[2] Esquemelling was a Hollander who went to Hispaniola in the capacity of clerk for the French West India Company. When the latter withdrew their business from Tortuga and sold off all their possessions, the clerk went to the auction block with the other chattels and was purchased for three hundred pieces of eight (approximately $300.00) by a cruel master. Under the treatment accorded him Esquemelling became dangerously ill, and his owner, fearing to lose his slave and his money at the same time, disposed of the sick man, for seventy pieces of eight, to a surgeon who treated Esquemelling kindly, nursed him to health, and granted him his freedom on condition that the penniless ex-clerk should pay him one [[viii]]hundred pieces of eight when able to do so. He promptly joined the buccaneers and took part in most of their notable exploits for nearly seven years. His records, especially his “Buccaneers of America,” are the best histories of these men extant. [↑]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Reasons. The romantic isles. The Vigilant. A real pirate ship. The Virgin Islands. Dead Man’s Chest. Sam, the descendant of the pirate chief. The Vigilant’s crew. Trouble comes to the Vigilant. Arguments. My happy family.
II [St. Thomas and Its Past] 22
First view of St. Thomas. Charlotte Amalie. The people. Shops and commodities. The home of bay-rum. Wet and dry. Odd wares. The ships’ graveyard. Blackbeard’s Castle. The pirates’ haunts.
III [The Buccaneers in the Virgin Isles] 38
The lairs of the buccaneers. Buccaneers and pirates. Queer conditions. When life was cheap. Interesting characters. A buccaneer poet. Blackbeard and his ways. The end of Blackbeard.