Even then one man, who was known as Simon the Armorer, was heard to mutter that it might be land and then again it might not; for his part, he believed the whole world had been drowned in a flood, as in the days of Noah, and that the only land they should ever see would be at the bottom of the ocean.
As the day wore on, and before a light breeze the ships were wafted towards the blue cloud, it was proved beyond a doubt to be land, for some palm-trees and tall pines became distinguishable, and above all other sounds came, faint but distinct, the heavy, regular boom of surf.
By noon the ships had approached as near to the coast as was deemed prudent, and for the first time since leaving France their anchors were dropped and their sails were furled.
They had come to anchor off the mouth of an inlet, before which extended a bar upon which the great seas were breaking and roaring so frightfully that no passage for the ships among them seemed to offer itself.
Laudonniere thought he recognized the inlet as one leading into a broad river, on the opposite side of which was located an Indian village called Seloy.

This place he had visited two years before in company with Admiral Ribault, and he determined to reassure himself as to the locality; therefore, bidding Rene accompany him, he entered a small boat, and ordering another, full of soldiers, to follow them, he gave the word to pull straight for the breakers.
Just as Rene thought the boat was to be swallowed by the raging seas, his uncle guided her, with great skill, into a narrow passage that opened in their very midst.

After a few minutes of suspense, during which Rene dared hardly to breathe, they shot into smooth waters, rounded a point of land, and saw before them the village of which they were in search.

On the beach in front of it a crowd of savage figures, nearly naked, were dancing wildly, and brandishing bows and spears.
Meanwhile, the village that the boats were now approaching had been thrown into a state of the greatest excitement by the appearance of the ships, which had been discovered while yet so distant that their sails resembled the wings of the white sea-gull.

Upon the first alarm all the warriors had been collected on the beach, and the women had left their work in the fields of maize and hurried with the children to the security of the forest depths.