The surviving prisoners were then brought before the conqueror. They were manacled, and presented a spectacle which must have moved the sympathies of any ordinary nature. But Pedro de Melendez was not of an ordinary nature. The natural sympathies had given way to a morbid passion amounting to insanity, by which his judgment was confounded. The sight of weeping, and trembling women and children; of captives naked, worn, exhausted, enfeebled by years, by disease, by cruel wounds--all pleading for his mercy--only seemed to strengthen him in the most cruel resolution. "The groans of the heretic, are music in the ears of heaven!" Upon this maxim he designed an appropriate commentary. "Separate these women from the other prisoners." It was done. "Now detach from these last, all children under fifteen years." His command was obeyed. The women and children thus set apart were consigned to slavery. Of their farther fate the historian knows nothing. The young and tender were probably persuaded to the Roman Catholic altars, and thus finally achieved their deliverance. The more stubborn, we may reasonably assume, perished in their bonds, passing from one condition of degradation to another. Of the rest the history is terribly definite. Fixing his cold, dark eye upon the male captives upon whose fate he had yet said nothing, he demanded-- "Is there among ye any who profess the faith of the Holy Catholic Church?" Two of the prisoners answered in the affirmative. "Take these Christians away, and let their bonds be removed. The Holy Father, Salvandi, will examine them in the faith of Mother Church. For the rest, are there any among ye, who, seeing the error of your ways, will renounce the heresy of Luther, and seek once more communion with the only true church?" A drear silence followed. The captives looked mournfully at each other, and at the Adelantado; but in his face there was no encouragement, and nothing but despair was expressed in the aspects of their fellows. "Be warned!" continued the Adelantado. "To those who seek the blessings of the true church, she generously openeth her arms. To those who turn away, indifferently or in scorn, she decrees death temporal and death eternal. Hear ye!--and now say." The silence was unbroken. "Are ye obdurate? or do ye not comprehend that your lives rest upon your speech? Either ye embrace the safety which the church offers, by an instant renunciation of that of the foul heretic Luther, or ye die by the halter!" One sturdy soldier advanced from the group--a bold, high-souled fellow--his brows lifted proudly with the conscious impulse which worked within his soul. "Pedro de Melendez, we are in your power. You are master of our mortal bodies, but with the death before us that you threaten, know that we are members of the reformed Church of Christ, which ye name to be of Luther--that, holding it good to live in this faith, we deem it one in which it will not be amiss to die!"