lans were proposed: first, to remain
where they were and fortify themselves; next, to push overland for St.
Augustine and attack the invaders in their intrenchments; and, finally,
to embark and assail them by sea. The first plan would leave their
ships a prey to the Spaniards; and so, too, in all likelihood, would
the second, besides the uncertainties of an overland march through
an unknown wilderness. By sea, the distance was short and the route
explored. By a sudden blow they could capture or destroy the Spanish
ships, and master the troops on shore before reinforcements could
arrive, and before they had time to complete their defences.

Such were the views of Ribaut, with which, not unnaturally, Laudonniere
finds fault, and Le Moyne echoes the censures of his chief. And yet
the plan seems as well conceived as it was bold, lacking nothing but
success. The Spaniards, stricken with terror, owed their safety to the
elements, or, as they say, to the special interposition of the Holy
Virgin. Menendez was a leader fit to stand with Cortes and Pizarro;
but he was matched with a man as cool, skilful, prompt, and daring as
himself. The traces that have come down to us indicate in Ribaut one far
above the common stamp,--"a distinguished man, of many high qualities,"
as even the fault-finding Le Moyne calls him; devout after the
best spirit of the Reform; and with a human heart under his steel
breastplate.

La Grange and other officers took part with Landonniere, and opposed the
plan of an attack by sea; but Ribaut's conviction was unshaken, and the
order was given. All his own soldiers fit for duty embarked in haste,
and with them went La Caille, Arlac, and, as it seems, Ottigny, with the
best of Laudonniere's men. Even Le Moyne, though wounded in the fight
with Outina's warriors, went on board to bear his part in the fray, and
would have sailed with the rest had not Ottigny, seeing his disabled
condition, ordered him back to the fort.

On the tenth, the ships, crowded with troops, set sail. Ribaut was gone,
and with him the bone and sinew of the colony. The miserable remnant
watched his receding sails with dreary foreboding,--a fore-boding which
seemed but too just, when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than
the Indians had ever known, howled through the forest and lashed the
ocean into fury. Most forlorn was the plight of these exiles, left, it
might be, the prey of a band of ferocious bigots more terrible than the