The _engagés_ were called to their work at daybreak by a shrill whistle (as the negroes are now by the hoarse conch shell); and the foreman, allowing any who liked to smoke, led them to their work. This consisted in felling trees and in picking or lopping tobacco; the driver stood by them as they dug or picked, and struck those who slackened or rested, as a captain would do to his galley slaves. Whether sick or well they were equally obliged to work. They were frequently employed in picking mahot, a sort of bark used to tie up bales. If they died of fatigue they were quietly buried, and there an end. Early in the morning one of the band had to feed the pigs with potato leaves, and prepare his comerades' dinner. They boiled their meat, putting peas and chopped potatoes into the water. The cook worked with the gang, but returned a little sooner to prepare his messmates' dinner, while they were stripping the tobacco stalk. On feast-days and Sundays they had some indulgences. Oexmelin relates an instance of a sick slave being employed to turn a grindstone on which his master was sharpening his axe; being too weak to do it well, the butcher turned round and clove him down between the shoulders. The slave fell down, bleeding profusely, and died within two hours; yet this master was one of a body of planters deemed very indulgent in comparison to those of some other islands. One planter of St. Christopher, named Belle Tête, who came from Dieppe, prided himself on having killed 200 _engagés_ who would not work, all of whom, he declared, died of sheer laziness. When they were in the last extremities he was in the habit of rubbing their mouths with the yolk of an egg, in order that he might conscientiously swear he had pressed them to take food till the very last. Upon a priest one day remonstrating with him on his brutality, he replied, with perfect effrontery, that he had once been a bound _engagé_, and had never been treated better; that he had come all the way to that shore to get money, and provided he could get it and see his children roll in a coach, he did not care himself if the devil carried him off.