n for some time at work. In a fortnight
they were ready for sea, armed and provided with the king's cannon,
munitions, and stores. Trenchant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join
the party. Their favorite object was the plunder of a certain church, on
one of the Spanish islands, which they proposed to assail during the
midnight mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be achieved:
first, a rich booty; secondly, the punishment of idolatry; thirdly,
vengeance on the arch-enemies of their party and their faith. They set
sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who remained, calling
them greenhorns, and threatening condign punishment, if, on their
triumphant return, they should be refused free entrance to the fort.

They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate Laudonniere was gladdened
in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends, Ottigny and Arlac,
who conveyed him to the fort, and reinstated him. The entire command was
reorganized and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted;
but the bad blood had been drawn, and thenceforth all internal danger
was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to
replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various intercourse
with the tribes far and near, the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of
March, when an Indian came in with the tidings that a vessel was
hovering off the coast. Laudonniere sent to reconnoitre. The stranger
lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine,
manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to
make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Laudonniere
sent down La Caille with thirty soldiers, concealed at the bottom of his
little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her
to come along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and
taken before they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woebegone, and
drunk, they were landed under a guard. Their story was soon told.
Fortune had flattered them at the outset. On the coast of Cuba, they
took a brigantine, with wine and stores. Embarking in her, they next
fell in with a caravel, which they also captured. Landing at a village
of Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly
reembarked when they fell in with a small vessel having on board the
governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last,
and with her a rich booty. They though