the "chug-chug" of
a motor boat, and a small craft of racing pattern glided up to the bank.

"Got a passenger, Andy," he said to the sole occupant of the boat.

"Food for fishes?" came the grim query, in reply.

"Not yet; not this time, anyway. No, we'll just put him ashore at Cuba
and see if he knows how to mind his own business."

The motor boat engineer grumbled under his breath. He was evidently not
a man for half-measures. The blood of the old buccaneers ran in his
veins. It was evident, though, that Cecil was master.

The two men aboard, Andy turned the head of the motor boat down the
river and out to sea, shooting past the short water-front of the little
village of Plaine du Nord at a bewildering speed. The Creoles had barely
time to realize that there was something on the water before it was gone
out of sight.

Despite its speed--which was in the neighborhood of thirty-two
knots--the motor boat was built for sea use, and it ran along the coast
of the Haitian north peninsula, past Le Borgne and St. Louis de Nord,
like a scared dolphin. Arriving near Port-de-Paix, it hugged the shore
of the famous lair of the buccaneers, Isle de Tortugas, and thence
struck for the open sea.

"Tortugas!" commented Cecil, pointing to the rocky shores of the islet.

"That's where all the pirates came from, wasn't it?" queried Stuart,
eager to break the silence of the journey.

"Pirates? No. The pirate haunts were more to the north. It was the
stronghold of the buccaneers."

"I always thought pirates and buccaneers were the same thing," put in
the boy.

"Far from it. Originally the buccaneers were hunters, and their name
comes from _boucan_, a word meaning dried flesh. They hunted wild cattle
and wild pigs on that island over there."

"Haiti?"

"It was called Hispaniola, then. The Spanish owned it, but had only a
few settlements on the coast. The population was largely Carib, a savage
race given to cannibalism. There seems little reason to doubt that even
if the buccaneers did not actually smoke and cure human flesh, as the
Caribs did, they traded in it and ate it themselves."

"Were the buccaneers Spaniards?" queried Stuart.

"No. French to begin with, and afterwards, many English joined them.
That was just where the whole bloody business began. France protected
the buccaneers, sent them aid and ammunition; even their famous
guns--known as 'buccaneering pieces' and four and a half feet long--were
all made in France