y sought, whereas
they were all the time sailing further from it. At one point where
they stopped, some Indians, who doubtless were familiar with the sight
of white men, swam out through the surf and came on board without any
sign of fear. But, nobody knowing their language, nothing could be
learned from them.

After hovering for three weeks in sight of land, La Salle, perplexed
beyond measure, but forced to decide because the captain of the
man-of-war was impatient to land the men and to sail for {265} France,
announced that they were at one of the mouths of the Mississippi and
ordered the people and stores put ashore.

Scarcely were they landed, when a band of Indians set upon some men at
work and carried off some of them. La Salle immediately seized his
arms, called to some of his followers, and started off in pursuit.
Just as he was entering the Indian village, the report of a cannon came
from the bay. It frightened the savages so that they fell flat on the
ground and gave up their prisoners without difficulty. But a chill
foreboding seized La Salle. He knew that the gun was a signal of
disaster, and, looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails.
Her captain, in violation of orders, and disregarding buoys which La
Salle had put down, had undertaken to come in under sail and had ended
by wrecking her. Soon she began to break up, and night fell upon the
wretched colonists bivouacking on the shore, strewn with boxes and
barrels saved from the wreck, while Indians swarmed on the beach,
greedy for plunder, and needed to be kept off by a guard.

What a situation, ludicrous, had it not been tragic! Instead of
holding the key of the {266} Mississippi Valley, the expeditionists did
not even know where they were. Instead of the fifteen thousand
warriors who were expected to march with them to the conquest of New
Biscay, the squalid savages in their neighborhood annoyed them in every
possible way, set fire to the prairie when the wind blew toward them,
stole their goods, ambushed a party that came in quest of the missing
articles, and killed two of them.

Next came sickness, due to using brackish water, carrying off five or
six a day. When the captain of the little "Belle," the last remaining
vessel--for the man-of-war had sailed for France--got drunk and wrecked
her on a sand-bar, the situation was truly desperate. Nobody knew
where they were, and the last means of getting away by water had
perished.