Part 33

Greatly as he was surprised and delighted, Gourgues dared not show it too plainly, and Pierre had grown almost as self-contained as a veteran of twice his years. When the French commander suggested fighting the Spaniards Satouriona leaped for joy. He and his warriors asked only to be allowed to join in that foray.

"How soon?" asked Gourgues. Satouriona could have his people ready in three days.

"Be secret," the Gascon cautioned, "for the enemy must not feel the wind of the blow." Satouriona assured him that there was no need of that warning, for the Indians hated the Spaniards worse than the French did.

"Pierre," said Gourgues, when he had the lad safe on board ship, "they said you were killed."

"I stayed alive to fight Spaniards," said the boy with a flash of the eye. "'Sieur Dominic, there are four hundred of them behind their walls, where they rebuilt our fort. I have hidden in the trees and counted. But you can trust Satouriona. The Spaniards have stolen women, enslaved and tortured men, and killed children, and the tribe is mad with hate."

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.

NOTE

The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's "The Pioneers of France in the New World."

THE DESTROYERS

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!

THE FLEECE OF GOLD

White fog, the thick mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast. The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand. His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen he was captain where six years before he had been ship's-boy.

Scores of daring projects went Catherine-wheeling through his mind as he steered seaward through the white enchanted world. In 1561 Spain was the bogy of English seaports, most of whose folk were Protestants. There was no knowing how long the coast-wise trade would be allowed to go on.

Out of the white mist flashed a whiter face, etched with black brows and lashes and a pointed silky beard--the face of a man all in black, whose body rose and dipped with the waves among the marsh grass of an eyot. So lightly was it held that it might have slipped off in the wake of the boat had not Tom Moone the carpenter caught it with a boat-hook. But when they had the man on board they found that he was not dead.

Ten minutes before, the young captain would have said that every dead Spaniard was so much to the good, but he had the life-saving instinct of a Newfoundland dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without thinking twice on the subject.

"'T is unlucky," grumbled Will Harvest under his breath. "Take a drownded man from the sea and she get one of us--some time."

"Like enough," agreed his master blithely. "But this one's not drownded--knocked on the head and robbed, I guess. D'you think we might take him to Granny Toothacre's, Tom?"

"I reckon so," returned Tom with a wide grin, "seein' 't is you. If I was the one to ask her I'd as lief do it with a brass kittle on my head. She don't like furriners."

Drake laughed and brought his craft alongside an old wharf near which an ancient farm-house stood, half-hidden by a huge pollard willow. Here, when he had seen his guest bestowed in a chamber whose one window looked out over the marshes, he stayed to watch with him that night, sending the ship on to Chatham in charge of the mate.

"Now what's the lad up to?" queried Will as they caught the ebbing tide. "D'ye think he'll find out anything, tending that there Spanisher?"

"Not him. He don't worm secrets out o' nobody. But he's got his reasons, I make no doubt. You go teach a duck to swim--and leave Frankie alone," said Moone.

The youth did not analyze the impulse that kept him at the bedside of the injured man, but he felt that he desired to know more of him. The stranger was gaunt, gray and without jewel, gold chain or signet ring to show who he was, but it was the same man who had spoken to him at Gravesend five years ago.

A barge-load of London folk had come down to see the launching of the Serchthrift, the new pinnace of the Muscovy Company, and among them was the venerable Sebastian Cabot. Alms were freely distributed that the spectators might pray for a fortunate voyage, but Frankie Drake was gazing with all his eyes at the veteran navigator. A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a friendly voice inquired,