10The men were cheering, half ironically, as a pearling lugger was brought alongside the Santa Perpetua. There were six Spaniards in charge of it, and as they were brought aboard Lizbeth could see that they were the type she had imagined all Spaniards to be before she met Don Miguel.
Their faces were coarse and bestial, their deportment arrogant; and that they were brutal was obvious when one looked at the natives they had commanded in the lugger. Every man had open wounds across his back where he had been struck with the many-thonged leather whips which the Spaniards used so cruelly on their slaves.
They were very different indeed from the natives whom Rodney had asked to volunteer for service on the English ships, cowed and broken both in body and spirit, they did not seem to care what
