nt; but the rain, the imperfect light, and
a cluster of intervening houses prevented his seeing clearly, and he
sent two officers to reconnoitre. Descending, they met a solitary
Frenchman, a straggler from the fort. They knocked him down with a
sheathed sword, took him prisoner, then stabbed him in cold blood. This
done, and their observations made, they returned to the top of the hill,
behind which, clutching their weapons in fierce expectancy, all the gang
stood waiting.

"Santiago!" cried Menendez. "At them! God is with us!"

And, shouting their hoarse war-cries, the Spaniards rushed down the
slope like starved wolves.

Not a sentry was on the rampart. La Vigne, the officer of the guard, had
just gone to his quarters, but a trumpeter, who chanced to remain, saw,
through sheets of rain, the black swarm of assailants sweeping down the
hill. He blew the alarm, and at his shrill summons a few half-naked
soldiers ran wildly out of the barracks. It was too late. Through the
breaches, over the ramparts, the Spaniards came pouring in.

"Santiago! Santiago! Down with the Lutherans!"

Sick men leaped from their beds. Women and children, blind with fright,
darted shrieking from the houses. A fierce gaunt visage, the thrust of a
pike or blow of a rusty halberd,--such was the greeting that met all
alike. Laudonniere snatched his sword and target, and ran towards the
principal breach, calling to his soldiers. A rush of Spaniards met him;
his men were cut down around him; and he, with a soldier named
Bartholomew, was forced back into the courtyard of his house. Here a
tent was pitched, and as the pursuers stumbled among the cords, he
escaped behind Ottigny's house, sprang through the breach in the western
rampart, and fled for the woods.

Le Moyne had been one of the guard. Scarcely had he thrown himself into
a hammock which was slung in his room, when a savage shout, and a wild
uproar of shrieks, outcries, and the clash of weapons, brought him to
his feet. He rushed past two Spaniards in the door-way, ran behind the
guard-house leaped through an embrasure into the ditch, and escaped to
the forest.

Challeux, the carpenter, was going betimes to his work, a chisel in his
hand. He was old, but pike and partisan brandished at his back gave
wings to his flight. In the ecstasy of his terror, he leaped upward at
the top of the palisade, and, clutching it, threw himself over with the
agility of a boy. He ran up the hill, no one pu