THE COUNTRY. 121

 would have been sleeping in the sunshine yet,
 but for the fact of their ammunition running
 low, so that their provisions failed; and perforce,
 they woke to scan the horizon with anxious
 eyes for Jean Ribaut's promised sail. But far
 greater things had thrust their existence from
 his thoughts; intrigue and civil war were more
 important than the lives of a few men, dream-
 ing under cloud shadows that chased across
 the smooth waste of a great river or a land-
 locked bay. So he did not return.
 One falls to thinking of the final wrench with
which the garrison must have roused themselves
from sleep and starvation, and of that strange
ship in which a little later they floated out to sea.
 "They built," some one says, "a small pin-
nace, though they had not a single ship-carpen-
ter among them. The cordage was of palmetto,
the sails their shirts and linen, and the vessel
was caulked with moss." The river bore the
strange craft kindly; perhaps the vessel seemed
to it--with rough logs, and twisted palms, and
flowing gray moss like a part of the landscape,
some strange island which had floated from its