It had been caught
feasting in the maize-fields of the Indians, by their cousin and another
youth, and shot with a crossbow bolt by Pierre. They thought the roast
corn and stewed clams of their first meal ashore the most delicious food
they had ever tasted, and the three-cornered enclosure in the forest
with the wilderness all about it, the most wonderful place they had
seen.
Little did these innocent folk imagine what was brewing in Spain. The
raid of French pirates upon the Jamaican coast had promptly been
reported by the Adelantado of that island. Spanish spies at the French
court had carefully noted the movements of Coligny and Ribault. Pedro
Menendez de Avila, raising money and men in his native province of
Asturia in Spain for the conquest of all Florida, learned with horror
and indignation that its virgin soil had already been polluted by
heretic Frenchmen.
Menendez had in that very year gained permission from the King of Spain
to conquer and convert this land at his own cost. In return he was to
have free trade with the whole Spanish empire, and the title of
Adelantado or governor of Florida for life--absolute power over all of
America north of Mexico, for Spain had never recognized any right of
France or England in the region discovered by Cabot, Cartier, Verrazzano
or others.
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