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Show 444 THE LILY AND THE TOTEM. vain hope to find security in their dark recesses, and under cover of the night. Dut they knew not well how the woods were occupied. At once a torrent of yells, of torture and of triumph, startled the echoes on every side. Tho swift nrrow, the sharp javelin, the long spear, tho stone hatchet, each found an unresisting ,-ictim ; and the miserable fugitives, maddened with terror, darted back upon the fortress, which was already in tho possession of the French. They had seized the opportunity, and in the moment when tho insubordinate garrison threw wide the gakls, and leaped blindly from the parapct.s, they had swiftly occupied their places. Tho fugitive Spaniards, recoiling from the savages, only changed one form of death for another. They suffered on all bands-were mercilessly shot down as they fled, or stabbed as they surrendered; those only excepted who were chosen to ex· piate, more solemnly and terribly, the great crime of which they had been guilty ! IX. THE SACRifiCE OF TilE VICTIMS. The captured fortress waa won with n. singular facility, and with so little loss to the assailants, as to confirm them in the conviction that tho scn•ice was acceptable to God. HE bad strengthened their hearts and arms-ne had hung his shield of protection over them-HE had made, through the sting of conseience, the souls of the murdcrou.'l Spaniards to quake in fear at the very sight of the n.vcngcn! The fortress of La Caroline was found to have been aa well supplied with all necessaries for defence, ns it had been amply garrisoned. It was defended by five donble culvtritu, by four mi'Himu, A.nd dh·ers ether canncn DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. 445 cf smaller calibre suitable for such a forest fortress. '1 Eighteen great cakes of gunpowder," (it \vould seem that this combustible was put up in those days moistened, and in a different form from the present, and hence the frequent necessity for drying it, of which we read,) and every variety of weapon proper to tho keeping of the fortress, had been supplied to the Spaniat·ds ; so that, but for the unaccountable error of the sortiC, and but for the panic which possessed them, r.nd which may reasonably be ascribed to the natural terrors of a guilty conscience, it was scarcely possible that the Chevalier de Gourgues, with all his prowess, could have succeeded in the assault. He transferred all the arms to his vessels, but the gunpowder took fire from the carelessness of one of the ~mvagcs, who, ignorant of its qualities, proceeded to seethe his fish in the neighborhood of a train, which took fire, and blew up tho storc·house with all its moveables, destroying all the houses within ita sweep ! The poor savage himself seems to have been the only human victim. The fortress was then razed to the ground, Gourgucs having no purpose t.o re· establish a colony which he had not the power to maintain. But his vengeance was not complete. The final act of expiation waa yet to take place; and, bringing all his prisoners together, he had them conducted to the fatal tree upon which the Spaniards had done to death their Huguenot captives! This was at a short distance frcm the fortress. Mournful was the spectacle that met tho eyes of the Frenchmen as they reached the spot. There still hung the withered and wasted skeletons of their brethren, naked, bare of flesh, bleached, and rattling against the branches of the thricc·acoursed tree! The tempest bad beaten wildly against their wasted forms-the obscene birds had preyed upon their carcasses-some had Callen, |
