e
led at once against the enemy. Francis Bourdelois, with twenty sailors,
was left with the ships. Gourgues affectionately bade him farewell.

"If I am slain in this most just enterprise," he said, "I leave all in
your charge, and pray you to carry back my soldiers to France."

There were many embracings among the excited Frenchmen,--many
sympathetic tears from those who were to stay behind,--many messages
left with them for wives, children, friends, and mistresses; and then
this valiant handful pushed their boats from shore. It was a
hare-brained venture, for, as young Debre had assured them, the
Spaniards on the River of May were four hundred in number, secure behind
their ramparts.

Hour after hour the sailors pulled at the oar. They glided slowly past
the sombre shores by the shimmering moonlight, the sound of the
murmuring surf and the moaning pine-trees. In the gray of the morning,
they came to the mouth of a river, probably the Nassau; and here a
northeast wind set in with a violence that almost wrecked their boats.
Their Indian allies were waiting on the bank, but for a while the gale
delayed their crossing. The bolder French would lose no time, rowed
through the tossing waves, and, landing safely, left their boats, and
pushed into the forest. Gourgues took the lead, in breastplate and
back-piece. At his side marched the young chief Olotoraca, a French pike
in his hand; and the files of arquebuse-men and armed sailors followed
close behind. They plunged through swamps, hewed their way through
brambly thickets and the matted intricacies of the forests, and, at five
in the afternoon, wellnigh spent with fatigue and hunger, came to a
river or inlet of the sea, not far from the first Spanish fort. Here
they found three hundred Indians waiting for them.

Tired as he was, Gourgues would not rest. He would fain attack at
daybreak, and with ten arquebusiers and his Indian guide he set forth to
reconnoitre. Night closed upon him. It was a vain task to struggle on,
in pitchy darkness, among trunks of trees, fallen logs, tangled vines,
and swollen streams. Gourgues returned, anxious and gloomy. An Indian
chief approached him, read through the darkness his perturbed look, and
offered to lead him by a better path along the margin of the sea.
Gourgues joyfully assented, and ordered all his men to march. The
Indians, better skilled in woodcraft, chose the shorter course through
the forest.

The French forgot their wearin