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.
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