Two days of suspense ensued, when a messenger
came back with a letter from the Adelantado, announcing that he had
nearly reached the French fort, and that on the morrow, September the
twentieth, at sunrise, he hoped to assault it. "May the Divine Majesty
deign to protect us, for He knows that we have need of it," writes the
scared chaplain; "the Adelantado's great zeal and courage make us hope
he will succeed, but, for the good of his Majesty's service, he ought to
be a little less ardent in pursuing his schemes."
Meanwhile the five hundred pushed their march, now toiling across the
inundated savanrias, waist-deep in bulrushes and mud; now filing through
the open forest to the moan and roar of the storm-racked pines: now
hacking their way through palmetto thickets; and now turning from their
path to shun some pool, quagmire, cypress swamp, or "hummock," matted
with impenetrable bushes, brambles, and vines. As they bent before the
tempest, the water trickling from the rusty head-piece crept clammy and
cold betwixt the armor and the skin; and when they made their wretched
bivouac, their bed was the spongy soil, and the exhaustless clouds their
tent.
The night of Wednesday, the nineteenth, found their vanguard in a deep
forest of pines, less than a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low
hills which extended in its rear, and formed a continuation of St.
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