The sole occupation of these adventurers then was the chase; they preserved the hides of cattle and dried the meat by smoke in the Indian fashion. Hence comes the name of buccaneers, for the Caribs gave the name of boucans to the spot where they smoked the flesh of the prisoners taken in war, and whom they ate after fattening them.
We shall soon have occasion to return to this subject and enter into fuller details about these singular men.
Still, in spite of their love of independence, these adventurers had understood the necessity of creating outlets for the sale of their hides. Hence they established several counters at Port Margot and Port de la Paix, which they regarded as the capital of their establishments; but their position was most precarious owing to the proximity of the Spaniards, who had hitherto been sole masters of the island, and would not consent to have them as such near neighbours; hence they constantly waged a savage war, which was the more cruel because quarter was not granted on either side.
Such was the situation of St. Domingo at the time when we resume our narrative, about a fortnight after the departure of the filibustering fleet from St. Kitts under the command of Montbarts the Exterminator.
The sun, already low on the horizon, was enormously lengthening the shadows of the trees, the evening breeze was rising, gently agitating the leaves and tall grass, when a man mounted on a powerful horse, and wearing the costume of the Spanish Campesinos, followed a scarce traced path which wound through the centre of a vast plain covered with magnificent plantations of sugar cane and coffee, and led to an elegant hatto, whose pretty mirador commanded the country for a long distance.
This man appeared to be five and twenty years of age at the most; his features were handsome, but imprinted with an expression of insupportable pride and disdain; his very simple dress was only relieved by a long rapier, whose hilt of carved silver hung on his left hip and showed him to be a gentleman, as the nobility alone had the right to wear a sword.
Four black slaves, half naked, and whose bodies glistened with perspiration, ran behind his horse, one carrying a richly damascened fusil, the second a game bag, and the two others a dead boar, whose tied feet were resting on a bamboo supported by the shoulders of the poor fellows.
But the rider seemed to trouble himself but little about his companions, or rather his slaves, toward whom he did not deign to turn his head, even when speaking to them, which he did sometimes to ask them for directions in a harsh and contemptuous voice.
He held in his band an embroidered handkerchief, with which he wiped away every moment the perspiration that inundated his forehead, and looked savagely around him, while urging his horse with the spur, to the great sorrow of the slaves who were forced to double their efforts to follow him.
"Well," he at length asked in an ill-tempered tone, "shall we never arrive at this accursed hatto?"