"What more can any men want?" said another, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Especially men like us, who have had for these weeks past to munch our biscuit in the dark, lest our stomachs should turn at seeing how many and how fat were the other eaters we were obliged also to devour."
"Bah!" ejaculated De Escobar, as he flung over a morsel of the said biscuit at the same time into the water. "It is too abominable of thee, Tristan, thus to remind a hungry wretch of the foul nature of his food. For thy barbarity thou shalt owe me thy first—"
"Nay, Señor," interposed Montoro Diego out of the dusk; "here is somewhat to make amends for thy lost supper. These great nuts have hard outsides; but within they are better than our little ones of Spain."
[CHAPTER XII.]
SURGEON TO THE REDSKINS.
Colonists for the proposed new settlement having proved so easily forthcoming, the next step in the business was to provide them habitations, and shelter of some sort for the needful stores. Accordingly the next morning, almost as soon as it was light, a number of men were sent on shore, as builders of the first European town to be founded on the mainland of America. Bartholomew Columbus went with them to choose a site for the place of which he was to be the Governor; and amongst the number of his companions were Diego Mendez, Diego's special comrade Rodrigo de Escobar, and of course Montoro.
"I cannot get on at all without my sharp-eyed namesake," said the notary good-naturedly, when he pleaded with the Admiral for Montoro's company. And thus, some little it must be confessed to Ferdinand's vexation, Montoro was once more of the land-going party, proving of as much service on this occasion as on the last, although the results were not so immediately apparent.
Cutting timber, clearing ground of a troublesomely-luxuriant vegetation, and driving stakes, had progressed for some time merrily enough, to the evident wonder and interest of an ever-increasing crowd of natives, men, women, and children, when Diego Mendez, looking about him for a help in a hard piece of work, discovered Montoro some couple of hundred yards or so distant from the building-ground, and apparently engaged in a very private and earnest conversation with a couple of native women, and three or four children.
"What, in the name of St. Jago, is the lad after now?" he exclaimed rather irritably, for he had got his fingers pinched in a split bamboo he had wanted his protégé to help him in sundering, and small annoyances were more trying to these brave Spaniards than great disasters. "Montoro," he shouted, "Montoro, you come here, can't you!"