ed Ottigny and Arlac, whom they
disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on
pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming
all the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the
conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated
West India cruise, which he required Laudonniere to sign. The sick
commandant, imprisoned in the ship with one attendant, at first refused;
but receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did not comply,
they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length yielded.

The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels
on which the carpenters had been 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 off, 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,
Landonniere sent down La Caille, with thirty soldiers concealed at
the bottom of his little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck