Loud cries of exultation from his people answered this address. A thousand voices renewed their vows of fidelity, and pledged themselves to follow blindly wherever he should lead. He commanded that a solemn mass of the Holy Spirit should be said that night, and that all the army should be present. He vouchsafed no farther words. Nothing, he well knew, that he could say, could possibly add to the miraculous event that had saved their vessels, before their own eyes, in the very moment of destruction. "Our prayers, our faith, my brethren; to these we owe the saving mercies of the Blessed Jesus!" CHAPTER III. MELENDEZ AT SELOOE. But the enthusiasm excited by the dispersion of Ribault's vessels, and the escape of their own, was of short-lived duration among the Spaniards at Selooe. Human nature may obey a grateful impulse, and, while it lasts, will be insensible to common dangers and common necessities; but the enthusiasm which excites and strengthens for a season, is one also which finally exhausts; and when the enervation which succeeds to a high-strung exultation, is followed by great physical trials, and the continued pressure of untoward events, the creature nature is quite too apt to triumph over that nobler spirit whose very intensity is fatal to its length of life. The sign of providential favor which they had beheld wrought visibly in their behalf, the inspiriting language of their stern and solemn leader, the offices of religion, meant to evoke the presence of the Deity, and to secure, by appropriate rites, his farther protection, of which they had recently witnessed so wonderful a manifestation; these wore away in their effects upon our Spaniards, and in the toils and sufferings which they were subsequently to endure.