“Jesus bless us!” cried the Spaniard. “Are these devils, or what are they?”
The uninvited guests showed what they were; while Peter the Great kept the captain quiet, others rushed to the gun-room, seized all the arms, and then dispersed about the ship, taking prisoner whoever preferred that to being killed out of hand. There was no gainsaying them, and the captain gave in, with the result that Pierre found himself master of a fine ship filled with treasure, and a crew that he hardly knew what to do with. He solved the problem by setting ashore all he didn’t want, and the rest he kept on to sail the ship to France. For the gay buccaneer discovered that he was rich enough to retire, and never again showed his face in the New World.
But if he did no more pirating himself, he set fire to the buccaneers of Tortuga, who told themselves that what Pierre le Grand had done they could do. If they had but ships! They were going to set up in “business” that required good craft, and there they were with only canoes. Well, canoes would do to get them where they could find suitable ships, and, pushing off day after day, the buccaneers cruised about Hispaniola and the neighbourhood, seizing small Spanish vessels carrying tobacco and hides. These they took back to Tortuga, disposed of the cargoes profitably, fitted out the vessels, and set out to sea again, now to seek larger ships; with the result that, in a couple of years, a score of buccaneer ships were sailing the seas proudly, taking toll of the Spaniards for having stopped their peaceful livelihood.
Of these earlier buccaneers we must mention another Peter—Pierre François. Like Peter the Great, his forerunner, he had been cruising about a long time without a satisfactory prize turning up; and as away at Tortuga were a number of men—whom we, in these modern days, call “duns”—waiting for him to settle up various little accounts, he thought it behoved him, for his creditors’ sake, to garner a harvest that was worth while.
So, standing out from the neighbourhood of Hispaniola, Pierre François ventured farther afield. Away down at Ranceiras, near the River Plate, there was a fine rich bank of pearl, to which year after year the Spaniards sent about a dozen large ships a-pearling, each squadron having a man-o’-war to protect it.
“Promptly boarded the Vice-Admiral. ‘Surrender!’ yelled the buccaneers”
Pierre François felt he would like to have some of the pearls which other men had obtained. When he came up with the fleet, he found the warship, the Capitana, of twenty-four guns and a couple of hundred men, lying half a league away from the rest of the vessels; and, well versed in the ways of the wily Spaniard, he knew that the man-o’-war would be certain to hold the greater part of the harvest of the sea. Wherefore, of course, Pierre decided that nothing less than the Capitana would pay him for the trip down the coast.
But first he must put himself in the way of being strong enough to take the war vessel, and to this end he resolved to capture one of the other ships to begin with. Pretending that his ship was a Spanish craft, he pulled down his sails, rowed close to the shore till he reached the pearl-bank, and then promptly boarded the Vice-Admiral, of eight guns and threescore men.
“Surrender!” yelled the buccaneers.