ld his inheritance, borrowed money from his brother, who held
a high post in Guienne, and equipped three small vessels, navigable by
sail or oar. On board he placed a hundred arquebusiers and eighty
sailors, prepared to fight on land, if need were. The noted Blaise de
Montluc, then lieutenant for the King in Guienne, gave him a commission
to make war on the negroes of Benin, that is, to kidnap them as slaves,
an adventure then held honorable.

His true design was locked within his own breast. He mustered his
followers, feasted them,--not a few were of rank equal to his own,--and,
on the twenty-second of August, 1567, sailed from the mouth of the
Charente. Off Cape Finisterre, so violent a storm buffeted his ships
that his men clamored to return; but Gourgues's spirit prevailed. He
bore away for Barbary, and, landing at the Rio del Oro, refreshed and
cheered them as he best might. Thence he sailed to Cape Blanco, where
the jealous Portuguese, who had a fort in the neighborhood, set upon him
three negro chiefs. Gourgues beat them off, and remained master of the
harbor; whence, however, he soon voyaged onward to Cape Verd, and,
steering westward, made for the West Indies. Here, advancing from island
to island, he came to Hispaniola, where, between the fury of a hurricane
at sea and the jealousy of the Spaniards on shore, he was in no small
jeopardy,--"the Spaniards," exclaims the indignant journalist, "who
think that this New World was made for nobody but them, and that no
other man living has a right to move or breathe here!" Gourgues landed,
however, obtained the water of which he was in need, and steered for
Cape San Antonio, in Cuba. There he gathered his followers about him,
and addressed them with his fiery Gascon eloquence. For the first time,
he told them his true purpose. He inveighed against Spanish cruelty. He
painted, with angry rhetoric, the butcheries of Fort Caroline and St.
Augustine.

"What disgrace," he cried, "if such an insult should pass unpunished!
What glory to us, if we revenge it! To this I have devoted my fortune. I
relied on you. I thought you jealous enough of your country's glory to
sacrifice life itself in a cause like this. Was I deceived? I will show
you the way; I will be always at your head; I will bear the brunt of
danger. Will you refuse to follow me?"

At first his startled hearers listened in silence; but soon the passions
of that adventurous age rose responsive to his words. The spa