These fled, and took
refuge behind the ridge of a hill, whence they gazed helplessly on the
destruction of their harvest. Biard approached them, and, according to
the declaration of Poutrincourt made and attested before the Admiralty
of Guienne, tried to persuade them to desert his son, Biencourt, and
take service with Argall. The reply of one of the men gave little
encouragement for further parley:--
"Begone, or I will split your head with this hatchet."
There is flat contradiction here between the narrative of the Jesuit and
the accounts of Poutrincourt and contemporary English writers, who agree
in affirming that Biard, "out of indigestible malice that he had
conceived against Biencourt," encouraged the attack on the settlements
of St. Croix and Port Royal, and guided the English thither. The priest
himself admits that both French and English regarded him as a traitor,
and that his life was in danger. While Argall's ship was at anchor, a
Frenchman shouted to the English from a distance that they would do well
to kill him. The master of the ship, a Puritan, in his abomination of
priests, and above all of Jesuits, was at the same time urging his
commander to set Biard ashore and leave him to the mercy of his
countrymen. In this pass he was saved, to adopt his own account, by what
he calls his simplicity; for he tells us, that, while--instigated, like
the rest of his enemies, by the Devil--the robber and the robbed were
joining hands to ruin him, he was on his knees before Argall, begging
him to take pity on the French, and leave them a boat, together with
provisions to sustain their miserable lives through the winter.
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