"We're not afraid."
"No, we needn't be were they to make war openly, but they are sly, and as dangerous as sly. They would in all probability burn us down some dark night."
Jake mused for a minute. Then he said abruptly:
"Let the poor devils earn a few dollars, Mr. Peter, if they are stony-broke, and then send them on their way rejoicing."
"That's what I say, too," said Burly Bill, who had just come up. "I've been over yonder in the starlight. They look deuced uncouth and nasty. So does a bull-dog, Jake, but is there a softer-hearted, more kindly dog in all creation?"
So that very day the Indians set to work with the other squads.
The labour connected with the collecting of india-rubber is by no means very hard, but it requires a little skill, and is irksome to those not used to such toil.
But labour is scarce and Indians are often lazy, so on the whole Jake was not sorry to have the new hands, or "serinqueiros" as they are called.
The india-rubber trees are indigenous and grow in greatest profusion on that great tributary of the Amazon called the Madeira. But when poor Tom St. Clair came to the country he had an eye to business. He knew that india-rubber would always command a good market, and so he visited the distant forests, studied the growth and culture of the trees as conducted by Nature, and ventured to believe that he could improve upon her methods.
He was successful, and it was not a great many years before he had a splendid plantation of young trees in his forest, to say nothing of the older ones that had stood the brunt of many a wild tropical storm.