The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories.  The result was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose villages would yield an ample supply.  The offer was accepted.  Ottigny and Vasseur set forth, but were grossly deceived, led against a different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.

Pale with famine and with rage, a crowd of soldiers beset Laudonniere, and fiercely demanded to be led against Outina to take him prisoner and extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from his gratitude.  The commandant was forced to comply.  Those who could bear the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty, in two barges, and sailed up the river under the commandant himself.  Outina’s landing reached, they marched inland, entered his village, surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized him amid the yells and howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats.  Here, anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of corn and beans as the price of his ransom.

The alarm spread.  Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging from all his villages.  The forest along the shore was full of them; and troops of women gathered at the water’s edge with moans, outcries, and gestures of despair.  Yet no ransom was offered, since, reasoning from their own instincts, they never doubted, that, the price paid, the captive would be put to death.

Laudonniere waited two days, then descended the river.  In a rude chamber of Fort Caroline, pike in hand, the sentinel stood his guard, while before him crouched the captive chief, mute, impassive, brooding on his woes.  His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as a hound on the scent of prey, tried, by great offers, to bribe Laudonniere to give the prisoner into his hands.  Outina, however, was kindly treated, and assured of immediate freedom on payment of the ransom.

Meanwhile his captivity was entailing dire affliction on his realm; for, despairing of his return, his subjects mustered to the election of a new chief.  Party-strife ran high.  Some were for a boy, his son, and some for an ambitious kinsman who coveted the vacant throne.  Outina chafed in his prison, learning these dissensions, and, eager to convince his over-hasty subjects that their king still lived, he was so profuse of promises, that he was again embarked and carried up the river.

At no great distance below Lake George, a small affluent of the St. John’s gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina’s principal town.  The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also the royal captive, rowed up this little stream.  Indians awaited them at the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of corn.  As they were deaf to