A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonniere.  Resolved, cost what it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy to send back to him two of the prisoners.  In the morning he sent a soldier to Satouriona to demand them.  The astonished chief gave a flat refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had shamefully broken faith with him.  On this, Laudonniere, at the head of twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated himself without ceremony in the highest place.  Here, to show his displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour.  At length he spoke, renewing his demand.  For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the prisoners away.  Laudonniere grew peremptory, when the chiefs son, Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the French led back to Fort Caroline.

Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave it.

Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers, embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina.  Arrived, they were showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his neighbor, Potanou.  To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.

The warriors were mustered, the dances were danced, and the songs were sung.  Then the wild cohort took up its march.  The wilderness through which they passed holds its distinctive features to this day,—­the shady desert of the pine-barrens, where many a wanderer has miserably died, with haggard eye seeking in vain for clue or guidance in the pitiless, inexorable monotony.  Yet the waste has its oases, the “hummocks,” where the live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,—­where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds.  Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre.  Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough.  Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling.  Lifeless forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every rugged stem and lank limb outstretched hangs the dark drapery of the Spanish moss.  The swamp is veiled in mourning.  No breath, no voice.  A deathly stillness, till the plunge of the alligator, lashing the waters of the black lagoon, resounds with hollow echo through the tomb-like solitude.