When he arrived off the mouth of the river the tide was so low on the bar that his ships could not pass it.  So they stood off and on, waiting for it to rise, and the Spaniards on shore, seeing them, were filled with great consternation.  Of a sudden, almost without warning, there came a terrible blast of wind out of the north-east.  It was followed by another and another, until such a gale was raging as had never been seen by white men on that coast.  In vain did the French ships struggle against it, and against the huge billows that towered as high as their tallest masts.  They could do nothing against its fury, and soon the Spaniards were filled with joy at seeing them drift helplessly down the coast towards certain wreck and destruction.

Then Menendez made up his mind, in spite of the terrible gale, to march overland to the attack of Fort Caroline, thus deprived of its defenders.  Followed by five hundred picked men, he set forth, and for three days, beaten and drenched by the pitiless storm, he wandered through over-flowed swamps and tangled forests.  He had compelled several of the Seloy Indians to go with him and act as guides; but finally, believing that they were purposely leading him astray, he put them to death with great cruelty, and trusted to his own knowledge to lead him to the great river.  At length he reached it, and following its course, came during the night to a high bluff, from which he looked down upon the few twinkling lights of Fort Caroline beneath him.

Meantime the raging of the elements had caused the greatest anxiety to those who remained within the fort, for they were fearful of its effect upon the ships of Admiral Ribault; and though they of course knew nothing of their fate, they were already beginning to regard them as lost.

Under Simon, the armorer, as captain of the guard, Rene de Veaux had done duty with the few old men and invalids who were pressed into service as sentinels, and he had manfully shouldered his cross-bow, and paced the walls through many long hours of storm, rain, and darkness.  Although, in his pride at thus performing the duties of a real soldier, the boy allowed no word of complaint to escape him, he felt what the others expressed openly—­that this guard duty, now that the Spaniards and savages had departed, and in the midst of a storm so terrible that it did not seem possible for mortals to face it, was an unnecessary hardship.  So when, towards morning of the fourth night, after two hours of wearily pacing the walls in the cold, drenching rain, he was relieved, and flung himself, all wet as he was, upon a couch in his own quarters, he determined to remonstrate with Simon upon the subject.

In spite of his feelings, Rene had been absolutely faithful to his duty, which, alas! the soldier who relieved him was not.  After a few turns upon the parapet, during which he neither saw nor heard anything to disquiet him, this sentinel sought shelter from the beatings of the storm in an angle of the walls, where he soon fell into a doze.