Soon after leaving the Cenis villages, both La Salle and his nephew, Moranget, were attacked by a fever. This caused a delay of more than two months, during which the party seem to have remained encamped on the Neches, or, possibly, the Sabine. When at length the invalids had recovered sufficient strength to travel, the stock of ammunition was nearly spent, some of the men had deserted, and the condition of the travellers was such, that there seemed no alternative but to return to Fort St. Louis. This they accordingly did, greatly aided in their march by the horses bought from the Cenis, and suffering no very serious accident by the way, excepting the loss of La Salle's servant, Dumesnil, who was seized by an alligator while attempting to cross the Colorado. The temporary excitement caused among the colonists by their return soon gave place to a dejection bordering on despair. "This pleasant land," writes Cavelier, "seemed to us an abode of weariness and a perpetual prison." Flattering themselves with the delusion, common to exiles of every kind, that they were objects of solicitude at home, they watched daily, with straining eyes, for an approaching sail. Ships, indeed, had ranged the coast to seek them, but with no friendly intent. Their thoughts dwelt, with unspeakable yearning, on the France they had left behind; and which, to their longing fancy, was pictured as an unattainable Eden. Well might they despond; for of a hundred and eighty colonists, besides the crew of the "Belle," less than forty-five remained. The weary precincts of Fort St. Louis, with its fence of rigid palisades, its area of trampled earth, its buildings of weather-stained timber, and its well-peopled graveyard without, were hateful to their sight. La Salle had a heavy task to save them from despair. His composure, his unfailing cheerfulness, his words of sympathy and of hope, were the breath of life to this forlorn company; for, self-contained and stern as was his nature, he could soften, in times of extremity, to a gentleness that strongly appealed to the hearts of those around him; and though he could not impart, to minds of less adamantine temper, the audacity of hope with which he still clung to the final accomplishment of his purposes, the contagion of his courage touched, nevertheless, the drooping spirits of his followers. [Footnote: "L'egalite d'humeur du Chef rassuroit tout le monde; et il trouvoit des resources a tout par son esprit qui relevoit les esperances les plus abatues."--Joutel, 152. "Il seroit difficile de trouver dans l'Histoire un courage plus intrepide et plus invincible que celuy du Sieur de la Salle dans les evenemens contraires; il ne fut jamais abatu, et il esperoit toujours avec le secours du Ciel de venir a bout de son entreprise malgre tous les obstacles qui se presentoient."--Douay, in Le Clercq, ii. 327.]