Just after Las Casas reached the Indies a man named Juan Bono, a shipmaster, arrived there with a shipload of Indians, whom he had kidnaped in the island of Trinidad. He himself told the clerico how it was done. He had gone to the island with sixty men and told the Indians that they had come to live with them. The Indians received them kindly, brought them food, and, as Bono said himself, treated them like brothers. Bono told them that the white men would like a large house to live in, and the Indians at once went to work to build it for them. When it was nearly done, Bono invited all the natives to come and see it. Some four hundred of them came, all unarmed and quite unsuspecting and happy. When all were gathered in the house, the Spaniards surrounded it, and Bono told the Indians that they must give themselves up or they would be killed. Some of them tried to run away, some to resist, and in a few minutes the swords of the Spaniards had filled the place with the dead and dying. One hundred and eighty of them were put in chains and taken to the ship. About a hundred shut themselves up in another house and tried to defend themselves there, but the Spaniards set fire to it and the natives were all burned alive. This was the return Bono and his men made to the innocent, gentle Indians, who had been so kind to them. No wonder the heart of the clerico was on fire with indignation when he heard the story. He went at once to the three fathers and told them the dreadful tale. They listened, but did nothing,--as usual. Not one of the one hundred and eighty kidnaped Indians was set free, and neither Bono nor any of the judges who had sent him was punished. One day a priest came to the Protector of the Indians to tell him how the native laborers in the mines near San Domingo were abused. He said he had seen them lying in the fields, sick from overwork, covered with flies, and nobody cared enough to give them food or drink; but their owners allowed them to lie there and die in this way. Las Casas took him by the hand and led him to the fathers, to whom he repeated this story; but they only tried to excuse the cruelty of the mine owners. The heart of the clerico burned within him as he saw so much suffering and misery about him and could not get the three commissioners to put a stop to it. Something, he felt, must be done. The fathers had now been in the islands six months and things were no better than they had been before their coming; so he resolved to go again to Spain and seek a remedy for this state of things. When the fathers heard what he intended to do they were much alarmed, but as they could not stop him, they sent one of their number to Spain also, to speak on their behalf.