s own rations; and that the
sailors, and even Amyas, had been going out of their way every five
minutes, to get fruit for their new pets.

A camp was soon formed; and that evening the old hermit asked Amyas,
Cary, and Brimblecombe to come up into his cavern.

They went; and after the accustomed compliments had passed, sat down on
mats upon the ground, while the old man stood, leaning against a slab of
stone surmounted by a rude wooden cross, which served him as a place of
prayer.

* * * * *

The talk lasted long into the night,[200-13] but Amyas was up long
before daybreak, felling the trees; and as he and Cary walked back to
breakfast, the first thing which they saw was the old man in his garden
with four or five Indian children round him, talking smilingly to them.

"The old man's heart is sound still," said Will. "No man is lost who is
still fond of little children."

"Ah, Senors!" said the hermit as they came up, "you see that I have
begun already to act upon your advice."

"And you have begun at the right end," quoth Amyas; "if you win the
children, you win the mothers."

"And if you win the mothers," quoth Will, "the poor fathers must needs
obey their wives, and follow in the wake."

The old man only sighed. "The prattle of these little ones softens my
hard heart, Senors, with a new pleasure; but it saddens me, when I
recollect that there may be children of mine now in the world--children
who have never known a father's love--never known aught but a master's
threats--"

"God has taken care of these little ones. Trust that He has taken care
of yours."

That day Amyas assembled the Indians, and told them that they must obey
the hermit as their king, and settle there as best they could: for if
they broke up and wandered away, nothing was left for them but to fall
one by one into the hands of the Spaniards. They heard him with their
usual melancholy and stupid acquiescence, and went and came as they were
bid, like animated machines; but the negroes were of a different temper;
and four or five stout fellows gave Amyas to understand that they had
been warriors in their own country, and that warriors they would be
still; and nothing should keep them from Spaniard-hunting. Amyas saw
that the presence of these desperadoes in the new colony would both
endanger the authority of the hermit, and bring the Spaniards down upon
it in a few weeks; so making a virtue of necessity, he ask