you stand by and see us butchered?"

"These," retorted Laudonniere, "are no comrades of mutineers and
rebels."

At the request of his followers, however, he commuted the sentence to
shooting.

A file of men, a rattling volley, and the debt of justice was paid. The
bodies were hanged on gibbets, at the river's mouth, and order reigned
at Fort Caroline.






CHAPTER VI.
1564, 1565.

FAMINE. WAR. SUCCOR.


While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferriere had been sent out as
an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and
restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have
reached the mysterious mountains of Appalache. He sent to the fort
mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows
tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and
other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the