IN WHICH WE JOURNEY TO PARIS.
If I have dwelt upon these events hitherto with great particularity,
it is that there might be a record of all that passed and that the
devotion of this seaman Goddard, a yeoman of England, should be known
to all men. Of the Chevalier de Brésac, I need say nothing further at
this time, since his public service is well known alike in England and
France.
Upon the morning following my discovery of the ring with the ancient
setting, we entered one of the great war canoes in company with the
Paracousi Emola and eight warriors, and set forth upon our journey to
the sea. There was nothing to fear from the Spaniards, for the camp of
Emola was in the country of Satouriona, and until we came again within
sight of the battlements of Fort San Mateo, there was little danger of
discovery; and even had we been attacked we should have been able to
give a good account of ourselves. The River of May for a long distance
was shallow, but of a great width and seemed like a vast morass. At
noon on the following day we set into a current which speedily took us
into a deeper channel, where the sand grasses no longer waved beside
us. The paddles dipped deep and, as they sent the water gurgling
musically astern, put us along down-stream at a fair brave rate.
By and by the Indians told us that Fort San Mateo was but four leagues
below; and, as it lacked an hour to sunset, we hauled in our canoe
to the bank to await the friendly cover of night before resuming our
journey to the sea. But there was little need for precaution, for we
saw no sign of human life. We stole along the shadow of the western
shore, drifting down with the tide, which was ebbing strongly. At some
time after midnight the sound of men’s voices singing a rough chorus
came up to us on the wind; and in a while we crept out from behind a
point of land to see the lights of Fort San Mateo, lurid and garish,
come dancing down to us across the face of the star-sprinkled waters.
The Spaniards were making merry, and the hoarse sound of their laughter
blasphemed the sweetness of the night, and shivered the silence again
and again with its echoes. They had no fear of attack. Had they not
swept out of existence a whole nation from these new shores? We saw no
sentries upon the bastions even, and passed fairly under the cannon,
arousing no challenge or inquiry. When we had passed below the Fort, a
desperate sadness fell upon me again at the sight of the familiar shore
and hills at which she and I had looked together. I turned my head and
looked back as I had on that morning when we went down to the sea to
give battle to the Spaniards. I seemed to see her standing there again
upon the battlements tall and lithe, looking fearlessly up at me as
I told her my fears. The farewell, the tender tears in her eyes, the
touch of her fingers, all--all were as real as though it had been but
yesterday instead of two long months ago,--months of suffering which
had made days into weeks and weeks into years. The pain came again
fiercely to my breast and I caught my breath to ease it. The firm
fingers of De Brésac closed upon my own as he whispered.
“Courage, mon brave! Courage!”
Ah me! The meaning of the travails through which we are brought to
our better understanding are little known of men--nor will be through
many generations of time. In a moment or so the pang was past, and in
a sudden flash of unreason--Nature’s compensation for her sorrows--I
felt again as I had felt before, that Mademoiselle was at that moment
somewhere near--not cold in death--but breathing and living. All this
in spite of the ring, the silent evidence of the truth of what had
been spoken, which I felt at every breath, against my heart.
We had passed a little below the Fort and had drifted toward a bluff of
dunes which jutted out into the stream almost athwart our course--for
here the channel runs close to the shore. Upon this point grew a
thatch of palmetto scrub and knot of stunted firs and pines, whose
gnarled branches stretched this way and that, an impenetrable black
tangle against the starlit sky. As we came nearer, the dark blur of
the branches took a definite form, and we could mark their gentle sway
in the breeze. We were bearing toward a sand bar which jutted well
out toward the other shore and I would have spoken of it; but as I
turned, Emola seized me by the arm, placing his hand upon his mouth in
token of silence. He and the warriors were craning their heads toward
the out-spreading branches. They sat mute as statues, saying no word.
I could not make it out. Long as I stared I saw no sign or heard no
movement save the rhythm of the swaying branches.
The silence was broken by one of the Indians beside me who uttered a
hoarse sound in his throat, and lifting his head he passed his index
finger grimly around his neck. We drifted in again with the current,
and in a moment we understood. There, a horrid plaything for the wind
of the sea, its clothing limp and loose, we saw a human body, swinging
by the neck!
De Brésac started up. “Par la Mort!” he cried. “The infamous ones!
Honest braves, fighting for their King, to be given this dog’s death!
Come, Emola, land us here. It is too much, mon ami! He shall not hang
so!” He was almost sobbing with the stress of his emotion.
The paddles swept us in to the beach and we climbed the dunes to where
the body was hung. Over its head that villain had nailed a piece of
white bark upon which had been burned the dreadful confession,
“_Not As To Frenchmen
But As To Lutherans!_”
Tenderly, as though he had been one of those we three most deeply
mourned, we cut him down and tried to straighten his poor stiffened
limbs. Then we carried him where the sand was soft and with the canoe
paddles buried him out of sight. There were others, we knew, for the
placard had said it, and three more we saw hung in the same way and
bearing the same inscription. These we cut down and buried as we had
buried the first, while Emola and his warriors stood by and gravely
watched. Then silently as though the hand of death were upon our own
hearts, we entered the canoe again and pushed onward.
The tide had turned; but before dawn we had come well within the sound
of the surf and pulled into a secluded river or creek on the north
bank, before the sun had come out of the sea. We ate a portion of
dried venison apiece, and concealing the canoe among the branches, cut
into the thicket, Goddard carrying a large packet of tobacco which the
Paracousi had given him. By marching steadily all the morning along
the line of this river, we came by noon to another body of water as
large as the River of May. Here we halted again, and to our surprise
and great joy discovered a small vessel riding securely at anchor, and
flying the flag of France!
There is no need to dwell at length upon the events which followed.
The vessel was the _Epervier_, Captain Gillonne, of the fleet of poor
Ribault. After much signaling a boat was lowered from her side and many
men armed with arquebus and pike dropped down into her. They approached
within thirty yards of the shore, when we proved to them by word of
mouth that we were no Spaniards but men of their own company. Then
they brought their boat in upon the beach and welcomed us with great
rejoicing. The _Epervier_ had been upon the sea for many weeks, and
blown to the southward, had ridden through the fury of the storm which
had sent the other vessels upon the coast. The Frenchmen had seen the
wrecks upon the beach, but no man save a few soldiers in armor carrying
a standard of Spain. They had come to the River of May only to find our
Fort in the hands of the enemy and had much to do to escape to the open
sea again, out of range of the Spanish ordnance. This gallant Gillonne,
watchful against the Spaniards, remained warily at anchor, hoping by
this delay to save any Frenchman who might have escaped, although he
thus placed himself in direst jeopardy of capture by the Spanish fleet.
It seemed, then, that most of our physical sufferings were to end.
We went aboard the “great canoe” as the Paracousi called it, Captain
Gillonne setting red wine before these Indians, which indeed they drank
with as much avidity as Job Goddard himself. They walked about the
vessel looking up at the rigging, speaking among themselves, though
they made no outward sign of curiosity, surprise or any other emotion.
They are a strange people, these Caribs; haughty, and solitary as the
great pines which tower in their wild forests. The good Paracousi was
given many gifts to carry back to his people. He bore messages of
good will from the French to the great Satouriona, and we three who
had been his guests shook him by the hand and smoked a pipe of peace,
which Goddard brought forth from beneath his doublet. The chief and
his warriors departed to the shore as gravely and silently as they had
come.
The people of the _Epervier_ all sickened for the sight of France; and
the provisions being low, it was at last decided to set sail. There
was small chance of finding other refugees and the danger of capture
was imminent, depending only upon discovery. And so we hoisted our
anchor in the morning and with a brisk wind sailed forth from that
harbor into the open sea, seeing no Spanish ships and making a clear
run to the eastward out of land-sight by evening. Of the trials of that
voyage I will not speak, since the matter is one having no importance
in the description of these events. It is enough that after many weeks
of storm and stress, privation and suffering, we had a fight with a
Spanish vessel, but being weak-handed were glad enough to get secure
away. A sickness broke out among our men, but we landed at last, worn
by adversity, at Rochelle in France.
As before written, I make no attempt to justify my actions in the
happenings which followed. Thrust by ill-fortune out of employment, I
had made this quarrel my own. And the love which had changed me for
the nonce from man to god had now turned me devil. A new glory had
shone into my life for a short hour and made me all resplendent with
its gold--but the light had gone out and the darkness hung like a
pall about my soul. I could not reason but with relation to the dark
thoughts which filled my mind. I thirsted for vengeance upon Menendez
and Diego de Baçan, and there was no slaking. Nor could I understand
that I, a quiet-tempered English lad, had turned adventurer like a Moor
or a Spaniard. It was the tame stable-dog made wolfish by the sight
of blood. I have said much of the cruelty of the Spaniards, but as I
look back upon those dreadful times and the more dreadful ones which
followed, I know that I was as mad as the others and that we were no
instruments of God--as, to ease our consciences, we said we were,--but
only the willing tools of our own passions.
Truly the Chevalier de Brésac was animated by much the same spirit as
myself. For upon French soil he proved himself a man of resource. The
roads were blocked with snow, but friends in Rochelle made our journey
to Paris possible; and in the middle of the month of December we rode
into that city by the Porte St. Marcel. De Brésac was a fine horseman
and I had been bred to ride long before I took to a sailor’s life,
but it was no tranquil riding for Job Goddard. The beasts were of the
quietest, but even so he found it no easy matter to keep upright in the
saddle, and was three times tossed into the snow drifts, from which he
emerged swearing and vowing that he would ride no more.
“’Tis worse than the weather top-gallant yardarm in a cross-chop,
Master Sydney,” he would say, “an’ never a lift or handful o’ sail to
hang on by. For d’ye see, sir, this craft will mind no helm but the
fore sheets, and ’tis mighty poor sailin’ in a squall.” He bore so
rueful a countenance that we laughed at him in spite of ourselves, and
by dint of much persuading and lifting he was got each time again in
the saddle.
Once within the gates of Paris we rode straightway to the house of M.
Henri de Teligny, the uncle of my good friend. He was a fine, bristly,
red-visaged, gallant figure of a man; an old soldier, a man of much
power and, as we soon learned, with a leaning to the cause of the
Huguenots. He welcomed the Chevalier with every mark of affection, and
after bidding us to the hospitality of his house, caused refreshments
to be brought and plied his nephew with questions as to his adventures
in New France. It had been the intention of De Brésac to approach him
with some care and niceness upon matters of religion and to bring
out an expression upon the tale before enlisting his sympathies in
our cause. Therefore, he at first was guarded in his replies, using
a very skilful diplomacy. But when he had at last fairly begun, the
old man listened to the story of the massacres of Fort Caroline and
San Augustin with undisguised horror. He had heard rumors from Spain
that the French colony was destroyed. He had not entirely believed it;
but, were it true, victory had been gained by honorable war and not
by criminal deceit. He could not remain quiet through the telling of
the real tale and strode up and down the chamber pulling at his gray
mustaches and venting himself in the loudest expressions of wrath and
sorrow. When the Chevalier had come to the voyage in the canoe and
the discovery of the swinging bodies over which the legends had been
placed, he could contain himself no longer.
“Jarnichien!” he shouted. “Hung like a pirate or a Marane! Par la Pâque
Dieu! It is a stain upon the honor--not of Coligny--but of France!
These Spaniards think that this New World was made only for themselves
and that no other living man has a right to move or breathe there!”
“Would even that justify the murder of French women and children, my
General?” returned the Chevalier keenly.
“La Dogue! I should say, no! You were gentlemen of France with a patent
from your King to settle in this Terre aux Bretons, which is as much
the property of France as of Spain.”
“Since this Colomb first set foot upon the land the Spanish claim it
all. Menendez has said it.”
“And that all others are Moors or piratos, to have their throats slit
like hogs or be hung like thieves? Ah! perhaps even in Spain there is
justice for such Generals as Menendez de Avilés! This is the King’s
quarrel, mes garçons, not yours. Forquevaulx is our Ambassador to
Madrid. I know him well. We have fought side by side in siege and
field. He too is a soldier and knows what a soldier’s death, as well
as his life, should be. This is murder--assassination, I tell you--of
the foulest kind! Done openly, and not even Philip of Spain could
countenance it. Forquevaulx shall demand the degradation of this man.”
He paused, out of breath and countenance from rapid speaking. Here
truly was a friend indeed; we had not counted upon such a valiant
partisan.
“The Admiral shall know of these facts at once. I will go to him--or
better--he shall come to me. The Hôtel de Châtillon and the Louvre have
ears and my house is my fortress, mes garçons, where all obey me. There
are no spies here.”
When he had composed himself, he sat and addressed a letter to Coligny,
acquainting him with our arrival and asking him to come secretly under
the cover of night. The publicity of an audience at the Hôtel de
Châtillon could thus be avoided and M. de Teligny did not doubt that,
in view of the importance of the matter, the Admiral would come with
all haste.
The Chevalier de Brésac was tireless. He worked with a nervous energy
which was most astonishing in one of his slender frame. For my part I
was glad enough to seek some rest; for my ride of many miles upon the
back of a horse, my first journey of the kind for years, had made me
more stiff and sore than when I had fought Don Diego de Baçan. Goddard
had long since been put to bed below stairs. While I lay upon a couch,
De Brésac wrote steadily; seeking to place on record, in some sort of
order, the argument and statement of the case for the Admiral. As he
had aroused Henri de Teligny, so he hoped to arouse Coligny; though
from what I knew of the man I had little thought that this would be
hard to do.
That night the Chevalier de Brésac repeated our story to Gaspard de
Coligny. The great Admiral had thrown off his mask and cloak and sat in
a straight high-backed chair before the fire. He was dressed solemnly
enough in a suit of black, with boots and slashed trunks. He wore a
rolling collar or kind of ruff; and a gold chain of fine workmanship,
the symbol of his rank, hung about his neck and down his doublet. In
stature he was tall, though he seemed less so by reason of his head
being somewhat bowed in thought. His forehead was lofty and wrinkled,
but marked rather by the weather than by the ravages of time. His hair
was plentiful but was cut short, standing straight upon his head.
A pointed white beard fell down upon his breast. His hands grasped
the straight arms of the chair as he looked forward into the fire.
His eyes, though clear and alert like those of a hawk and seeming to
look not at but through, had yet an expression of sadness rather than
severity. The light of the fire, which was thrown up from below, shone
upon the cheek-bones and marked the deeper the hollows below. At one
corner of the mouth was a great scar half-hidden by the mustache--a
relic of Montcontour--which made him to appear still more gaunt and
hollow-eyed. It was the face of a keen, daring man, but not that of a
cruel or even a vengeful one.
The Chevalier stood a little to one side opposite him, leaning lightly
against the chimney-piece. As he proceeded with the story the Admiral’s
hands gripped the chair-arms the harder and he chewed nervously upon a
toothpick, which he had put into his mouth. For the most part he sat
quiet, saying no word; but when he heard of the promise of Menendez for
safe conduct as prisoners of war, he could contain himself no longer.
He got upon his feet, walking up and down, asking short questions the
while to complete his view. De Brésac told all that had happened much
as I have related it here, save only the parts which are intimate
and personal to me. When he described the patience and martyrdom of
Ribault and the others and the manner in which they had met their doom,
Coligny raised his hands to his brow, saying as though to himself,
“It is not possible--not possible! I cannot believe it!” asking
questions until all doubt of the barbarity had been removed from his
mind. “It is horrible!” he said. “Horrible, even now when assassination
is so much the fashion that it is the argument of the fool and the wise
alike.”
When De Brésac had finished, having spoken of the good conduct of
those who were lost and the probable position of the survivors--were
there any--the Admiral remained silent awhile looking into the fire,
his hands clinched and his brows knit in a tangled frown. He had quite
forgotten us; for his mind was fixed upon the bearing of this news upon
matters of State. No word was spoken and the only sound in that great
chamber was the crackling of the logs upon the hearth. We saw by the
look upon his face how deep was his interest in the fate of his poor
colony, and we saw how the melancholy was driven from his eyes by the
expression of stern resolve which suddenly fixed his features. It was
like watching a hericano drive up over a windy sea.
After a while he put again in rapid succession a number of questions
upon facts unconsidered by De Brésac, which would have a certain
diplomatic value at the Court of Madrid. It was far into the night when
he had done, and he made no further statement and gave no opinion of
any kind save at the end, when his men had been called and he was about
to draw on his cloak.
“A great crime has been committed against duly-constituted officers
of France, my friends,” he said gravely. “It is a matter in which the
honor of the King is concerned. It may not be overlooked, and God alone
knows what may come. You are to speak no word of this affair, but must
wait in readiness to be called to audience with the King. You have done
well, Monsieur de Brésac. Good night, messieurs! Monsieur de Teligny,
good night.”
And so saying he disappeared down the stairway and out a street door,
muffling himself as he went.
De Brésac turned to me, his eyes glittering and his lips set in a grim
smile of triumph. “We shall have vengeance upon them,--yes, we shall
have vengeance!”