Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/292

272 prowess, but known under another title now, as “the father of the English slave-trade.” With his other three vessels, the “Solomon,” the “Tiger,” and the “Swallow,” he had just sold at Hispaniola cargoes of slaves which he had kidnapped at Guinea. Thus England, by her ships and mariners, was represented, in character, as the third of the great European nationalities on a scene which was to open the lengthening struggle between what we call civilization and barbarism. Hawkins as a Protestant took pity on the wretched remnant of the Huguenots, relieved their immediate distresses, sold them a vessel, taking payment in cannon and stores, and courteously offered to transport them all free to France. This offer honor and scruples compelled the French commander to decline.

At length Ribault, long looked for, having been delayed by troubles in France, arrived with reinforcements and supplies. Hardly, however, had his vessels reached a harborage, when more ominous sights upon the waters of the sea revealed the arrival of the dispensers of vengeance against trespassers under the more hateful guise of heretics, to whom was due only death and damnation. Some of the Spanish vessels ran down the coast, chased by some of Ribault's, when a fierce and prolonged tempest raging on land and water dispersed and wrecked many of both fleets. The fiery and zealous Menendez, the Spanish commander, with the company of such of his followers as had reached and entered an inlet on the south, near what he soon afterwards founded as the city of St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States, resolved on immediate vengeance. Knowing that Fort Caroline was dilapidated and weakened, he roused a body of five hundred of his quailing and reluctant followers, exhausted and famished, to make a forced march by night and day, through tempest and drenching rain, across swamps, forests, and jungles, sleepless and unfed, to surprise the heretic hive. He was guided by a renegade Frenchman and some Indians, —