He walked with Cammock to the island’s eastern end, where a rocky hillock stood out from the trees. He saw that a fort there would command the channel. Six of his long-range guns planted there under cover would be enough to defend the anchorage against any probable attack from guarda-costas. He drew a sketch-plan for a small redoubt, and ordered half his crew ashore to begin the clearing of the ground. He would have a wall of unmortared stones, backed by gabions, leaving embrasures for the six cannon. The outside of the fort would be covered with earth and sand, so that from a little distance it would look like a natural hillock. He caused a dozen men to cut down bejuco cane, and to plait it, while green, into wattle for the gabions. An Indian prince came to him from the Main that afternoon. He entertained him with ceremony, giving gifts of beads and petticoats, with the result that, the next morning, there were fifty natives on the key helping in the clearing of the ground. They, too, were bribed by beads. They were kindly, intelligent fellows, accustomed to be reckoned as the equals of white men, so that Cammock, superintending the work, had to watch his hands, lest they should treat their guests, in the English style, as niggers. The fort, such as it was, was finished on the third day. Its outer face showed from the sea like a sloping hillock, which in a few days would be again green with creepers. Within the wall of gabions, backed by wattle-bound piles, was a gun platform, with dry powder storerooms twenty feet behind each gun. The guns were mounted on iron carriages, and so arranged that each of the six could play across some ninety degrees of the compass. A roof of felt was rigged over each gun to protect the gunners in the rains. Margaret wished to hoist the colours over the fort; but Perrin begged that the new republic might be spared, at any rate till it was worth appropriating. Cammock advised him to refrain, lest the buccaneers should suspect him of playing for the hand of the Crown. So no flag was hoisted, though within the fort, daily, military sentries paced, firing a gun at dawn and sunset. While the fort was in building some of the Indians cleared a space among the wood. In the clearing they built a great house for the workers: a thatched house twelve feet high, with wattle walls made rainproof. The uprights supported the hammocks at night. Those who slept ashore built always a fire of aromatic leaves in the house’s centre. Before turning in they sprinkled this with water to make a smoke. Those who woke in the night smelt the sweet, strong smoke which made their eyes smart, and heard without the never-ceasing march of the surf, the drone of the dew-flies, and the drowsy twang of the mosquitoes, plagued by the smoke.