A hundred and forty-two persons were slain in and around the fort, and their bodies lay heaped together on the shore.  Nearly opposite was anchored a small vessel, called the Pearl, commanded by James Ribaut, son of the Admiral.  The ferocious soldiery, maddened with victory and drunk with blood, crowded to the beach, shouting insults to those on board, mangling the corpses, tearing out their eyes, and throwing them towards the vessel from the points of their daggers.  Thus did the Most Catholic Philip champion the cause of Heaven in the New World.

It was currently believed in France, and, though no eye-witness attests it, there is reason to think it true, that among those murdered at Fort Caroline there were some who died a death of peculiar ignominy.  Menendez, it is affirmed, hanged his prisoners on trees, and placed over them the inscription, “I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans.”

The Spaniards gained a great booty:  armor, clothing, and provision.  “Nevertheless,” says the devout Mendoza, after closing his inventory of the plunder, “the greatest profit of this victory is the triumph which our Lord has granted us, whereby His holy gospel will be introduced into this country, a thing so needful for saving so many souls from perdition.”  Again, he writes in his journal,—­“We owe to God and His Mother, more than to human strength, this victory over the adversaries of the holy Catholic religion.”

To whatever influence, celestial or other, the exploit may best be ascribed, the victors were not yet quite content with their success.  Two small French vessels, besides that of James Ribaut, still lay within range of the fort.  When the storm had a little abated, the cannon were turned on them.  One of them was sunk, but Ribaut, with the others, escaped down the river, at the mouth of which several light craft, including that bought from the English, had been anchored since the arrival of his father’s squadron.

While this was passing, the wretched fugitives were flying from the scene of massacre through a tempest, of whose pertinacious violence all the narratives speak with wonder.  Exhausted, starved, half-clothed,—­for most of them had escaped in their shirts,—­they pushed their toilsome way amid the ceaseless howl of the elements.  A few sought refuge in Indian villages; but these, it is said, were afterwards killed by the Spaniards.  The greater number attempted to reach the vessels at the mouth of the river.  Of the latter was Le Moyne, who, despite his former failure, was toiling through the maze of tangled forests when he met a Belgian soldier with the woman described as Laudonniere’s maid-servant, the latter wounded in the breast, and, urging their flight towards the vessels, they fell in with other fugitives, among them Laudonniere himself.  As they struggled through the salt-marsh, the rank sedge cut their naked limbs, and the tide rose to their waists.  Presently they descried others, toiling like themselves through the