But these bold bad men were loath to die.
"Comrades," said one, turning to the loyal soldiers near, "will
you stand by and see us die thus shamefully?"
"These," replied Laudonni?re, sharply, "are no comrades of mutineers
and rebels."
All appeals for mercy were in vain. So the men were shot and their
bodies hanged on gibbets near the mouth of the river as a lesson
to rebels.
After this there was peace for a time in Fort Caroline. But it
soon became peace with misery, for the colony began to starve. The
long-expected ship from France did not come. Rich and fertile land
spread all round them, but the colonists had neither ploughed nor
sown it. They trusted to France for all their food. Now for months
no ships had come, and their supplies were utterly at an end.
So in ever increasing misery the days passed. Some crawled about the
meadows and forest, digging for roots and gathering herbs. Others
haunted the river bed in search of shell-fish. One man even gathered
up all the fish bones he could find and ground them to powder to
make bread. But all that they scraped together with so much pain
and care was hardly enough to keep body and soul together. They
grew so thin that their bones started through the skin. Gaunt,
hollow-eyed spectres they lay about the fort sunk in misery, or
dragged themselves a little way into the forest in search of food.
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