"Hither, now, Monsieur René," cried Bartholomew, grasping the commandant by the wrist and drawing him along; "follow me now and we shall surely escape. They have left the breach open by the west, near to the lodging of Monsieur D'Erlach, and by that route shall we gain the thickets." "Ah!" cried Laudonniere, long and grateful recollections of a tried fidelity, to which he had not always done justice, extorting from him a groan; "Ah! this had never happened had Jean Ribault left me Alphonse!" And the tears gushed from his eyes, and he paused and thrust the point of his sword into the earth with vexation and despair. "We have not a moment, Monsieur René," cried the soldier with impatience; "the tent is down; the Spaniards are foiled for a moment only. They will be sure to seek you in the breach." "There! there! indeed!" cried the commandant bitterly, "there should they have found me at first; but now!--Lead on! lead on! my good fellow. As thou wilt!" Soon our fugitives had cleared the breach, and were now without the walls. The misty shroud which covered the face of nature, and enveloped as with a sea the thickets to which they were making, favored their escape. The unhappy Laudonniere found himself temporarily safe in the forests; but if remote from present danger, they were not so far from the fortress as to be insensible to the work of death and horror which was in progress there, the evidence of which came to their ears in the shrieks of women for mercy, and the groans and cries of tortured men. "Slay! slay! Smite and spare not!" was the dreadful command of Melendez. "The groans of the heretic make music in the ears of Heaven!"