"And I am to be one of the party," said Juan de Cabrera, excitedly. "And if you choose you also are to have a hand in catching this Hatuey, and helping to make him an example."
"He is that already," replied Montoro gravely. "Would that the poor sheep, his countrymen, knew how to profit by it."
"By my faith," exclaimed Cabrera impatiently, "you are a queer fellow, Diego. Wouldst thou then that these 'poor sheep,' who are as a hundred to one of us, should know their strength, and shoot us down like vermin in a barn?"
Montoro flung down the great wooden hammer with which he had been driving stakes, and came forward, his face set with mingled sternness and sorrow.
"Ay, truly, Juan de Cabrera, less would it shame me that the heathen should thus treat us, than to know that we Christians have acted that hideous part towards them. Hast thou heard of the late campaign in Trinidad, where our countrymen have burnt alive in cold blood—to save trouble!—nigh upon two hundred men and women, and innocent babes scarcely more helpless than their kind and gentle-natured fathers? How shall Spanish tears or Spanish blood, thinkest thou, ever wash out that foul stain?"
Juan de Cabrera turned away for a moment, for he had no answer ready. When he turned round again he said, with an assumption of flippancy he was for once far from feeling,—
"Ah, well, I have not heard this shady tale before, and I don't suppose that it has lost any of its shadows by coming through thy lips. Doubtless it was but a toss up whether our brethren should be killed, or should kill."
"Not so," said Montoro, sternly. "Juan Bono hath confessed, himself, that the unhappy creatures whom he thus repaid had been as fathers and mothers to him, and to all his party; but he had been sent to make slaves, and he made them the more readily by burning part of the population before resistance was dreamt of."
He stopped abruptly, and stooped to pick up his tool. Then once more raising his eyes to his companion's face, he said slowly and quietly—
"That is all; but a ghastly all; and I would to God that the heathen had shot me ere I heard it."