The Lily and the Totem; or, The Huguenots in Florida
Page 54
IX.
THE SACRIFICE OF THE VICTIMS.
The captured fortress was won with a singular facility, and with solittle loss to the assailants, as to confirm them in the conviction thatthe service was acceptable to God. HE had strengthened their heartsand arms--HE had hung his shield of protection over them--HE had made,through the sting of conscience, the souls of the murderous Spaniardsto quake in fear at the very sight of the avengers! The fortress of LaCaroline was found to have been as well supplied with all necessariesfor defence, as it had been amply garrisoned. It was defended by fivedouble _culverins_, by four _minions_, and divers other cannon ofsmaller calibre suitable for such a forest fortress. "Eighteen greatcakes of gunpowder," (it would seem that this combustible was put upin those days moistened, and in a different form from the present, andhence the frequent necessity for drying it, of which we read,) andevery variety of weapon proper to the keeping of the fortress, had beensupplied to the Spaniards; so that, but for the unaccountable error ofthe sortie, and but for the panic which possessed them, and which mayreasonably be ascribed to the natural terrors of a guilty conscience,it was scarcely possible that the Chevalier de Gourgues, with all hisprowess, could have succeeded in the assault. He transferred all thearms to his vessels, but the gunpowder took fire from the carelessnessof one of the savages, who, ignorant of its qualities, proceeded toseethe his fish in the neighborhood of a train, which took fire, andblew up the store-house with all its moveables, destroying all thehouses within its sweep! The poor savage himself seems to have been theonly human victim. The fortress was then razed to the ground, Gourgueshaving no purpose to reestablish a colony which he had not the power tomaintain.
But his vengeance was not complete. The final act of expiation was yetto take place; and, bringing all his prisoners together, he had themconducted to the fatal tree upon which the Spaniards had done to deaththeir Huguenot captives! This was at a short distance from the fortress.
Mournful was the spectacle that met the eyes of the Frenchmen as theyreached the spot. There still hung the withered and wasted skeletons oftheir brethren, naked, bare of flesh, bleached, and rattling againstthe branches of the thrice-accursed tree! The tempest had beaten wildlyagainst their wasted forms--the obscene birds had preyed upon theircarcasses--some had fallen, and lay in undistinguished heaps upon theearth; but the entire skeletons of many, unbroken, still waved in theunconscious breezes of heaven! For two weary years had they been thustossed and shaken in the tempest. For two years had they thus waved,ghastly, white, and terrible, in mockery of the blessed sunshine! Andnow, in the genial breezes of April, they still shook aloft in horriblecontrast with the green leaves, and the purple blossoms of the springaround them! But they were now decreed to take their shame from thesuffering eyes of day! A solemn service was said over the wretchedremains, which were taken down with cautious hands, as considerately asif they were still accessible to hurt, and buried in one common grave!The red-men looked on wondering, and in grave silence; and Holata Cara,leaning upon his spear, might almost be thought to weep at the cruelspectacle.
But his aspect changed when the Spanish captives were brought forth.They were ranged, manacled in pairs, beneath the same tree of sacrifice.Briefly, and in stern accents, did Gourgues recite the crime of whichthey had been guilty, and which they were now to expiate by a sufferanceof the same fate which they had decreed to their victims! Prayers andpleadings were alike in vain. The priest who had performed the solemnrites for the dead, now performed the last duties for the living judged!He heard their confessions. One of the wretched victims confessed thatthe judgment under which he was about to suffer was a just one; that hehimself, with his own hands, had hung no less than five of the wretchedHuguenots. With such a confession ringing in their ears, it was notpossible for the French to be merciful! At a given signal, the victimswere run up to the deadly branches, which they themselves had accursedby such employment; and even while their suspended forms writhed andquivered with the last fruitless efforts of expiring consciousness, thechieftain Holata Cara looked upon them with a cold, hard eye, sternand tearless, as if he felt the dreadful propriety of this wild andunrelenting justice! The deed done--the expiation made--Gourgues thenprocured a huge plank of pine, upon which he caused to be branded, witha searing iron, in rude, but large, intelligible characters, thesewords, corresponding to that inscription put by the Spaniards over theHuguenots, and as a fitting commentary upon it:--
"These are not hung as Spaniards, nor as Mariners, but as Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers!"
How long they hung thus, bleaching in storm and sunshine; how long thisterrible inscription remained as a record of their crime and of thishistory, the chronicle does not show, nor is it needful. The recordis inscribed in pages that survive storm, and wreck, and fire;--moreindelibly written than on pillars of brass and marble! It hangs on highforever, where the eyes of the criminal may read how certainly will thevengeance of heaven alight, or soon or late, upon the offender, whowantonly exults in the moment of security in the commission of greatcrimes done upon suffering humanity.