When Menendez could secure the attention of his maddened men he gave an
order that women, children and boys under fifteen should be spared. This
order and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last of the men
in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds of the Spaniards.
Pierre leaped the palisade and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw
the trembling women and children herded into shelter, but not killed.
Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were presently hanged; a hundred and
forty-two had been cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank.
Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering reached a
friendly Indian village. The carpenter and the other fugitives who
escaped were taken to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet
which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement. Menendez returned
at leisure to San Augustin, where he knelt and thanked the Lord.
The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known through the letters
which the Spaniards themselves wrote in course of time to their friends
at home, but chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King. Dominic
de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and his eyes burned with the still
anger of a naturally impetuous man who has learned in stern schools how
to keep his temper.
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