"There is your deserter," said he to Marcelino; "I should advise you to shoot him at once, as a warning to the others." "No, that would be a poor commencement," replied Marcelino. Then summoning the other nineteen, he ordered them to drive four stout stakes into the ground in the form of a square, and to lash the runaway to them by the ankles and wrists with flat strips of raw hide; after which he told off four of them to keep guard over him till the following morning, giving him food and water as he required, but allowing no one to approach him or speak to him. During the evening Marcelino visited his prisoner once every two hours, and found his guards always at their posts, till midnight, when, on the runaway promising that he would make no further effort to escape, he told the others to cut the thongs so that he might sleep at ease, but warned him that if he repeated the offence he would shoot him on the spot where he found him. "I am glad you did not shoot him," said Gordon, who was with Marcelino at the time; "but with these men you will find it necessary to be very severe." Next morning at sunrise Marcelino and his twenty men marched away, Marcelino riding, but the men marching on foot, each man with a bundle of spare clothes and provisions, and a stout stick. Don Gregorio and Gordon set off at the same time, attended by peons driving a tropilla before them, and reached the Guardia Chascomus before midday. The next day Marcelino and his recruits reached the Chacra de Los Sauces, where Don Gregorio had collected the most robust of his slaves from his various establishments round about. From these Marcelino selected fifty, and with the seventy men he had thus under his orders he formed an encampment on some open ground by the edge of the Laguna de Chascomus, and, aided by the sergeant and corporals sent him by the commandant of the Guardia, proceeded at once to drill them into soldiers. He had not been many days at work ere, greatly to his surprise and pleasure, he received a fresh detachment of recruits, ten stout slaves, sent to him by his father, who also wrote him a letter expressing the warmest interest in his project, and offering him any further assistance in his power. CHAPTER IV STANDING ALONE Weeks passed, busy weeks for Marcelino Ponce de Leon. Every morning at cockcrow the reveillé sounded at the Chacra de Los Sauces, at sunrise the recruits mustered, and the first six hours of the day were spent in steady drill and in long marches. Marcelino had but a dozen muskets which had been lent him by the commandant of the Guardia; a dozen men were detached every hour for instruction in the manual exercise by the sergeant, the rest were instructed in evolutions by Marcelino himself and the corporals. The afternoons were spent by the negroes in the manufacture of accoutrements, and in the routine work of the encampment; at sundown they were paraded again, and sentinels were told off for the night.