"Thus," observes Lescarbot, "did thirty-five thousand
Midianites fly before Gideon and his three hundred." The French buried
their dead comrades; but, as they chanted their funeral hymn, the
Indians, at a safe distance on a neighboring hill, were dancing in glee
and triumph, and mocking them with unseemly gestures; and no sooner had
the party re-embarked, than they dug up the dead bodies, burnt them, and
arrayed themselves in their shirts. Little pleased with the country or
its inhabitants, the voyagers turned their prow towards Port Royal,
though not until, by a treacherous device, they had lured some of their
late assailants within their reach, killed them, and cut off their heads
as trophies. Near Mount Desert, on a stormy night, their rudder broke,
and they had a hair-breadth escape from destruction. The chief object of
their voyage, that of discovering a site for their colony under a more
southern sky, had failed. Pontgrave's son had his hand blown off by the
bursting of his gun; several of their number had been killed; others
were sick or wounded; and thus, on the fourteenth of November, with
somewhat downcast visages, they guided their helpless vessel with a pair
of oars to the landing at Port Royal.
"I will not," says Lescarbot, "compare their perils to those of Ulysses,
nor yet of Aeneas, lest thereby I should sully our holy enterprise with
things impure.
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