But these amusements were soon to come to an end. The Indians were upon their track. They had been now eight days hunting. It was the daybreak of the ninth day, and the fishermen and hunters were preparing their nets and guns to start for the sea and for the woods. The slaves were on the beach burning shells to make lime, which served instead of pitch for the vessels, and the women were drawing water at the wells which had been dug in the shore. A few of them were washing dishes, and others sewing, for they had risen earlier than usual. While the rest went to the wells, one of them lingered behind to pick some fruit that grew near the beach. Seeing suddenly some Indians running from the spot where she had left her companions, she ran to the tents, crying, "Indians, Indians, Christians, the Indians are come." The Buccaneers, running to arms, discovered that three of their female slaves were lying dead in the wood, pierced with fourteen or fifteen flint-headed arrows. These darts were about eight feet long, and as thick as a man's thumb; at one end was a wooden hook, tied on with a string, at the other, a case containing a few small stones. Searching the woods, no traces of Indians, or any canoes, were to be found, and the Buccaneers, fearing they should be surrounded and overpowered, re-embarked all their goods, and sailed in great haste and fear.
They soon arrived at Cape Gracias à Dios, and rejoiced to find themselves once more among friendly Indians; and at a port where Buccaneer vessels often resorted, the rudest sailors giving thanks to God for having delivered them out of so many dangers, and brought them to a place of refuge. The Indians provided them with every necessary, and treated them with friendship. For an old knife or hatchet the men each bought an Indian woman, who supplied them with food. These people often went to sea with the Buccaneers, and, remaining several years, returned home with a good knowledge of French and English. They were used as fishermen, and for striking tortoises and manitees, one Indian being able to victual a vessel of 100 men. Œxmelin's crew having on board two sailors who could speak the Indian tongue, they were unusually well received.
This nation was not more than 1700 in number, including a few negro slaves, who had swum ashore from a wreck, having murdered the Spanish crew, and, in their ignorance of navigation, stranded the vessel. Some of them cultivated the ground, and others wandered about hunting and fishing. They wore little clothes but a palm leaf hat, and a short apron, made of the bark of some tree. Their arms were spears, pointed with crocodile's teeth. They believed in a Supreme Being, and, as Esquemeling quaintly says, "believe not in nor serve the devil, as many other nations of America do, and hereby they are not so much tormented by him as other nations are." Their food was chiefly fruit and fish. They prepared pleasant and intoxicating liquors from the plantain, and from the seed of the palm, and at their banquets every guest was expected to empty a four-quart calabash full of achioc, as the palm drink was called, merely a whet to the feast to follow. Their achioc was as thick as gruel. When they were in love, they pierced themselves with arrows to prove their sincerity. When a youth wished to marry a maiden, the first question of the bride's father to the lover was, whether he could make arrows, or spin the thread with which they bound them. If he answered in the affirmative, the father called for a calabash of achioc, and he himself, the bride, and the bridegroom, all tasted of the beverage. When one of these hardy women was delivered, she rose, went to the nearest brook, washed and swathed the child, and went about her ordinary labour. When a husband died, the wife buried him, with all his spears, aprons, and ear jewels, and for fifteen moons after (a year) brought meat and drink daily to the grave. Some writers contend that the devil visited the graves, and carried away these offerings to the manes; but Esquemeling says, he knows to the contrary, having often taken away the food, which was always of the choicest and best sort. At the end of the year, an extraordinary custom prevailed. The widow had then to open the grave, and take out all the bones; she scraped, washed, and dried them in the sun; then placed them in a satchel, and for a whole year was obliged to carry them upon her back by day, and sleep upon them by night. At the end of the year, she hung up the bag at her door-post, or, if she was not mistress of her house, at the door of her nearest relation. A widow could not marry again till this painful ceremony was completed, and if an Indian woman married a pirate, the same custom prevailed. The negroes maintained the habits of their own countries.
After refreshing themselves in this friendly region, the Buccaneers steered for the island de los Pinos, and, arriving in fifteen days, refitted their vessel, now become dangerously leaky. Half the crew were employed in careening, and half in fishing, and by the help of some of the Cape Gracias Indians who accompanied them they killed and salted a sufficient number of wild cattle and turtle to revictual the ship. In six hours they could capture fish sufficient for a thousand persons. "This abundance of provision," says Esquemeling, "made us forget the miseries we had lately endured, and we began to call one another again by the name of brother, which was customary among us, but had been disused in our miseries." They feasted here plentifully, and without fear of enemies, for the few Spaniards who were on the island were friendly, and past dangers grew mere dreams in the distance. Their only anxiety now was about the crocodiles, which swarmed in the island, and, when hungry, would devour men.
On one occasion a Buccaneer and his negro slave, while hunting in the wood, were attacked by one of these monsters. With incredible agility it fastened upon the Englishman's leg, and brought him to the ground. The negro fled. The hunter, a robust and courageous man, drawing his knife, stabbed the crocodile to the heart, after a desperate fight, and then, tired with the combat and weak with loss of blood, fell senseless by its side. The negro, returning, from curiosity rather than compassion, to see how the duel had ended, lifted his master on his back and brought him to the sea-shore, a whole league distant, where he placed him in a canoe and rowed him aboard. After this, no Buccaneer dared to go into the woods alone, but the next day, sallying out in troops, they killed all the monsters they could meet. These animals would come every night to the sides of the vessel and attempt to climb up, attracted probably by the smell of food. One of these, when seized with an iron hook, instead of diving or swimming, began to mount the ladder of the ship, till they killed him with blows of pikes and axes. After remaining some time here they sailed for Jamaica, and arrived there in a few days after a prosperous voyage, being the first adventurers who had arrived there from Panama since Morgan.
In 1673, when the war between the French and Hollanders (Dutch) was still raging, the inhabitants of the French West Indian colonies equipped a fleet to attack the Dutch settlements at Curaçoa, engaging all the Buccaneers that could be induced to join the white flag, either from hopes of plunder or from hatred to the Dutch. M. D'Ogeron, the Governor of Tortuga, the planner of this invasion, headed the fleet in a large vessel named after himself, built by himself, and manned by 500 picked adventurers. His unlucky star led them to misfortune. The new frigate ran upon the rocks near the Guadanillas Islands, and broke into a thousand pieces, during a storm near Porto Rico. Being at the time very near to land, the governor and all his men swam safe to shore. The next day, discovered by the Spaniards, they were attacked by a large force, who supposed they had come purposely to plunder the islands as the Buccaneers had done before. The whole country, alarmed, rose in arms. The shipwrecked men were surrounded by an overpowering army, who, finding them almost without arms, refused to give them quarter, slew the greater part without mercy, and made the remainder prisoners. Binding them with cords, two by two, they drove them through the woods into the open champaign. To all inquiries as to the fate of their commander, whom they could not distinguish from the rest, they replied that he had sunk with the wreck. D'Ogeron, following up this deception with French sagacity, behaved himself as a mere half-witted suttler, diverting the Spanish soldiers by his tricks and mimicry, and was the only Buccaneer whom they allowed to go at liberty. The troopers at their camp fires gave him scraps from their meals and rewarded him with more food than his companions.
Among the prisoners there was also a French surgeon who had on former occasions done some service to the Spaniards, and him they also allowed to go at large. D'Ogeron agreed with him to attempt an escape at all risks, and after mature deliberation, they both agreed upon a plan, and succeeded in escaping safely into the woods, and in making their way to the sea-side. They determined to attempt to build a canoe, although unsupplied with any tool except a hatchet. By the evening they reached the sea-shore, to their great joy, and caught some shell fish on the beach from a shoal that ran in upon the sands in pursuit of their prey. Fire to roast them they obtained by rubbing two sticks together in the Indian fashion. The next morning early they began to cut down and prepare timber to build the canoe in which to escape to Vera Cruz. While they were toiling at their work they observed in the distance a large boat, which they supposed to contain an enemy, steering directly towards them. Retreating to the woods, they discovered as soon as it touched land that it held only two poor fishermen. These unsuspecting men they determined if possible to overpower, and to capture the boat. As the mulatto came on shore alone, with a string of calabashes on his back to draw water, they killed him with a blow of their axe, and then slew the Spaniard, who, alarmed at the sound of voices, was attempting in vain to push from the shore. Having filled the dead man's calabashes they set sail, using the precaution of taking the dead bodies with them out into the deep sea, in order to conceal their death from the Spaniards.
They steered at once for Porto Rico, and passed on to Hispaniola. A fair wind soon brought them to Samana, where they found a party of their people. Leaving the surgeon to collect men at Samana, D'Ogeron sailed to Tortuga to collect vessels and crews to return and deliver his companions, and revenge his late disaster. He sailed eventually with 300 men, and took great precautions to prevent the Spaniards being aware of his coming, using only his lower sails in order that his masts should not rise above the horizon. In spite of this the Spaniards, informed of his approach, had placed troops of horse upon the shore at various assailable points.
D'Ogeron landed his men under favour of a discharge from his great guns, which drove the horsemen into the woods, where, as he little suspected, the infantry lay in ambush. Eagerly pursuing, his men, who thought the victory their own, found themselves hemmed in on every side. Few escaped even to the ships. The Spaniards, cruel from the reaction of fear, cut off the limbs of the dead and carried them home as trophies. They lighted bonfires on the shore as tokens of defiance to the retreating fleet.
The first prisoners were now treated worse than ever. Some of them were sent to Havannah and employed on the fortifications all day, and chained up like wild beasts at night to prevent their desperate attempts at escape. Many were sent to Cadiz, and from thence escaped over the Pyrenees into France, and, assembling together, like sworn members of a common brotherhood, returned by the first ship to Tortuga.