those detestable doctrines should share the fate of their three
comrades; and, his harangue over, feasted the whole assembly, in token,
says the narrator, of joy and triumph.

Meanwhile, in their crazy vessel, the banished ministers drifted slowly
on their way. Storms fell upon them, their provisions failed, their
water-casks were empty, and, tossing in the wilderness of waves, or
rocking on the long swells of subsiding gales, they sank almost to
despair. In their famine they chewed the Brazil-wood with which the
vessel was laden, devoured every scrap of leather, singed and ate the
horn of lanterns, hunted rats through the hold, and sold them to each
other at enormous prices. At length, stretched on the deck, sick,
listless, attenuated, and scarcely able to move a limb, they descried
across the waste of sea the faint, cloud-like line that marked the coast
of Brittany. Their perils were not past; for, if we may believe one of
them, Jean de Lery, they bore a sealed letter from Villegagnon to the
magistrates of the first French port at which they might arrive. It
denounced them as heretics, worthy to be burned. Happily, the
magistrates leaned to the Reform, and the malice of the commandant
failed of its victims.

Villegagnon himself soon sailed for France, leaving the wretched colony
to its fate. He presently entered the lists against Calvin, and engaged
him in a hot controversial war, in which, according to some of his
contemporaries, the knight often worsted the theologian at his own
weapons. Before the year 1558 was closed, Ganabara fell a prey to the
Portuguese. They set upon it in force, battered down the fort, and slew
the feeble garrison, or drove them to a miserable refuge among the
Indians. Spain and Portugal made good their claim to the vast domain,
the mighty vegetation, and undeveloped riches of "Antarctic France."