purpose of dividing the booty. It seems strange
that any principle of right and justice should have been regarded by
these dishonest knaves, even in their relations to each other, but they
had rigid rules in regard to the division of their spoils, and according
to these curious regulations the whole amount of plunder was apportioned
among the officers and crews of the different ships.

Before the regular allotment of shares was made, the claims of the
wounded were fully satisfied according to their established code. For
the loss of a right arm a man was paid about six hundred dollars or six
slaves; for the loss of a left arm, five hundred dollars, or five
slaves; for a missing right leg, five hundred dollars, or five slaves;
for a missing left leg, four hundred dollars, or four slaves; for an eye
or a finger, one hundred dollars, or one slave. Then the rest of the
money and spoils were divided among all the buccaneers without reference
to what had been paid to the wounded. The shares of those who had been
killed were given to friends or acquaintances, who undertook to deliver
them to their families.

The spoils in this case consisted of two hundred and sixty thousand
dollars in money and a great quantity of valuable goods, besides many
slaves and precious stones and jewels. These latter were apportioned
among the men in the most ridiculous manner, the pirates having no idea
of the relative value of the jewels, some of them preferring large and
worthless colored stones to smaller diamonds and rubies. When all their
wickedly gained property had been divided, the pirates sailed to
Tortuga, where they proceeded, without loss of time, to get rid of the
wealth they had amassed. They ate, they drank, they gambled; they
crowded the taverns as taverns have never been crowded before; they sold
their valuable merchandise for a twentieth part of its value to some of
the more level-headed people of the place; and having rioted, gambled,
and committed every sort of extravagance for about three weeks, the
majority of L'Olonnois' rascally crew found themselves as poor as when
they had started off on their expedition. It took them almost as long to
divide their spoils as it did to get rid of them.

As these precious rascals had now nothing to live upon, it was necessary
to start out again and commit some more acts of robbery and ruin; and
L'Olonnois, whose rapacious mind seems to have been filled with a desire
for town-destroying, pro