“What!  Do I hear thee truly?  Art thou indeed that Rene de Veaux so bitterly mourned by the Chevalier Laudonniere, and not the savage thou seemest?  If so, there is the best part of my mission to this new world accomplished by this meeting.”

As Rene satisfied the other of his identity as the nephew of Laudonniere, De Gourges embraced him warmly, and would have at once proclaimed the joyful intelligence to those on deck; but the young man begged of him to refrain from so doing for yet a short while, as there was still much that he would say to him alone.

De Gourges consented to this, and Rene continued: 

“Although I am Rene de Veaux, I am also Ta-lah-lo-ko, head chief of the Alachua nation, and I have brought with me a party of chosen warriors which I will place at thy service, if, perchance, thou canst make use of them.  Wilt thou not describe to me the nature of thy business in these parts, and something of thy plans, and what has been already accomplished?”

“That will I gladly, my noble savage,” answered De Gourges, with a smile, “and truly I could but lately have made a most excellent use of these brave warriors of thine, whose service thou dost so promptly tender.”

Then the admiral gave Rene a brief history of his expedition, its purpose and results, which was in effect as follows: 

He himself had been a prisoner in Spanish dungeons, and had suffered as a Spanish galley-slave.  Upon making his escape and returning to his own country, he had met his old friend, the Chevalier Laudonniere, and learned from him of the terrible massacres of the Huguenots, perpetrated by Menendez and the soldiers at San Augustin.  Upon hearing this tale of wrong and outrage, he had then and there determined to devote his fortune and his life, if that should be necessary, to the punishment of these same Spaniards, and to the rescue of such of his countrymen as might have escaped with their lives, but who still remained in the New World.

By selling his estates, he had obtained the means to fit out three ships, and in them had induced a brave company of soldiers and seamen to accompany him upon what he considered his holy mission.

Ten days before the coming of Rene he had arrived off San Augustin, where the Spaniards, supposing his ships to be that of their own nation, had fired a salute of welcome from the guns of their newly erected fort.

As De Gourges deemed this place too strong for him to attack, and as he only wished to recover that which had belonged to the French, he had not tarried there, but had sailed northward to the River of May, the name of which the Spaniards had changed to Rio de San Mateo.

He found its entrance guarded by two small forts, one on either side, which Menendez had built after his capture of Fort Caroline.  As the French ships were of too great draught to cross the bar, De Gourges had organized an expedition of small boats, and had carried these works, one after another, by assault.