, withdrew sorely against his will,
and found in the pathway fourteen Spaniards, but all dead. For one of
the wounded, with more courage than wisdom, had fired on the English
as he lay; and Amyas's men, whose blood was maddened both by their
desperate situation, and the frightful stories of the rescued
galley-slaves, had killed them all before their captain could stop them.

"Are you mad?" cries Amyas, as he strikes up one fellow's sword. "Will
you kill an Indian?"

And he drags out of the bushes an Indian lad of sixteen, who, slightly
wounded, is crawling away like a copper snake along the ground.

"The black vermin has sent an arrow through my leg; and poisoned too,
most like."

"God grant not: but an Indian is worth his weight in gold to us now,"
said Amyas, tucking his prize under his arm like a bundle. The lad, as
soon as he saw there was no escape, resigned himself to his fate with
true Indian stoicism, was brought in, and treated kindly enough, but
refused to eat. For which, after much questioning, he gave as a reason,
that he would make them kill him at once; for fat him they should not;
and gradually gave them to understand that the English always (so
at least the Spaniards said) fatted and ate their prisoners like
the Caribs; and till he saw them go out and bury the bodies of the
Spaniards, nothing would persuade him that the corpses were not to be
cooked for supper.

However, kind words, kind looks, and the present of that inestimable
treasure--a knife, brought him to reason; and he told Amyas that he
belonged to a Spaniard who had an "encomienda" of Indians some fifteen
miles to the south-west; that he had fled from his master, and lived
by hunting for some months past; and having seen the ship where she lay
moored, and boarded her in hope of plunder, had been surprised therein
by the Spaniards, and forced by threats to go with them as a guide in
their search for the English. But now came a part of his story which
filled the soul of Amyas with delight. He was an Indian of the Llanos,
or great savannahs which lay to the southward beyond the mountains, and
had actually been upon the Orinoco. He had been stolen as a boy by some
Spaniards, who had gone down (as was the fashion of the Jesuits even
as late as 1790) for the pious purpose of converting the savages by the
simple process of catching, baptizing, and making servants of those
whom they could carry off, and murdering those who resisted their gentle