and thence, with the help of their oars, made their way
to another cluster of wigwams, apparently on a branch of the main
river. Here