“Together, we ran back toward the beach, but when we reached the edge of the thicket, we stopped because what we saw…what we saw was unimaginable. We were men of fortune and decorum, men whose minds were filled with books and music and art, yet in an instant, our perception of the world was forever changed. Dark-skinned natives with painted faces had overrun de Solis and his men, and with stone hatchets and crudely fashioned knives, we watched in horror as they disemboweled and dismembered our traveling companions. The sand turned red, and our blood turned cold, and before I knew it, I was running with the others, running away from the shore and the barbaric images I’ve yet to forget.

“We barreled through the forest like madmen, mindless of the brush and bramble as it scratched our faces and sliced through our clothes. We ran, and we ran, losing some of our belongings along the way, but none of that mattered. Nothing mattered any longer. Our lungs burned with the need for air, and our legs grew heavy as if draped in the thickest of armors, yet we all kept running.

“I remember little else of that day, the exhaustion and dehydration no doubt the culprits in my amnesia. I awoke on what I assumed to be the following day in a wooded area a few steps away from a stream. Etienne and the others were there, too, bloodied but alive, and their clothes were as torn and tattered as my own. After we filled our bellies with water from the stream, we sat and listened as Etienne told us of his plan.

“Since the stream was the only water source we knew of, we would travel along its edge, using the trees and scrub to hide us, mindful of the noise we made as well as the sounds around us. Armed with only four daggers amongst us, Etienne believed that in order to stay alive, instead of traveling north, back to the port where we initially landed, the coastline to our west was much closer. He’d seen the maps de Solis had been using, and he also knew that while the ships on the western shore would be fewer, the trip would take us much less time, and he received no argument from us. Our need for wealth had well been trumped by our need to stay alive, and since the stream seemed to flow from the west, it was the most perfect of plans.