The trees grew somewhat far apart, and across a fairly open space he saw the strangers whose unexpected presence was causing him such concern. Five men, stripped to the waist, were hard at work with axes. Four of them had dusky skins of reddish hue; the fifth, a short, thickset, brawny man, the muscles of whose arms showed like great globes, was clearly a white man, though his hands and arms were stained a bright scarlet quite different from the red duskiness of southern natives, or the red-brown caused by exposure to sun and wind. As they moved, the five men clanked the chains that fettered their ankles to stout logs of wood. A little apart stood three men looking on, laughing and talking together in a tongue strange to Dennis. They were big swarthy fellows, with soft wide-brimmed hats, each decked with a feather, brown leather doublets and hose, and long boots. Each bore a caliver and a whip.
The sun was high in the heavens, its beams beating down through the trees upon the unprotected backs of the toilers. Sweat was pouring from them. The trees were thick, some at least two yards in circumference; to cut them through needed no slight exertion. The white labourer paused to draw his arm across his reeking brow. Then one of the watchers strolled across from the tree against which he had been lolling, and raising his whip, brought the thong with a stinging cut across the back of the slave who had dared to intermit his labours. A red streak showed livid on the white skin. For a moment it seemed to Dennis, watching the scene, that the victim was about to turn upon his assailant with the axe, his sole weapon. An expression of deadly rage writhed the features of his red, bearded face. His grip tightened upon the axe. But he controlled his impulse with an effort. The warder laughed brutally, flung a taunt, and cracked his whip in the air in challenge and menace. Sullenly the woodman resumed his task, and his persecutor, with another laugh, turned and rejoined his companions, applauded by their grins.
Dennis felt himself stung to anger. This swarthy ruffian, he doubted not, was a Spaniard, a subject of King Philip, once the consort of an English queen. It was not a pleasant introduction to the race dominating the Americas. Apparently Mirandola liked them no better than he, for at the first sight of the strangers the monkey had fled away. Dennis found him a good quarter-mile distant when, taking advantage of an interval during which the Spaniards ate and drank, and the flagging toilers rested, he strode away to a banana grove to refresh himself.
He watched the group till near sundown. Several trees having been felled, the men proceeded to hack off the branches and to chip away the white rind. Then the strange scarlet colour of their arms and hands was explained. The heart of the trees was a brilliant red. As the rind was stripped off, the Spaniards drew near and examined the core, and under their direction the labourers cut and trimmed certain selected logs. The work was still unfinished when the sun went down, and the leader of the Spaniards gave the word for returning to the shore. The logs were struck off the slaves' ankles and replaced by manacles; then they set off. Dennis followed them at a safe distance, and when he came within view of the sea, there was a small vessel riding at anchor some little distance off shore, and the slaves were in the act of dragging a row boat through the white surf. In this they all put off, and darkness covered them up as they regained the ship.
Dennis returned to his hut, joined by the monkey on the way.
"Here is food for thought, Mirandola, my friend," he said. "No fire for us to-night! Are you acquainted with don Spaniards and their ways? You kept a wide berth: have you too suffered at their hands? Who is the poor wretch the ruffian lashed? By his looks he would pass for an Englishman: I hope he is not of English breed. Yet I hope he is: what do you make of that, Mirandola? I protest I love your wise and friendly countenance; but there is something warming to the heart in the sight of one of my own kind, if such he be. We must be up betimes, my friend; maybe the morrow will give us assurance."
Thinking over the incident before he slept, Dennis wondered why the party had returned to the ship. If the purpose of their visit was to obtain any quantity of this strange red wood, doubtless they had several days' work before them; why had they not camped on shore? Perhaps they felt that the slaves were safer on board; perhaps, too, they did not care to weaken the ship's company during the hours of night. It was a small vessel; probably there was not a large number of Spaniards aboard; but doubtless they were all armed like the three who had come ashore, and their slaves, being fettered, would need but a few to control them. Dennis hoped that when they returned next day they would not make too thorough a search for similar groves elsewhere in the island, for if they should discover his hut, he had little doubt they would seek to impress him into the hapless gang.
His sleep was restless. Many times he woke with a start and sprang up trembling, feeling that the Spaniards were on his track. At daybreak he was on his way towards the western shore, and took up his position in the same thicket, the leafy screen being almost impenetrable. The monkey was with him now; but when his ears caught first the measured thud of oars, then the clank of chains drawing nearer, Mirandola chattered angrily, sprang into a tree, and disappeared.
The party came into view: five slaves, three Spaniards. The former were, to all appearance, the same as those Dennis had seen on the previous day; but it seemed to him that their armed guards were different; probably the men of the ship took it in turns to come ashore. But if the individuals were different, their methods were much the same. Indeed, before Dennis had been watching the work many minutes, he had reason to know that the warders of to-day were even more ingeniously brutal than those of yesterday. The first thing he noticed was a change in their manner of rendering their slaves harmless. One of them carried a large wooden mallet; the others had between them iron staples with sharp-pointed ends. These staples they drove one by one with the mallet into the boles of the five trees selected for the day's operations. Secured to each staple was one end of a long chain, the other end of which was fastened to the captive's ankle band. Thus the hapless woodmen were fettered not merely by the logs of wood, as on the previous day, but by chains that bound them to the very trees they were to cut down. The staples were driven into the trunks below the line of the cleft to be made; but the chains, though long, seemed to Dennis scarcely long enough to enable the men to escape crushing should the trees happen to fall the wrong way. That was a chance which evidently did not trouble the guards.
Dennis wondered why this additional precaution had been taken to ensure the safe custody of the wretched men. Had they shown signs of mutiny? It would not be surprising after the treatment of the previous day. Certainly the ingenious device lightened the task of surveillance, for the wood-cutters, however exasperated, could not turn upon their guards until they had forced out the staples with their axes.