he breasts of these men by their brutal
business. For a handful of dollars they were ready to wreck a city,
reduce even its ruins to ashes, slaughter women and babes, and cut
the throats of the aged. They were as harsh and treacherous toward one
another as they were toward peaceable men, and for acts of rebellion
against a leader they were killed off-hand, while it was customary,
also, to butcher a sailor whenever a chest of treasure was buried,
and place his body on or in the chest, that his ghost might guard it
and terrify intruders. Yet the ultimate influence of the buccaneers
was for good, inasmuch as they wrested a part of the rich Antilles from
the cruel and ignorant Spaniard and gave it to more enlightened powers.

When the freebooting days were at their height there was no harbor
of safety between Rio and Halifax; but there was, in every town the
rascals visited, an element that profited by their robberies: the
keepers of inns, brothels, and gaming-houses, and, lastly, the royal
governors. These bloody-fingered varlets would sack a church, get
tipsy on the communion wine, and demand the blessing of the priests on
the next enterprise of the same kind they had in contemplation. With
the chalices, candlesticks, and altar furnishings, they would go
to the nearest city, where they were sure of finding this friendly
element, and riot away the last piece of metal in their pockets; or,
if pipes of wine were among the prizes, any island would serve for
a long debauch. Devil's Island, the place of Dreyfus's captivity,
was a popular rendezvous, though it is so named not because of these
gatherings, but because of a particularly unmanageable prisoner who
was once confined there.

The governors of some of the West Indies were as keen on the scent
of the sea-robbers as the latter were in the chase of merchant-men,
and they were unable to see a good many sad goings-on when a few
pieces-of-eight were held before their eyes. Gaming was no disgrace
in those times, nor was hard drinking, nor coarse speech, and even
piracy had a sort of sanction when the victims were people of a nation
with whom the buccaneers were at war. Many tales of gamesters' luck
are told, but a couple will suffice. Vent-en-Panne, a Frenchman,
had received five hundred crowns as his share of a robbery, and on
the first night ashore, at Kingston, Jamaica, he staked and lost
it all, with three hundred more that a reckless comrade had lent to
him. Though penni