hed area, or lay
stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some
were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the
meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal.
Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they
dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining
their eyes across the sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.

Had Coligny left them to perish? or had some new tempest of calamity,
let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the
watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection
fell upon them, a dejection that would have sunk to despair, could their
eyes have pierced the future.

The Indians had left the neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought
in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at
exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion,
they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river,
beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them.
"Oftentimes," says Laudonniere, "our poor soldiers were constrained to
give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any
time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke,
these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make
so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish:
then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat."

The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed
the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the
Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish
brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were
insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of
reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered
pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the
timber. The maize began to ripen, and this brought some relief; but the
Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold it with reluctance, and murdered
two half-famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields.

The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result
was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an
invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose
villages would yield an ample supply. The off