st, and the island remained French.

[Illustration: On the Tortugas

_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN

_by_ Howard Pyle

_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September_, 1887]

Hitherto the Tortugans had been content to gain as much as possible
from the homeward-bound vessels through the orderly channels of
legitimate trade. It was reserved for Pierre le Grand to introduce
piracy as a quicker and more easy road to wealth than the semihonest
exchange they had been used to practice.

Gathering together eight-and-twenty other spirits as hardy and
reckless as himself, he put boldly out to sea in a boat hardly large
enough to hold his crew, and running down the Windward Channel and out
into the Caribbean Sea, he lay in wait for such a prize as might be
worth the risks of winning.

For a while their luck was steadily against them; their provisions and
water began to fail, and they saw nothing before them but starvation
or a humiliating return. In this extremity they sighted a Spanish ship
belonging to a "flota" which had become separated from her consorts.

The boat in which the buccaneers sailed might, perhaps, have served
for the great ship's longboat; the Spaniards outnumbered them three to
one, and Pierre and his men were armed only with pistols and
cutlasses; nevertheless this was their one and their only chance, and
they determined to take the Spanish ship or to die in the attempt.
Down upon the Spaniard they bore through the dusk of the night, and
giving orders to the "chirurgeon" to scuttle their craft under them as
they were leaving it, they swarmed up the side of the unsuspecting
ship and upon its decks in a torrent--pistol in one hand and cutlass
in the other. A part of them ran to the gun room and secured the arms
and ammunition, pistoling or cutting down all such as stood in their
way or offered opposition; the other party burst into the great cabin
at the heels of Pierre le Grand, found the captain and a party of his
friends at cards, set a pistol to his breast, and demanded him to
deliver up the ship. Nothing remained for the Spaniard but to yield,
for there was no alternative between surrender and death. And so the
great prize was won.

It was not long before the news of this great exploit and of the vast
treasure gained reached the ears of the buccaneers of Tortuga and
Hispaniola. Then what a hubbub and an uproar and a tumult there was!
Hunting