But all of Ribault’s officers were not discouraged. Indeed upon the sight of so large a company many of the men and soldiers took great heart again and cried joyously to one another. The men we had found were sailors of the _Gloire_, who had elected to remain together upon the beach, until sighted by some French ship while the main body of their company had gone northward. Others were of the _Petit-Jean_ and of the _Jesus_, which had gone ashore leagues below. We numbered now three hundred and fifty persons, and but for our hunger and the smallness of the supply of powder and ball would have been a formidable little army indeed. Captain Cosette of the _Gloire_, who was there, embraced the Admiral with great joy, and Bourdelais commanded a halt, for the men of the _Trinity_ were tired out. Many of them dropped to the ground, and, forgetting their hunger and their thirst fell mercifully into a deep sleep in which they were left to rest. I seemed to have no further sensation--even of weariness. Quiet was more irksome to me than aught else. I could not remain seated like the others but must walk up and down upon the sand. And yet I was not in a fever as before. It was easier for me to think thus upon my feet. I felt myself most calm in mind and could not understand how it should be so when every new discovery went to confirm the premonition of the doom that had hung over us like a pall since that day--years ago it seemed--when I had bade farewell to Mademoiselle upon the bastion at Fort Caroline. It all came back upon me as some dream, the stifling atmosphere, the ominous elements, the listlessness of all things human and animate upon the earth, and the misery which took the joy from those last words with my love. Then I thought of those red sunsets upon the ocean, when we had sat upon the fore-castle laughing at our ill omens and watched the great ball of fire drop down into the purple mists of the hot western sea. Such a sun there was this night--I mounted a sand hill that I might see it the better. A yellow mist rose from a swamp somewhere inland and the disk grew to a greater size than I had ever seen. Yet one could look at it squarely ere it had come to the horizon, for it was not bright and seemed not to be shining at all; only a great ball of blood poised in the air, which one might almost reach out and pluck from the sky. Then it fell down behind a line of barren pine trees at the horizon, which cut across it cold and clear as prison bars,--and in a moment was gone. When I went back the officers of the _Trinity_ and some of the other gentlemen had lit a fire and sat in a circle upon the sand. A council of war was held. The wilder blades were for pushing on at once. Bourdelais stood up and on behalf of the Admiral, said he, “We must be patient. To-morrow we will know something.”