When they had landed they learned what had happened.  There were only two Frenchmen in the fort; Pontgrave and the others, fearing that the supply ship would never arrive, had gone twelve days before in two small ships of their own building to look for some of the French fishing fleet who might have provisions.  The two who remained had volunteered to stay and guard the buildings and stores.  There was a village of friendly Indians near by, and the chief, Membertou, who was more than a hundred years old, had seen the distant sail of the Jonas and come to warn the white men, who were at dinner.  Not knowing whether the strange ship came in peace or war, one of the comrades had gone to the platform on which the cannon were mounted, and stood ready to do what he could in defense, while the other ran down to the shore.  When they saw the French flag at the mast-head the cannon spoke joyfully in salute.

All was now eager life and activity.  Poutrincourt sent out a boat to explore the coast, which met the two little ships of Pontgrave and Champlain and told the great news.  Lescarbot, exploring the meadows under the guidance of some of Membertou’s people, saw moose with their young feeding peacefully upon the lush grass, and beavers building their curious habitations in a swamp.  Pontgrave took his departure for France in the Jonas, and Champlain and Poutrincourt began making plans.

The winter in Port Royal had been less severe than the terrible first winter of the settlement, on the St. Croix, but the two leaders decided to take one of the ramshackle little ships and make another exploring voyage along the coast, to see whether some more comfortable site for the colony could not be found.  There was plenty of leeway to the southward, for De Monts was supposed to control everything as far south as the present site of Philadelphia; but the coast had never been accurately charted by the French further south than Cape Cod.

Lescarbot, who was to command at Port Royal in their absence, had already laid out his kitchen-garden and set about spading and planting it.  The kitchen, the smithy and the bakery were on the south side of the quadrangle around which the wooden buildings stood; east of them was the arched gateway, protected by a sort of bastion of log-work, from which a path led to the water a few paces away; and west of them another bastion matched it, mounting the four cannon.  The storehouses for ammunition and provisions were on the eastern side; on the west were the men’s quarters, and on the north, a dining-hall and lodgings for the chief men of the company, who now numbered fifteen.  Lescarbot set some of the men to burning over the meadows that they might sow wheat and barley; others broke up new soil for the herbs, roots and cuttings he had brought, and he himself, hoe in hand, was busiest of all.

“Do not overtask yourself,” warned Poutrincourt, pausing beside the thin, pale-faced man who knelt in the long shadows of the rainy dawn among his neatly-arranged plots.  “If you are too zealous you may never see France again.”  Lescarbot laughed and dug a little grave in his plantation.  “What in heaven’s name are those?”