[vscweb-devel] Truggle, and nearly throttled me. He's calmer now, and I

[Leisey S. <pa...@be...>]

As you did not belong to me then, whatever you may have done was no
disgrace to me. Give me your word for the future, and I will acquit you
for the past.' Then striking his gun barrel, he would add, 'Shouldst
thou prove false to me,
this will not.' Meanwhile, the
buccaneers, becoming stronger and stronger every day, extended their
designs,

and pushed their operations with a degree of audacity and success that
rendered them the terror of the seas. As yet their marine consisted
only of boats and canoes, but these were, as before stated,
of a size to carry from fifty to a hundred men each. They attacked not
only merchantmen, but vessels
of war, with

a degree of intrepidity unexampled in the history of man. No matter for
the size of a ship, or for her armament. They paused not to calculate
chances. Their invariable practice was to carry their
prizes by boarding. Their boats were propelled with the swiftness of an
arrow. As certain as they grappled with a vessel, she was sure to be
taken; for their onslaughts were desperately
furious and irresistible. The Spanish Government
complained bitterly, both to England and France, of the outrages upon
her commerce by the pirates, a large

majority of whom were the born subjects of those nations. The answers,
however, of both were the same: that those
piratical acts were not committed by the buccaneers as their subjects;
and the Spanish ambassador was informed that his master might proceed

against them as he saw fit. In consequence of the transactions of the
buccaneers with the people

of Jamaica, England went farther,
and actually removed the governor of that colony. But, whether with the
connivance

of the civil authorities or not, the intercourse between the
pirates
and the people continued
without serious interruption. Some of the buccaneers, however,
pretended to hold commissions both from the French and
the Dutch; but it was mere pretext. Their authority was in truth
nothing
more than what the sailors are wont jocosely to call 'a commission from
the Pope.' Yet they affected to consider themselves in lawful
war against Spain, for the reason that the Spaniards had debarred them
from the privileges of hunting in the forests and fishing in the waters
of St. Domingo--thus depriving them of the exercise of what they called
their lawful rights. In regard to the cruelties which they frequently
inflicted upon the prisoners who fell into their
hands, they pleaded in justification those enormities
which the conquerors of Spanish America inflicted upon t