The few who had escaped to the ships were in the utmost want of every necessary of life, worn out by fatigue, and destitute both of food and water. Melendez, who was aware of their wretched condition, promised them mercy if they would surrender themselves into his hands. Being men of truth themselves, they believed his words and capitulated. As they stepped on shore, however, their hands were at once tied behind them, and they were marched as prisoners into St. Augustine. A signal was given; and to the sound of drums and trumpets they were all massacred, with the exception of a few catholics and a few mechanics, who were reserved for slaves; and over their mangled remains was placed the inscription, “This is done not as unto Frenchmen, but as unto heretics.” Nine hundred true men, worshippers of God according to their protestant faith, are supposed to have perished on those shores, victims of bigotry. The French government did not trouble itself about these things; the Huguenots and the French nation, however, resented them keenly. A bold soldier of Gascony, Dominic de Gourgues, a man whose life had been a series of adventures and hardships, sold his property to acquire the means of avenging the wrongs of his fellow-countrymen and believers. With one hundred and fifty men and three ships he embarked for Florida; they were but a handful against the Spanish power, but their object was not conquest—it was retributive justice, if not revenge. Like Melendez he came suddenly; and surprising two Spanish forts on St. John’s river, took them at once, together with a still larger fort on the spot where the unfortunate French settlement had stood. He executed summary justice, hung his prisoners on the trees, with this inscription, “I do this not as unto Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers.” And the Indians, who had been ill-used both by the French and the Spaniards, looked on well pleased to see their enemies preying one on another. Dominic de Gourgues, having avenged his countrymen, again disappeared with his ships, and France disavowing all cognisance of the circumstance, relinquished any claim to Florida; and Spain remained in possession. The Spanish dominion in America was magnificent. Cuba was the centre of the West Indian possessions. “From the remotest south-eastern cape of the Carribean,” says the historian. “along the whole shore, to the Cape of Florida, and beyond it, all was hers. The Gulf of Mexico lay embosomed within her territories.”