in payment. Then, smiling grimly at the two
pitiful little craft in which they purposed sailing for France, he
offered them all a free passage home. Laudonniere would not {89} accept
a proposal so humiliating, but was very glad to buy a small vessel from
Hawkins on credit.

Just when all was in readiness to sail for home came news of an
approaching squadron. It was an anxious hour. Were these friends or
foes? If foes, the garrison was lost, for the fort was defenceless.
Then the river was seen full of armed barges coming up. Imagine the wild
joy of the garrison, when the sentry's challenge was answered in French!
It was Ribaut. He had come at last, with seven ships, bringing not only
soldiers and artisans, but whole families of settlers.

One might imagine that Fort Caroline's dark days had passed. But it was
not so. Ribaut had been there just a week when his vessels, lying
outside the bar, were attacked, about dusk, by a huge Spanish galleon.
The officers were on shore, and the crews cut the cables and put to sea,
followed by the Spaniard firing, but not able to overhaul them. Ribaut,
on shore, heard the guns and knew what they meant. The Spaniards had
come! Before he left France he had been secretly notified of their
intentions.

The next morning Don Pedro Menendez in his great galleon ran back to the
mouth of the {90} St. John's. But seeing the Frenchmen drawn up under
arms on the beach and Ribaut's smaller vessels inside the bar, all ready
for battle, he turned away and sailed southward to an inlet which he
called San Augustin. There he found three ships of his unloading troops,
guns, and stores. He landed, took formal possession of his vast
domain--for the Florida of which he had been appointed Governor was
understood by the Spaniards to extend from Mexico to the North Pole--and
began to fortify the place. Thus, in September, 1565, was founded St.
Augustine, the oldest town of the United States.

One of the French captains, relying on the speed of his ship, had
followed Menendez down the coast. He saw what was going on at St.
Augustine and hastened back to report to Ribaut that the Spaniards were
there in force and were throwing up fortifications. A brilliant idea
came to the French commander. His dispersed ships had returned to their
anchorage. Why not take them, with all his men and all of Laudonniere's
that were fit for service, sail at once, and strike the Spaniards before
they could co