By 1686, with its Castillo about completed, St. Augustine felt ready to take the offensive. In the fall of that year its women waved farewell to soldier husbands and sweethearts. They sailed north in three ships, destroyed a Scottish settlement at Port Royal, plundered English coastal plantations, and advanced on _San Jorge_, as the Spaniards called it, or Charleston. Suddenly a hurricane came up driving two of their vessels hopelessly aground. The third limped sadly back to Matanzas Bay. Soon after this expedition a boat-load of half-starved Negro slaves arrived at St. Augustine, and asked for the Holy Waters of Baptism. They had escaped from Carolina plantations. In response to demands for their return the Spanish governor offered to reimburse the English for their loss. Spanish agents and Indians secretly began to encourage slaves in Carolina to run away, making it known that St. Augustine offered them asylum. These refugees increased in number and were allowed to occupy lands two miles north of the settlement in the vicinity of Mose Creek. _The Shipwrecked Quakers_ John Archdale, a Quaker, became governor of Carolina in 1695. He frowned upon the enslavement of Christian Indians and returned four to authorities at St. Augustine, who wrote him a letter of appreciation and agreed to reciprocate by according English subjects safe conduct through Spanish territory. This accounts for the kind treatment accorded a small company of Quakers enroute to Philadelphia, who were wrecked on the coast of Florida in the vicinity of Hobe Sound in 1696. The Quakers reached shore safely only to suffer torturing hardship among the coastal Indians, who feared Spanish authority but were still savages in most respects. [Illustration: _Title page from one of the many editions of Dickinson’s book._] GOD’_s_ Protecting Providence, MAN’_s_ _Surest_ Help _and_ Defence, IN Times of Greatest Difficulty and most Eminent Danger: EVIDENCED In the Remarkable Deliverance of Robert Barrow, with divers other Persons, from the Devouring Waves of the Sea; amongst which they Suffered SHIPWRACK: And also, From the cruel Devouring Jaws of the Inhuman _Canibals of Florida_. Faithfully Related by one of the Persons concern’d therein, Jonathan Dickenson.