'His Most Catholic Majesty has long arms,' the officer told us. 'This you yourselves will see, perhaps. He is a good and a humane king, however. Thus he sends me to warn you. You are to depart his island of Hispaniola by the couching of the sun, all seven of you. You are not to go to His Most Catholic Majesty's island of Tortuga when you quit this place. Nor are you to go to any other place in his domain. Other than that, you may go where you please. Depart, and you will not be molested. Remain, and you will be killed, or taken for slaves should you give yourselves up.'
Melind started to say that we were doing no harm and had resupplied many Spanish ships, but the officer cut him off. 'I will not dispute with you, as it would be without point. His Most Catholic Majesty has made the decision, not I. You will die or be enslaved if you remain where you are. You have been warned.'
'We will not go,' Melind told him, 'and we will kill anyone who tries to force us to go.'
A real Frenchman would have shrugged. The officer turned up his palms instead. There was more talk, but I have written everything that mattered.
As soon as he got back into his longboat, I started backing away toward the rain forest. I motioned for some of the others to come, too, but nobody did.
The longboat went back to the big galleon, and I watched the officer go up the sea ladder, and the crew go up, and the longboat hoisted back aboard. The galleon squared around and the hatches of the gunports went up.
I yelled for the buccaneers to scatter and get down then, but nobody did much of anything until the guns were run out. Then Melind shouted for everybody to get back.
Nobody had moved more than a couple of steps when the broadside went off. I had been on Capt. Burt's Weald when she fired her broadside at the Duquesa, but that had been smaller guns and a lot fewer. Besides, I had been behind them, and that makes all the difference. This was thirty big guns on two decks. For a second it was like being in a hurricane. Trees and limbs were falling, water was jumping up out of our little bay, and the noise was terrible.
As fast as it had come, it got quiet again.
One of the buccaneers was dead and so was his servant. I cannot remember the buccaneer's name now, but the servant was Harve. He only had three or four months left on his contract, and used to talk a lot about raising pigs. He knew more than I did about it, and I knew a lot. Joire's arm had been taken off, too. We did what we could for him, but he died that night.
The worst thing for me was the dogs. We had about a dozen, and four were dead or hurt so badly that we had to kill them, all of them good hunting dogs. We pulled back into the rain forest that night, and buried Joire the next day.
After that we went back to hunting, but we kept away from the beach and had the other servant watch the sea. He was supposed to tell us when a ship came.
What really came was more buccaneers, forty or fifty of them paddling down the coast in piraguas. They said there was a Spanish army on the island. They had fought and lost, and they were going to Tortuga until things quieted down on Hispaniola. They had not been able to bring the beef they had dried and had nothing to eat.
We fed them, and everybody talked a lot that evening. I said we ought to go inland and hide in the mountains. Melind told me it would not work. The Native Americans had tried it, and look what had happened to them. We might be all right until we ran out of powder, but when we did they would slaughter us.
'Like shooting the horses to see them die,' I said, but nobody got it. Finally we bedded down, all of us having decided we would go to Tortuga in the morning.
9
How I Became a Pirate
It was the middle of the night when I woke up. I sat up, thinking I had heard a shot. All the dogs were barking. There was another shot, and I rolled out and grabbed my musket.
That was about as bad a fight as I have ever been in, and I have been in some bad ones. It was dark, and you could not be sure who you were fighting. I heard Melind yelling and recognized his voice, and ran over and helped him out. After that we called the rest over, shooting at just about anybody who did not answer in French. The sky got gray, and the shooting got better, everybody hiding behind trees and popping out to shoot. There seemed to be six or seven of them for every one of us, and they drove us toward the sea and finally out onto the beach.
That was bad, because they could see us better. But it was good, too, because there were rocks and driftwood we could hide behind, and they were afraid to follow us out into the open. One or two tried, and they were shot the minute they stepped out from behind their trees. I figured the ships would come back, and then it would be over for us.
What really happened was that they hollered for a parlay. They swore they would not hurt anybody we sent to talk to them, but they would not send anybody out to talk to us. There was a lot of jawing back and forth about that because nobody on their side could speak much French and Melind could not speak much Spanish.
That was when I did one of the dumbest things I have ever done in my life. I told him I spoke Spanish better than he did, and I would translate for him. So before long Melind and I left our muskets and knives behind and went up the beach and into the edge of the rain forest to talk to them.
There were two, a Spanish officer and a Spanish farmer. From what I saw, the officer had about ten soldiers and the farmer maybe a hundred other farmers. Once they got us into the trees they grabbed us and searched us for weapons, and of course they found my money belt and kept the money. Melind protested and I yelled my head off, but it did no good. Before long they told us they would kill us both if we did not shut up about it.
That was when I tried to jump them. A farmer standing pretty near me had a big knife in his belt, with the handle sticking out. I grabbed it and went for the Spanish officer. I would have killed them all then and there if I could, and I have never hated anybody in my life the way I hated that guy. That was my money, I had earned it with worry, hard work, and tough decisions, and they had sworn we would be okay if we left our weapons behind and came over.
I got that officer in the side, before somebody hit me. When I was conscious again (and feeling like something scraped off a shoe), my hands were tied behind me, and so were Melind's.
What it came down to was that we had to go-get in our piraguas and go off the island. If we did that, they said, we could leave in peace. If we did not leave, they would hold us where we were until more men came. They had sent for them, they said, and they would be there the next day.
We pretended not to believe them, but we did. I did, and I know Melind did, too. They were too happy about it for it not to be true. (It is pure hell to see somebody you hate happy. I found that out then.) Parties of soldiers and farmers had been searching the island for the past few days, and now that this one had found us the others would join it. They agreed to let us bury our dead and fill our water bottles, then we had to go. I would guess it was about noon the next day when we left, twenty or thirty men in four piraguas, but I was still feeling rocky, and I do not remember a lot about it. We camped that night along the coast, and made Tortuga the next day.
The shantytown was gone. The Spanish had blown it apart with their ships' guns, then landed and burned what was left. A lot of people were left just the same. They had run off into the woods when the Spanish guns opened up. Melind got a bunch together that night and talked to them.
Only first, he talked to me. I told him the truth. It was the first time I had told anybody the truth since I had talked to Capt. Burt in his cabin on the Weald, so maybe that knock on the head had done me some good. I told him I had been a pirate, could navigate, and was a pretty fair sailor.
I do not remember everything Melind said when he made his speech. Besides, it was in French and there were some things I did not understand. As close as I can come, it went about like this.
'My friends, we have been driven to the wall. If we remain here, they will come again and kill us. If we return to Hispaniola, they will hunt us down and butcher us like cattle. Can we return to France in piraguas? You know that we cannot.
'Every man must choose to live or choose to die. I choose to live, and here is how I propose to do it. With a few friends to whom I have already spoken, I shall follow the coast to San Domingo. Not until very late will we
