It only deepened Rene’s love for his uncle to learn that he was in trouble, and increased his desire to hasten to him.  Thus it was with the greatest impatience that he awaited the coming of the daylight, that should enable them to go in search of the hidden papers.

The next morning Rene and De Gourges were rowed in one of the ship’s boats to the shell mound, where the war-party of Alachuas was encamped.  Here the boat was dismissed, and the French admiral was given a place in the young chief’s own canoe.  He was highly delighted with this, to him, novel mode of travelling, and was also greatly interested in the grim Indian warriors by whom he was surrounded.  Their unmistakable devotion to their young chief touched him deeply, and he said to Rene,

“I know not if, after all, thou hast not found thy truest happiness in this wilderness.”

That night they encamped at the foot of the very bluff on which Rene had been captured by the Seminoles.  The next morning he and his new-found friend, accompanied by Yah-chi-la-ne and E-chee, ascended the river to the fort which had lately been the scene of such thrilling events.  Now, ruined and deserted, it was destined to be forever abandoned to its own solitude.

Although it filled Rene with sadness to witness this ruin of what had once been a home to him, and in the building of which he had taken such pride, he had rather see it thus than restored to all its former glory, but remaining in the shadow of the yellow banner of Spain.

Locating as nearly as might be that portion of the ruins beneath which the tunnel had penetrated, Rene, and those with him, began a search of the river-bank for its entrance.  At length they discovered not a slab of bark, such as had formerly covered the entrance, but a block of stone, of such size that it required their united strength to remove it.  It was also of a color so closely resembling the surrounding soil that, had they not been looking for some such thing, and been aware of almost the exact spot in which to search, they would not have noticed it.

The substitution of this slab of stone for the one of bark proved that others had meddled with the passage since Rene last passed through it, and also that these others were white men, probably Spaniards.  Nevertheless, though he greatly feared that the search would prove fruitless, for those who had discovered the passage must also have found its contents, Rene determined to keep on and explore it to the end.

Lighting their way with torches, and with Rene in the lead, the party entered the tunnel.  De Gourges lamented that he had not known of its existence sooner, in which case he would have used it as a mine, in which to place powder and blow the walls of the fort about the ears of the Spaniards.