“You do not speak like a Lutheran.”

“I am not a Lutheran, but an Englishman:  but, Protestant as I am, God knows, I had sooner see these poor souls of your creed, than of none.”

“But I am no priest.”

“When they are ready,” said Jack, “the Lord will send a priest.  If you begin the good work, you may trust to Him to finish it.”

“God help me!” said the old warrior.

The talk lasted long into the night, 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 still is 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 asked them whether they would go Spaniard-hunting with him.

This was just what the bold Coromantees wished for; they grinned and shouted their delight at serving under so great a warrior, and then set to work most gallantly, getting through more in the day than any ten Indians, and indeed than any two Englishmen.