"On most days we would rise at dawn, prime our muskets, then move out to scout for game. Usually one of us went ahead with the dogs. Before the Anglais came to live with us, that perilous assignment normally fell to me, since I had the best aim." He lifted the onion-flask of French brandy from the side of the veranda and replenished her tankard with a smooth flourish. "When you stalk the wild bull, the taureau sauvage, you'd best be able to bring him down with the first shot, or hope there's a stout tree nearby to climb." He smiled and thumbed toward Winston. "But after the Anglais joined us, we soon all agreed he should have the honor of going first with the dogs. We had discovered he was a born marksman." He toasted Winston with his tankard. "When the dogs had a wild bull at bay, the Anglais would dispatch it with his musket. Afterwards, one of our men would stay to butcher it and take the hide while the rest of us would move on, following him."
"Then what?" She never knew before that Winston had actually been the leader of the hunt, their marksman.
"Well, Mademoiselle, after the Anglais had bagged a bull for every man, we'd bring all the meat and hides back to the base camp, the rendezvous. Then we would put up a boucan,
like the one down there below us now, and begin smoking the meat while we finished scraping the hides." He smiled through his graying beard. "You would scarcely have recognized the Anglais, or me, in those days, Mademoiselle. Half the time our breeches were so caked with blood they looked like we'd been tarred." He glanced back at the island. "By nightfall the barbacoa would be finished, and we would eat some, then salt the rest and put it away in an ajoupa, together with the hides. Finally, we'd bed down beside the fire of the boucan, to smoke away the mosquitoes, sleeping in those canvas sacks we used to keep off ants. Then, at first light of dawn, we rose to go out again."
"And then you would sell your . . . barbacoa and hides here on Tortuga?"
"Exactly, Mademoiselle. I see my old friend the Anglais has already told you something of those days." He smiled and caught her eye. "Yes, often as not we'd come back over here and barter with the ships that put in to refit. But then sometimes we'd just sell them over there. When we had a load, we would start watching for a sail, and if we saw a ship nearing the coast, we'd paddle out in our canoes . . ."
"Canoes?" She felt the night grow chill. Suddenly a memory from long ago welled up again, bearded men firing on their ship, her mother falling. . . .
"Oui, Mademoiselle. Dugout canoes. In truth they're all we had those days. We made them by hollowing out the heart of a tree, burning it away, just like the Indians on Hispaniola used to do." He sipped his brandy, then motioned toward Winston. "They were quite seaworthy, n 'est-ce pas? Enough so we actually used them on our first raid." He turned back. "Though after that we naturally had Spanish ships."
"And where . . . was your first raid, Monsieur le Basque?" She felt her grip tighten involuntarily on the pewter handle of her tankard.
"Did the Anglais never tell you about that little episode, Mademoiselle?" He laughed sarcastically. "No, perhaps it