"Oh! my brethren! would ye could see with my vision! Ribault will not trouble our camp, neither will he pursue us in our absence. He speeds before the terrors of the tempest. He flies from the destruction which will scarcely suffer him to escape. A voice cries to me that he already perishes beneath the engulphing waters of the Mexican sea; or is cast upon the bleak and treacherous shores and islands which guard the domain of the Floridian. Even if he should escape these dangers, weeks must pass before he can return to these waters of Selooe, the heathen empire of which we have consecrated with the name and confided to the holy keeping of the blessed St. Augustine! This tempest is no summer gale, subsiding as rapidly as it begins. It will rage thus for many days. In that time, encouraged by the Lord, we shall pass the forest wastes that lie between us and La Caroline. With five hundred men, and a host of these red warriors, we shall penetrate in less than four days to the fortress of the heretics--and while they dream that they sleep securely under the shadows of the tempest, we shall rush upon their slumbers, and give them to sleep eternally. My valiant comrades, this is the resolution which I have taken; but I would hear your counsel. I would not that ye should not cheerfully adopt the resolve which is assuredly a dictate from Heaven itself. For, if we destroy not these heretics, they will destroy us. If we cut off the people of La Caroline ere Ribault shall return, his fortress is ours, the cannon of which we shall turn upon him. It is a war _a l'outrance_ between us. They will give us no quarter: they shall have none. This tempest gives us the assurance that we shall have no danger from Ribault, if we seize the precious moments for our enterprise, when he is vainly striving with the tempests of the deep, and vainly striving against the winds that bear him away hourly still farther from the scene of our achievements."