The buccaneers and marooners of America

by A. O. Exquemelin; Daniel Defoe

Now we shall turn back and give our readers some account of what became of the two sloops.

We took notice of the rage and confusion which must have seized them upon their missing of Avery. However, they continued their course, some of them still flattering themselves that he had only outsailed them in the night, and that they should find him at the place of rendezvous. But when they came there, and could hear no tidings of him there was end of hope. It was time to consider what they should do with themselves; their stock of sea provision was almost spent, and though there was rice and fish, and fowl to be had ashore, yet these would not keep for sea without being properly cured with salt, which they had no conveniences of doing; therefore, since they could not go a-cruising any more, it was time to think of establishing themselves on land; to which purpose they took all things out of the sloops, made tents of the sails, and encamped themselves, having a large quantity of ammunition and abundance of small arms.

Here they met with several of their countrymen, the crew of a privateer sloop which was commanded by Captain Thomas Tew; and, since it will be but a short digression, we will give an account how they came here.

Captain George Dew and Captain Thomas Tew having received commissions from the then Governor of Bermudas to sail directly for the river Gambia in Africa, there, with the advice and assistance of the agents of the Royal African Company, to attempt the taking the French factory at Goorie, lying upon that coast. In a few days after they sailed out, Dew, in a violent storm, not only sprung his mast, but lost sight of his consort; Dew therefore returned back to refit, and Tew, instead of proceeding on his voyage, made for the Cape of Good Hope, and doubling the said Cape, shaped his course for the Straits of Babel Mandel, being the entrance into the Red Sea. Here he came up with a large ship, richly laden, bound from the Indies to Arabia, with three hundred soldiers on board, besides seamen; yet Tew had the hardiness to board her, and soon carried her; and it is said by this prize his men shared near three thousand pounds a-piece. They had intelligence from the prisoners of five other rich ships to pass that way, which Tew would have attacked, though they were very strong, if he had not been overruled by the quartermaster and others. This differing in opinion created some ill blood amongst them, so that they resolved to break up pirating, and no place was so fit to receive them as Madagascar; hither they steered, resolving to live on shore and enjoy what they got.

As for Tew himself, he, with a few others, in a short time went off to Rhode Island, from whence he made his peace.

Thus have we accounted for the company our pirates met with here.

It must be observed that the natives of Madagascar are a kind of negroes; they differ from those of Guinea in their hair, which is long, and their complexion is not so good a jet; they have innumerable little princes among them, who are continually making war upon one another; their prisoners are their slaves, and they either sell them or put them to death as they please. When our pirates first settled amongst them their alliance was much courted by these princes, so they sometimes joined one, sometimes another, but wheresoever they sided they were sure to be victorious, for the negroes here had no firearms, nor did they understand their use; so that at length these pirates became so terrible to the negroes that if two or three of them were only seen on one side when they were going to engage, the opposite side would fly without striking a blow.

By these means they not only became feared, but powerful; all the prisoners of war they took to be their slaves; they married the most beautiful of the negro women, not one or two, but as many as they liked; so that every one of them had as great a seraglio as the Grand Seignior at Constantinople. Their slaves they employed in planting rice, in fishing, hunting, &c., besides which they had abundance of others who lived, as it were, under their protection, and to be secure from their disturbances or attacks of their powerful neighbours, these seemed to pay them a willing homage. Now they began to divide from one another, each living with his own wives, slaves, and dependents, like a separate prince; and as power and plenty naturally beget contention, they sometimes quarrelled with one another, and attacked each other at the head of their several armies; and in these civil wars many of them were killed; but an incident happened which obliged them to unite again for their common safety.

It must be observed that these sudden great men had used their power like tyrants, for they grew wanton in cruelty, and nothing was more common than, upon the slightest displeasure, to cause one of their dependents to be tied to a tree and shot through the heart—let the crime be what it would, whether little or great, this was always the punishment; wherefore the negroes conspired together to rid themselves of these destroyers all in one night; and as they now lived separate the thing might easily have been done had not a woman, who had been wife or concubine to one of them, run near twenty miles in three hours to discover the matter to them. Immediately upon the alarm they ran together as fast as they could, so that when the negroes approached them they found them all up in arms; wherefore they retired without making any attempt.

This escape made them very cautious from that time, and it will be worth while to describe the policy of these brutish fellows, and to show what measures they took to secure themselves.