Albert, a rude soldier, with a thousand leagues of ocean betwixt him and responsibility, grew harsh, domineering, and violent beyond endurance.  None could question or oppose him without peril of death.  He hanged a drummer who had fallen under his displeasure, and banished La Chere, a soldier, to a solitary island, three leagues from the fort, where he left him to starve.  For a time his comrades chafed in smothered fury.  The crisis came at length.  A few of the fiercer spirits leagued together, assailed their tyrant, and murdered him.  The deed done, and the famished soldier delivered, they called to the command one Nicholas Barre, a man of merit.  Barre took the command, and thenceforth there was peace.

Peace, such as it was, with famine, homesickness, disgust.  The rough ramparts and rude buildings of Charlesfort, hatefully familiar to their weary eyes, the sweltering forest, the glassy river, the eternal silence of the wild monotony around them, oppressed the senses and the spirits.  Did they feel themselves the pioneers of religious freedom, the advance-guard of civilization?  Not at all.  They dreamed of ease, of home, of pleasures across the sea,—­of the evening cup on the bench before the cabaret, of dances with kind damsels of Dieppe.  But how to escape?  A continent was their solitary prison, and the pitiless Atlantic closed the egress.  Not one of them knew how to build a ship; but Ribaut had left them a forge, with tools and iron, and strong desire supplied the place of skill.  Trees were hewn down and the work begun.  Had they put forth, to maintain themselves at Port Royal, the energy and resource which they exerted to escape from it, they might have laid the cornerstone of a solid colony.

All, gentle and simple, labored with equal zeal.  They calked the seams with the long moss which hung in profusion from the neighboring trees; the pines supplied them with pitch; the Indians made for them a kind of cordage; and for sails they sewed together their shirts and bedding.  At length a brigantine worthy of Robinson Crusoe floated on the waters of the Chenonceau.  They laid in what provision they might, gave all that remained of their goods to the delighted Indians, embarked, descended the river, and put to sea.  A fair wind filled their patchwork sails and bore them from the hated coast.  Day after day they held their course, till at length the favoring breeze died away and a breathless calm fell on the face of the waters.  Florida was far behind; France farther yet before.  Floating idly on the glassy waste, the craft lay motionless.  Their supplies gave out.  Twelve kernels of maize a day were each man’s portion; then the maize failed, and they ate their shoes and leather jerkins.  The water-barrels were drained, and they tried to slake their thirst with brine.  Several died, and the rest, giddy with exhaustion and crazed with thirst, were forced to ceaseless labor, baling out the water that gushed through every seam.  Head-winds