Half apologizing for his own little knowledge of “architecture and geometry,” Salazar left the trials and tribulations of this frontier province to his more youthful successor. Salazar had done a great deal. Within a short 6 months after his arrival he had made the castillo defensible against any but an overwhelming force, then during the remainder of his 5-year term, over one obstacle after another he slowly raised all the permanent walls so that there was now little left to build inside the fort—the rooms and Lagones’ mistakes excepted. San Carlos even had the firing steps for the musketeers and embrasures for the artillery—though that small gap for hauling materials was still there. The curtains were almost ready for the parapet builders, since in most places the core of fill was within a yard of the top. The only low part of the work was San Pablo, where the level had been miscalculated. The main doorway, its iron-bound door, and drawbridge—the work of a convict—was finished. Another heavy portal closed the emergency doorway in another curtain. There was a small temporary chapel in the shadow of the eastern wall. Governor Cabrera found his hands full. The 1680’s were turbulent years. Already the English had struck at Santa Catalina, and that mission outpost was abandoned soon thereafter. Other raids by Englishman, Indian, and pirate drove the padres and their charges to the coastal islands south of the St. Marys River. Heathen Indians carried away their Christian cousins into English slavery. Cabrera bided his time. He had other worries. If spring marked the turn of a young man’s fancy, it was no less the season the corsairs chose to “run” the coasts of Florida. Each year the buccaneers grew bolder. In 1682, the year Cabrera finished the fort ravelin, there were a dozen or so pirate craft operating in the Bahama Channel, and they took a number of Spanish prizes, including the St. Augustine frigate on its way to Vera Cruz for the subsidy. [Illustration: THE LARGE CORNER FIREPLACES IN THE GUARDROOMS WERE USED BOTH FOR HEATING AND COOKING.]