necessaries, and sailed
for Hispaniola. Often they remained in the woods for a year or two,
sending their servants to the coast from time to time with loads of meat
and hides. They hunted, as a rule, without dogs, though some sought out
the whelps of the wild mastiffs and trained them to hunt the boars.
They stalked their quarry carefully, and shot it from behind a tree. In
the evenings they boucanned their kill, pegged out the hides as tightly
as they could, smoked a pipe or two about the fire, and prepared a
glorious meal of marrow, "toute chaude"--their favourite dish. After
supper they pitched their little linen tents, smeared their faces with
grease to keep away the insects, put some wood upon the fire, and
retired to sleep, with little thought of the beauty of the fireflies.
They slept to leeward of the fires, and as near to them as possible, so
that the smoke might blow over them, and keep off the mosquitoes. They
used to place wet tobacco leaf and the leaves of certain plants among
the embers in order that the smoke might be more pungent.

[Footnote 6: See Burney, and Exquemeling.]

[Illustration: A BUCCANEER'S SLAVE, WITH HIS MASTER'S GUN
A BARBECUE IN RIGHT LOWER CORNER]

When the hunt was over, the parties would return to the coast to dispose
of all they carried home, and to receive all they had earned during
their absence. It was a lucrative business, and two years' hunting in
the woods brought to each hunter a considerable sum of money. As soon as
they touched their cash, they retired to Tortuga, where they bought new
guns, powder, bullets, small shot, knives, and axes "against another
going out or hunting." When the new munitions had been paid for, the
buccaneers knew exactly how much money they could spend in
self-indulgence. Those who have seen a cowboy on a holiday, or a sailor
newly home from the seas, will understand the nature of the "great
liberality" these hunters practised on such occasions. One who saw a
good deal of their way of life[7] has written that their chief vice, or
debauchery, was that of drunkenness, "which they exercise for the most
part with brandy. This they drink as liberally as the Spaniards do clear
fountain water. Sometimes they buy together a pipe of wine; this they
stave at the one end, and never cease drinking till they have made an
end of it. Thus they celebrate the festivals of Bacchus so long as they
have any money left." The island of Tortuga must have witnessed som