years amounted to twenty
thousand, whose only source of subsistence was derived from the
buccaneers.

Hitherto France had disclaimed as her subjects the roving cattle-hunters
upon the island of Hispaniola; but after they had formed settlements and
established themselves so firmly upon Tortuga, the French West India
company took them under the aegis of the lilies for protection; and M.
Ogeron, 'a man of probity and understanding,' was sent from the parent
country to govern them. With the arrival of the new governor the
domestic relations of the buccaneers underwent a material change, for
the former brought many women with him--fit persons, from the past
profligacy of their lives, to consort with the inhabitants of Tortuga.
But the buccaneers were not fastidious in the selection of wives, and
history gives us no right to suppose that there was a single forlorn
damsel left without a husband. 'I ask nothing of your past life,' would
the buccaneer say to the fair one to whom he proposed himself. 'If
anybody would have had you where you came from, you would not have come
here. But as you did not belong to me then, whatever you may have done
was no disgrace to me. Give me your word for the future, and I will
acquit you for the past.' Then striking his gun barrel, he would add,
'Shouldst thou prove false to me, this will not.'

Meanwhile, the buccaneers, becoming stronger and stronger every day,
extended their designs, and pushed their operations with a degree of
audacity and success that rendered them the terror of the seas. As yet
their marine consisted only of boats and canoes, but these were, as
before stated, of a size to carry from fifty to a hundred men each. They
attacked not only merchantmen, but vessels of war, with a degree of
intrepidity unexampled in the history of man. No matter for the size of
a ship, or for her armament. They paused not to calculate chances. Their
invariable practice was to carry their prizes by boarding. Their boats
were propelled with the swiftness of an arrow. As certain as they
grappled with a vessel, she was sure to be taken; for their onslaughts
were desperately furious and irresistible. The Spanish Government
complained bitterly, both to England and France, of the outrages upon
her commerce by the pirates, a large majority of whom were the born
subjects of those nations. The answers, however, of both were the same:
that those piratical acts were not committed by the buccaneers as their