It was broken, at length, by a trumpet from the deck of the San Pelayo.  A French trumpet answered.  Then Menendez, “with much courtesy,” says his Spanish eulogist, demanded, “Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?”

“From France,” was the reply.

“What are you doing here?” pursued the Adelantado.

“Bringing soldiers and supplies for a fort which the King of France has in this country, and for many others which he soon will have.”

“Are you Catholics or Lutherans?”

Many voices cried together, “Lutherans, of the new religion”; then, in their turn, they demanded who Menendez was, and whence he came.  The latter answered,—­

“I am Pedro Menendez, General of the fleet of the King of Spain, Don Philip the Second, who have come to this country to hang and behead all Lutherans whom I shall find by land or sea, according to instructions from my King, so precise that I have power to pardon none whomsoever; and these commands I shall fulfil, as you shall know.  At daybreak I shall board your ships, and if I find there any Catholic, he shall be well treated; but every heretic shall die.”

The French with one voice raised a cry of wrath and defiance.

“If you are a brave man, don’t wait till day.  Come on now, and see what you will get!”

And they assailed the Adelantado with a shower of scoffs and insults.

Menendez broke into a rage, and gave the order to board.  The men slipped the cables, and the sullen black hulk of the San Pelayo drifted down upon the Trinity.  The French by no means made good their defiance.  Indeed, they were incapable of resistance, Ribaut with his soldiers being ashore at Fort Caroline.  They cut their cables, left their anchors, made sail, and fled.  The Spaniards fired, the French replied.  The other Spanish ships had imitated the movement of the San Pelayo; “but,” writes the chaplain, Mendoza, “these devils run mad are such adroit sailors, and manoeuvred so well, that we did not catch one of them.”  Pursuers and pursued ran out to sea, firing useless volleys at each other.

In the morning Menendez gave over the chase, turned, and, with the San Pelayo alone, ran back for the St. John’s.  But here a welcome was prepared for him.  He saw bands of armed men drawn up on the beach, and the smaller vessels of Ribaut’s squadron, which had crossed the bar several days before, anchored behind it to oppose his landing.  He would not venture an attack, but, steering southward, skirted the coast till he came to an inlet which he named St. Augustine.

Here he found three of his ships, already debarking their troops, guns, and stores.  Two officers, Patino and Vicente, had taken possession of the dwelling of Seloy, an Indian chief, a huge barn-like structure, strongly framed of entire trunks of trees, and thatched with palmetto-leaves.  Around it they were throwing up intrenchments of fascines and sand.  Gangs of negroes, with pick, shovel, and spade, were toiling at the work.  Such was the birth of St. Augustine, the oldest town of the United States, and such the introduction of slave-labor upon their soil.