Still, even at this low estimate, the average was over a thousand dollars for each pirate. Having finished this important business, they set sail for Tortuga, where most of them were, in a few days, to squander all the fruits of their robberies and murders, in the most riotous dissipation. After a four-weeks’ voyage they reached the great rendezvous of the buccaneers. The island was crowded with gamblers and abandoned women, and every conceivable haunt of dissipation.
For three weeks Tortuga presented a spectacle of frenzied and maddened carousal, which could not have been surpassed. Men, insane with drink, rushed through the streets, slashing with their sabres in all directions. Casks of rum and wine were placed in the streets, standing on end, with the heads knocked out, and every passer-by was compelled to drink. The women, more loathsome in their wickedness than the men, reeled through the thoroughfares, in the richest silks and satins, and bedecked with glittering jewelry of which a duchess might be proud. There were oaths and brawls and bloody duels. In the delirium of these demoniac orgies gold watches were fried for a costly breakfast, and were served up with boiled pearls and jewels.
Two French vessels chanced just then to enter the port, laden with wine and brandy. This was throwing fresh fuel upon the fiery conflagration of violence, sin, and shame then raging in this miniature city of all the fiends. In the course of three weeks nearly all of these thieves had squandered everything. The riches they had gained by murder and the endurance and the infliction of untold miseries, had all passed into the hands of the gamblers, the liquor dealers, and the abandoned women. John Esquemeling, who witnessed these scenes, of which he wrote an account, says that the governor of the island bought of these buccaneers a shipload of cocoa, for not one-twentieth part its real value. He sent it to Europe, and realized over five hundred thousand dollars from the profits. Lolonois, though fiercely brave, and with unusual native strength of mind, was a low, degraded, brutal man. He indulged in these bacchanal orgies with the meanest of his crew. No one was guilty of greater excesses. No one sank to greater depths in the mire of loathsome wickedness. Not one short month had passed ere he was reeling through the streets a filthy and ragged beggar. He was also deeply involved in debt.
He could conceive of but one mode of extrication. That was to set out upon another piratic expedition. The ravages of the pirates had been so great that the commerce of those seas was almost annihilated. Merchant ships abandoned the ocean, unless attended by a very strong convoy. This it was which led the buccaneers to go in fleets, so as to land in sufficient strength to desolate the coasts and to sack towns and cities.
Lolonois’s success had given him high reputation as a pirate. There were many on the island ready to furnish him with the means for another adventure. There were hundreds of penniless, starving wretches staggering through the streets, eager to enlist under his banner for any service whatever. Inscrutable is the mystery of God’s government. He has allowed miniature hells to exist on earth, and to be crowded with demons in human form. No philosophy, no theology can explain this. The heart, in its anguish, often cries out, “O Lord, how long! how long!” Faith tremblingly and sadly exclaims, “What we know not now we shall know hereafter.”
This demoniac man had sense enough to abandon his cups, until his brain was sufficiently clear to organize, even to its details, the plan for a new expedition. The enterprise was communicated to a few men of capital and unscrupulous shrewdness. Money was promptly raised. Six vessels were purchased. There were generally vessels enough in the harbor, from the prizes that were brought in, and from the large number of piratic ships.
Lolonois placarded a proclamation upon the walls, calling for volunteers. More than seven hundred eager applicants thronged his doors. Three hundred of these he took, with himself, on board his largest ship. The rest were placed in five other ships. None but the leading officers were informed of the destination of the fleet.
They first sailed to a port called Bayaha, on the Island of San Domingo, then, as we have mentioned, called Hispaniola; or Little Spain. Here they filled their water-casks and supplied themselves with provisions. Thence they sailed to Matamana, a solitary but commodious harbor on the south side of Cuba. This region was famous for its rich turtles. Native Cuban fishermen, in large boats, pursued these animals, alike valuable for their flesh and their shells. The pirates were fond of turtle soup. Lolonois needed a large number of boats, that he might simultaneously land the crews, from his ships, upon any doomed city.
These poor men were mercilessly robbed of their boats, into many of which forty sailors could be crowded. The poor fishermen, having no other means of subsistence, were overwhelmed with grief and dismay. Lolonois was as heedless of their sorrows as he was of the manifest trouble of the tortoise when deprived of its young. Again they spread their sails, and had advanced about three hundred miles along the southern coast of Cuba, when they were overtaken by what the Spaniards call a “furious calm.”
For four weeks there was not a breath of air. Day after day the tropical sun rose, pouring down upon their blistered decks his scorching rays. The cabins became as furnaces. There was relief nowhere. The pirates swore, prayed, called upon the Virgin and the saints. All was in vain. Twenty eight days of this terrible imprisonment passed slowly away. In the mean time a strong, but imperceptible and resistless current swept them along into the Gulf of Honduras, which deeply penetrates the eastern coast of Central America. Upon leaving Cuba, the crews had been informed of the enterprise before them. They were to coast along the province of Nicaragua and plunder all its settlements, great and small.