Twenty sailors were left to guard the ships, Gourgues with a hundred and sixty Frenchmen took up their march along the seashore; their Indian allies slipped around through the forest. With the French went Olotoraca, the nephew of the chief, a young brave of distinguished reputation, a French pike in his hand. The French met their allies not far from the fort, and pounced upon the garrison just as it finished dinner, Olotoraca being the first man up the glacis and over the unfinished moat. The fort across the river began to cannonade the attacking party, who turned four captured guns upon them, and then crossed, the French in a large boat which had been brought up the river, the Indians swimming. Not one Spaniard escaped. Fifteen were kept alive, to be hanged on the very trees from which Menendez had hanged his French captives, and over them was set an inscription burned with a hot poker on a pine board:
"Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."
When not one stone was left upon another in either fort, Dominic de Gourgues bade farewell to his Indian allies, and taking with him the lad so strangely saved from death and exile, went back to France.
The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's "The Pioneers of France in the New World."
The moon herself doth sail the air As we do sail the sea, Where by Saint Michael's Mount we fare Free as the winds are free. Our keels are bright with elfin gold That mocks the tyrant's gaze, That slips from out his greedy hold And leaves him in amaze.
White water creaming past her prow The little _Golden Hynde_ Bears westward with her treasure now-- We'd ship and follow blind, But that he never did require-- Our Captain hath us bound Only by force of his desire-- The quarry hunts the hound!
The hunt is up, the hunt is up To the gray Atlantic's bound,-- The health of the Queen in a golden cup!-- The quarry is hunting the hound! Like steel the stars gleam through the night On armored waves beneath,-- As England's honor cold and bright We bear her sword in sheath!
When that great Empire dies away And none recall her place, Men shall remember our work to-day And tell of our Captain's grace,-- How never a woman or child was the worse Wherever our foe we found, Nor their own priests had cause to curse The quarry that hunted the hound!