move with
great rapidity.

Two days after embarking, the Spaniards met this formidable fleet. The
natives attacked them with great ferocity, circling around the
cumbrous brigantines, discharging upon them showers of arrows, and
withdrawing at their pleasure. This assault, which was continued
almost without intermission for seven days and nights, was attended by
hideous yells and war-songs. Though the Spaniards were protected by
their bulwarks and their shields, nearly every one received some
wound. All the horses but eight were killed.

On the sixteenth day of the voyage four small boats, containing in all
fifty-five men, which had pushed out a little distance from the
brigantines, were cut off by the natives, and all but seven perished.
The natives now retired from pursuing their foes, and with exultant
yells of triumph turned their bows up the river and soon disappeared
from sight.

On the twentieth day they reached the Gulf. Here they anchored their
fleet to a low marshy island, a mere sand bank, surrounded with a vast
mass of floating timber. Again a council was held to decide what
course was to be pursued. They had no nautical instruments, and they
knew not in what direction to seek for Cuba. It was at length decided
that as their brigantines could not stand any rough usage of a stormy
sea, their only safety consisted in creeping cautiously along the
shore towards the west in search of their companions in Mexico. They
could thus run into creeks and bays in case of storms, and could
occasionally land for supplies.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they again made sail. There
was much division of counsel among them; much diversity of opinion as
to the best course to be pursued; and the authority of Moscoso was but
little regarded. They had many adventures for fifty-three days, as
they coasted slowly along to the westward. Then a violent gale arose,
a norther, which blew with unabated fury for twenty-six hours. In this
gale the little fleet became separated. The brigantines contained
about fifty men each. Five of them succeeded in running into a little
bay for shelter. Two were left far behind, and finding it impossible
to overtake their companions, as the wind was directly ahead, and as
there was danger of their foundering during the night, though with
quarrels among themselves, they ran their two vessels upon a sand
beach and escaped to the shore.

Moscoso, with the five brigantines, had entered the