“loitered away six days in the Bay. During this time how his people were employed I know not, but as for himself he spent the time in diversions every day rowing about the bay in his barge with the Ladies, and attended by trumpets and all the music of the fleet in other boats to recreate himself and the women, with the pleasantness of the country.” When at last the expedition got to its work of plundering the French settlements in Haiti, Captain Wilmot, who had been joined by various Jamaica privateers, kept ahead of the troops as they marched along on shore, and applied himself to robbing the plantations, particularly of their negroes, who were then very valuable booty. At Port de Paix the commodore made his last attempt to induce the colonel to come to an understanding for their common advantage: “But smiling he takes me by the hand and leading me aside he told me he wanted to speak with me, and now he showed himself in his own colours a second time and made his last attempt to bring me over to him; he told me he would comply with all the orders of our council of war, and assist me with all the men he could spare, and do everything he could to forward the service if I would but join with him in one thing, and allow a second. The first was I should consent to his having an equal share of the plunder with me in case the fort should be taken. “To this I made him no answer but asked him what was his second proposal. ‘Why,’ says he, ‘if you will join with me when the fort is taken and all done that can be done on the island we will carry these three Spanish men-of-war away with us to Jamaica, for,’ says he, ‘the dogs have got a great many of the negroes, and other plunder, and if you will consent,’ says he, ‘we’ll make them pay us well before we part with them.’ [Lillingston objected that this would be dishonest and would certainly get them into trouble at home.] ‘’Tis no matter for that,’ says the commodore, ‘we are a great way off England, and it may be long enough before the news of it will come there. We may make it worth our while and may easily make it up when we come home.’ I told him I could not concern myself in such a thing unless the Spaniards gave us some just occasion. ‘Occasion,’ says he, ‘there is occasion enough, for they have got away our negroes, and it is easy enough to pick a hole in their coats on that account, and answer it at home.’” Wilmot’s confidence that news took a long time to come home from the West Indies, and that accusations were easily answered by people who had money in their pockets, was not unfounded. Strange things happened in those waters. It may well have been within the commodore’s memory that in the reign of Charles II. a man-of-war sent out to suppress the buccaneers had gone over to them, after her captain had run his master through the body, and had then fled.