the neighboring Timucuan Indians, who, in return, began to attack them.
Dispirited, they decided that they should give up and return to France. But
they had no boat. None of their group knew how to build one. But they
were desperate and determined. So, cutting down pine trees, they shaped
them as best they could into beams and clapboard siding. They caulked the
gaping holes left by their poor carpentry and by the green wood with moss;
for sails, they stitched together their shirts. The boat had no deck or cabin
to protect them from sun and sea. And they had little food to store in it.
None of them knew anything about navigation. But twenty-six of them—
one boy prudently stayed behind—pushed off into the Atlantic. Drifting
more than sailing, they were carried along by the Gulf Stream and the pre-
vailing winds. As the weeks turned into months, the twenty stronger men
ate the weaker six. Finally, even the remaining twenty were mere skeletons.
Yet almost unbelievably, their nearly swamped boat reached the English
Channel. There they were rescued by an astonished English ship. Unde-
cided whether to treat them as survivors of catastrophe or as cannibals, the
English put them in jail. Their odyssey is one of the most ghastly tales of
American colonialism.
While these events were unfolding to their gruesome end, the departed
leader fled from France. As a Huguenot, Ribault feared for his own safety
and sought refuge in England. There, the government was unsure what to
make of him. Was he some sort of spy or a valuable recruit to England’s
small group of able navigators? Probably to try to convince the English that
he was a prize addition, Ribault published his account of the new colony.
Publishing what he had been doing was not a wise move. It frightened
the Spanish ambassador in London into sending a panicky report to King
Philip II, who immediately issued orders to establish a new Spanish fort,
Santa Elena, near Charlesfort and to scout the entire coastline for hostile
invaders. The Spaniards speedily found and burned what remained of
Charlesfort.
Meanwhile, knowing nothing of the fate of Charlesfort and despite the
terrible conditions of the civil war, the French government managed to put
together another expedition. It carried some 300 colonists to establish a new
colony, called Fort Caroline, near the mouth of the Saint Johns River. Under
the command of Ribault’s former deputy, René Goulaine de Laudonnière,
60 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA