But for
Laudonniere, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally
in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonniere's confidants, who, while
still professing fast adherence to his interests, is charged by him with
plotting against his life. "This Genre," he says, "secretly enfourmed
the Souldiers that were already suborned by La Roquette, that I would
deprive them of this great game, in that I did set them dayly on worke,
not sending them on every side to discover the Countreys; therefore that
it were a good deede to dispatch mee out of the way, and to choose
another Captaine in my place." The soldiers listened too well. They made
a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with them to the rampart when
they went to their work, at the same time wearing their arms; and,
pursues Laudonniere, "these gentle Souldiers did the same for none other
ende but to have killed mee and my Lieutenant also, if by chance I had
given them any hard speeches." About this time, overheating himself, he
fell ill, and was confined to his quarters. On this, Genre made advances
to the apothecary, urging him to put arsenic into his medicine; but the
apothecary shrugged his shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow
him up by hiding a keg of gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they
failed.
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