Читать книгу The Secret Chart; or, Treasure Hunting in Hayti онлайн

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“Immediately after this the boucanning foreigners formed themselves into a band composed of a collection of couples. Each two hunters made common property of all possessions of either. They bound themselves by every oath to an imperishable brotherhood. Each swore to avenge with death any insult offered to the other. The two hunted and lived together by day, slept together by night, and were as one flesh; and always as the band ranged the coast valleys, grew the purpose of avenging the Tortuga massacre.

“A few months later the Frenchmen took the islanders by surprise. A carnival of butchery ensued. When it was completed the village was burned. The most lawless of the murderers was one Pierre Le Gros, a sailor of oxlike frame and weight, hailing originally from Dieppe, who, with twenty-seven fellow spirits, stole a small sloop from a Tortugan skipper, and started on a nautical foray on whatsoever Spanish merchantmen fate might cast in his course.

“The act was of sufficient gravity to daunt even the chosen crew of cutthroats captained by Pierre, had the proposed prey been anything but Spanish, since it was plain piracy. For two days the sloop ran on before a northerly wind, swinging down into the Caribbean Sea, but sighting no craft. On the third afternoon out Pierre spied a galleon, one of the Panama pearl fleet, which had been separated from its sister vessels in a recent hurricane. Until night shut down, he craftily kept away toward the windward horizon. Then, under cover of the darkness, he swiftly and silently approached, coming alongside at daybreak. The entire twenty-eight buccaneers boarded the galleon, leaving their sloop adrift.